#174 - double fantasy.

i'm no beatles expert. that's for sure. i am pretty familiar with their music though. i first really heard the beatles when i was a pre-teen & found abbey road amongst a box of records my dad had in the basement. i fell in love & to this day, it's still my fave beatles album & possibly my fave album of all time. since then, i've heard everything they've ever done multiple times, but my beatles cd collection only consists of sgt peppers, the beatles 1967-1970 & the beatles anthology I. i know. i'm a slacker. maybe all that will change now that the beatles' music is on itunes. [insert chuckle here]. with that in mind, other than "imagine" & the other smash hits, i know next to nothing about john lennon's solo career. with today marking the 30th anniversary of the day when he was murdered here in NYC, i decided to mark the date by familiarizing myself with his first two solo albums--john lennon/plastic ono band & imagine--and his final album, double fantasy.

john lennon/plastic ono band - after the breakup of the beatles & the release of a few experimental albums with yoko ono, in 1970 lennon released john lennon/plastic ono band, an album recorded at the same time as ono's debut solo album, yoko ono/plastic ono band. it's got a ton of killer songs, from the rockin' "i found out" to the introspective "mother" to the dylanesque "working class hero." lennon covers a lot of varied musical territory throughout the album & for the most part, he succeeds in doing so. of the three albums i've been listening to today, this one's my #1. apparently, i'm not alone, as many have included it on their "totally the best albums ever" lists.

fave track: "i found out"

imagine - the next year, lennon followed up his solo debut with imagine, whose title track became shorthand for lennon's political activism & "message of hope." it's a song that's taken on a life of its own & become WAY cliche. for me though, depending on my frame of mind, hearing "imagine" can still make me teary-eyed. i know a lot of folks put this album in their top 100 of all time, but other than a few songs, it really doesn't do it for me. i'm cool with "how do you sleep?," a direct jab at paul mccartney & "oh yoko!," the album closer & happiest song on the album but "jealous guy" (which went on to become a #1 hit for roxy music) & a handful of other songs bore me to tears.

fave track: "oh yoko!"

double fantasy - after imagine, lennon released a new album every year up to & including 1975, when his son sean was born & he retreated from the music industry. five years later (on my sixth birthday in 1980), he re-emerged with double fantasy. it's a joint album with yoko ono, as half of the album's fourteen tracks are penned by lennon & half are ono's. initially, critics didn't love the album but exactly three weeks after its release, lennon was shot & killed in front of his apartment & the legacy of double fantasy changed, as it went to #1 in the U.S. for the next eight weeks. three of lennon's songs--"(just like) starting over," "woman" & "watching the wheels"--were released as singles & went on to get a lot of radio play. as for ono's stuff, it's dancier & more experimental but still mostly listenable. overall, the album's got a few gaps here & there, but i can't see why critics weren't feeling it. it's a hopeful album from an artist who'd spent so much of his last decade fighting both the U.S. government and the public's conceptions of he & his lifestyle choices. maybe the critics just expected more from someone who'd been built up as a god.

fave track: "watching the wheels"

the killing of john lennon, a 2006 non-fiction drama about the three months in mark david chapman's life before he murdered lennon, came in the mail via netflix today. i guess i'll watch that tonight but for the moment though, i'm going to relax & give these albums a few more listens. after all, it's probably better to make today more about his life than about his death.

snack: kettle popcorners
drink: virgil's black cherry cream soda

in my snack-drink double fantasy, these days the snack has to be of the kettle variety. slightly-embarrassing full disclosure: until this year, i had no idea what qualified a snack as "kettle" flavored. since discovering the wonder of kettle flavoring earlier this year, i've been eating copious amounts of popcorn, indiana's sweet & tangy bbq kettlecorn. when i recently came across kettle popcorners at my bodega & saw the bag's claim that popcorners represent "the new shape of popcorn," i jumped at the opportunity to once again be on the cutting edge of snacking. they're an all-natural, non-greasy chip & they're made with popcorn, which allows them to work the healthy angle & while popcorners are a relatively new entry to the field of snacking, they've quickly started to become hip, as jet blue now serves them on their flights. they come in four flavors--butter, sea salt, white cheddar & the aforementioned kettle.

the kettle ones are pretty damn tasty. sure it's nothing than hasn't been done before with rice cakes, but rice cakes are SO not the future of snacking. popcorners TOTALLY are. they're light but flavorful & since they're thinner than rice cakes, they don't have an inner portion that's dry & relatively untouched by flavor. i assume that the tangy sweetness of the kettle flavoring had a lot to do with the fast pace that i ate them at, but the fact that they're so light definitely helped. so yeah...they're good & they must be on to something, as the folks at popcorn, indiana have just released their own version of the popcorn chip, the chip'in. there's no kettle flavored chip'in though, so i guess until my kettle obsession comes to an end, when it comes to popcorn chips, i'll be sticking to popcorners.

my snack-drink double fantasy definitely comes with a cold bottle of virgil's black cherry cream soda. when i turned aside caffeine & HFCS in my sodas late last year, virgil's root beer quickly emerged as my favorite soda. since i'm a creature of habit, i stuck with that for a while. then i came across their black cherry cream soda & everything changed. since then, i've had at least a bottle a week of the stuff. the front of the label promises "a black cherry cream soda so pure, so rich and creamy you'll swear it's made in heaven." that's funny because i checked the rest of the label & virgil's is totally based in L.A., which we all know is actually hell.

as far as cherry sodas go, it's the best i've ever tried. it's made of all-natural ingredients: purified carbonated water, unbleached cane sugar, caramelized unrefined cane sugar, vanilla extract, black cherry flavor & natural flavors. with each sip, you get a nice, smooth black cherry flavor followed by a vanilla aftertaste. it's sweet & creamy & lovely. the only drawback to it is the fact that since it's all microbrewed & whatnot, a single bottle costs at least two-and-change, so it's not something i'm going to be drinking every day. when i do though, i can be sure that my taste buds will thank me...you know...if taste buds could talk...which they can't...except for in my fantasies.