Once upon a time in New York City

Recent commemorative tributes on the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York City used video footage with John Lennon’s Imagine as soundtrack for the more heart-rending scenes, practically obliterating all threats of an imminent war an ocean or two away in the oil fields of Iraq.

Now if there was one adopted son of New York, then it would be Lennon, who was shot to death by a deranged fan at his upscale Dakota apartments in the city, a far cry from the squalid Dakota on Harrison Plaza way.

One of the more enduring CDs of Lennon, who perhaps will be best remembered for his Imagine (also used as soundtrack for the movie on Cambodia’s killing fields), is Sometime in New York City, a long bootlegged version of his live concert in Central Park with the underground Plastic Ono Band that featured his wife Yoko Ono, bassist Klaus Voorman, and session spots by friend Eric Clapton, if we’re not mistaken.

Sometime in NYC has since been reissued in legitimate form. We once came across a copy while browsing in Music One in PowerBooks in Megamall. We don’t know the exact songs in the CD, but we imagine (that word again) that Give Peace a Chance and Woman is the Nigger of the World would be on it, if only they would sound great live and are the staples of the Plastic Ono Band at that period of their somewhat abbreviated existence –the early ’70s, or just after the Beatles broke up.

Who else but Lennon could sing a song like God, with his catalogue listing of his unbeliefs –he doesn’t believe in Dylan, Elvis, Buddha, mantra, tai chi, Beatles, etc., etc. He also says that "God is a concept by which we measure our pain," a philosophical construct in the league of Schopenhauer or Keirkegaard, the latter of whom said "purity of heart is to will one thing."

And what thing might that be? When Lennon sings towards the end of God that "the dream is over," we know it really is and nothing can bring it back or revive it.

Except perhaps for Crowded House, whose best known song is Don’t Dream it’s Over, itself an indirect tribute to Lennon and/or the dream that was the Beatles, or any doomed relationship for that matter.

(There’s a new place, by the way, called Crowded House at the former university bookstore in UP Diliman, which is a pub cum art gallery and folk house, and which understandably is always crowded. But that’s another story).

There are other memorable songs about New York. Simon and Garfunkel recorded The Only Living Boy in New York, which could also be belatedly dedicated to the firefighters and other heroes in the World Trade Center disaster, and which David Bowie sang in the commemorative album meant to raise funds for the victims of the tragedy.

The Simon and Garfunkel song is culled from their last studio album Bridge Over Troubled Water during their heyday, what a long time ago that was.

Everything But the Girl also has a version of The Only Living Boy in New York, and vocalist Tracy Thorn gives it a distinct rendering coming from a woman’s point of view.

Neither is it easy to dismiss Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, which originally was recorded by the acoustic duo Mark-Almond (not to be confused with the post-New Wave and punk Marc Almond) who popularized such cry-in-your-beer classics as What Am I Living For.

A year before the terrorist attacks, in 2000 Sonic Youth came out with the CD NYC Ghosts and Flowers, an eerie album of sounds and assorted gratings on the guitar that may have prefigured the dark day that was to come.

Seldom has there been an album as stark and lyrical and disarmingly prescient, maybe not since the Grateful Dead’s Blues for Allah in the mid-70s. In Ghosts and Flowers guitarist Thurston Moore again explores the outer limits of his instrument, almost as if it were an extraterrestrial gift or testament to the longevity of the rock medium.

Sustain is the operative word, the feedback playing on the eardrums long after the last note of Kim Gordon’s bass has subsided.

The Sonic Youth’s NYC album cover is a drawing by the writer-artist and junkie William Burroughs, another one for the books for this city of petrified dreams.