LENNON, JOHN / ONO, YOKO - Unfinished Music, No. 2: Life With The Lions (CD)

Secretly Canadian is honored to partner with Chimera Music on releasing Yoko Ono's musical output from 1968 to 1985. Comprised of eleven studio albums, the reissue project's focus is to painstakingly reconstruct the original vinyl packaging, to thoroughly excavate and appropriately curate the treasure-laden archives of never-before-seen photos and ephemera, and to re-master the audio, all for the purpose of creating the definitive editions of this timeless work. In addition to making the vinyl available for the first time in decades. Secretly Canadian and Chimera Music couldn't be more proud to be a part of re-introducing Yoko Ono's seminal work. The first batch to be reissued will be 1968's Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins, 1969's Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With The Lions, and 1970's Plastic Ono Band. If Two Virgins is the ecstatic first kiss shared between two of pop culture's greatest lovers, then Life with the Lions is the sound of the pair validating their love as something impenetrable and timeless. It's when we, the listener, begin to fully understand that the scope of their recording efforts was much more than a recording collaboration, and something closer to a performative documentary, a declaration of Our life and our love is our art - every nitty, gritty part of it. The collection begins with a more straightforward - at least in terms of explaining what it is - piece of improvised music, edited down from live performance at Cambridge University's Lady Mitchell Hall in March 1969. The entirety of Side B was recorded in a patient suite at London's Queen Charlotte Hospital where Ono was admitted with pregnancy complications and ultimately lost a child, John Ono Lennon II. The album cover photo was taken in the suite, with Ono in her hospital bed and Lennon in a sleeping bag made up on the floor next to her, both of them looking exhausted from the process. Secretly Canadian's reissue also includes Ono's Song for John and Mulberry, which did not appear on the original release.