Peter C. Johnson has been around the rock scene since the 1970's, recording albums on both CBS and A&M Records, and opening shows for such diverse acts as Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, Bonnie Raitt, J. Geils Band, and The Velvet Underground. After leaving the music scene for quite a while, he resurfaced in 2001 and Yaka Yaka is his third release since his return. Yaka Yaka is a bizarre, spoken word "concept" album, a story of one man's journey through life after being shattered by the shooting of John Lennon in 1980. Johnson's vocals, or narrative would be a better word for it, sounds eerily like Lou Reed crossed with an old gravelly voiced blues man, as he rambles on about this and that with sparse instrumentation going on behind him, supplied mostly by percussion, keyboard washes, acoustic and pedal steel guitars. The results are ominous and dark, at times downright creepy, yet it's almost impossible to distinguish one song from the next due to Johnson's nasaly diatribe and lack of any tempo change. It's not rock, not prog, not jazz, certainly not metal, and quite frankly anyone would be hard pressed to classify this as anything other than abstract and narrative avant-garde.
Proceed with caution...
Track Listing
1. Yaka Yaka
2. Victims of The Flood
3. Goodbye Dear Friend
4. Something Is Broken
5. California
6. I Still Miss Someone
7. Hospital
8. You're In The Computer
9. Runaways
10. Blue Shakra
11. The War Is Over