The last ten years have been pretty good to Yoko. Starting with the exhibit “Yes Yoko Ono” put on by the Japan Society in New York in 2000 and traveling on to San Francisco, Sao Paolo, Hiroshima, Seoul, and other cities, awareness of her importance — and continued fertility — in making the art of our times reached and inspired a new generation of museum-goers and young artists while solidifying her standing among critics as a major 20th century artist. There were also a string of DJ remixes of her past songs by the likes of Basement Jaxx, Petshop Boys, DJ Dan, and many others, that earned a number of Billboard top spots on the dance charts. Likely, the resurrection of the Plastic Ono Band and its performances in New York and Tokyo will do much the same for her on the musical front as “Yes Yoko Ono” did for her art, except that her standing in art circles was much less in question.
     Musically, Ono has routinely been dismissed as making unbearable music to listen to, especially given her radical vocal style, which is based on deep guttural howls and screams. But the recent performances, with a generation of breakthrough sonic experimentalists and noise musicians backing her up, artists whose paths to success and cultural acceptance were at least partially paved by Ono, have made it more obvious than ever that she was one of the foremost innovators of avant-garde music and, as some writers have noted, proto-punk — and that credit should be given where credit is due. Sure, you can scream too, but can you scream in tune and in tempo? It might be argued that howling in tune is even more challenging than singing in tune.