A blues musician from Chicago and one from the Delta would have no problem getting onstage and jamming on a riff. So why should it be a surprise when Greek singer Savina Yannatou and Persian-rooted Mamak Khadem teamed up the other day at a Los Angeles concert for an unaccompanied, totally unrehearsed, improvised vocal duet?

"I've improvised on record, so this shouldn't be very different," said Khadem before the show with a little nervous laugh."

"We felt each one of us know what she would do," said Yannatou after. "We thought it could not be a disaster."

Indeed. The duet was a rousing success, the sweet frosting on top of what was already a well-frosted cake of an evening. Khadem's opening hour showcased material from her fine 2007 album 'Jostojoo,' featuring music gleaned from studies she'd done in Greece, Turkey and Iran with lyrics derived from classical Persian poetry, played by a band that ranged into Armenian, Balkan and Kurdish traditional styles with a few modern touches, to boot.

Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono are furious over a new book called 'John Lennon: The Life,' written by respected Beatles biographer Philip Norman, which claims that Lennon fantasized about sleeping with his mother and wanted a gay relationship with McCartney.

"I don't think [the gay claims] are true," McCartney told the Sun. "John never ever tried anything, I slept with him a million times. I've seen him on tour roaring drunk, out of his mind in the early days before he sobered up and went to rehab. Roaring drunk and it was always with a female."

"If you've got a little gay tendency and you're roaring drunk I'd have caught him once," McCartney concluded.

Both McCartney and Ono initially approved the book, and even granted interviews. Not surprisingly, Ono, 75, has completely withdrawn her endorsement of the book, which is due out next month.

• Bjork and Sigur Ros are teaming for a concert to be held in their native Iceland on June 28. The gig, which will be held at an undisclosed location in the capital of Reykjavik, aims to bring about evironmental awareness.

• Liz Phair has written the score for a new CBS TV series called 'Swingtown.'

• Spiritualized is set to open select dates for Lenny Kravitz, beginning June 7 in Finland.

• Yoko Ono lost her legal bid to prohibit the use of John Lennon's 'Imagine' in the film 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,' which challenges the theory of evolution.
  

• Yoko Ono is trying to prevent the public release of a video that shows John Lennon smoking pot and threatening to put LSD in President Nixon's tea. The video was shot in 1970 by Ono's ex-husband, Anthony Cox.

• Cat Power has rescheduled the handful of dates she was forced to cancel last week due to damaged vocal cords.
  

• Lou Reed and longtime girlfriend Laurie Anderson got married on April 12.
  

• Singer-songwriter Paul Davis, who is best known for the hit 'I Go Crazy,' died at a Mississippi hospital today. He was 60.

On This Date in 1969: John Lennon changes his middle name from Winston to Ono, in honor of his bride of one month, Yoko Ono.

The Almanac Advises for April 22: "Some brides will change their last name upon marriage, others will retain their original family name. As another alternative, some newlywed wives, in lieu of adopting an unwieldy hyphenated surname, will take one family name as a middle name and one as a last name."

On This Date in 1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono wed at the British Consulate in Gibraltar. It is the second marriage for Lennon and the third for Ono.

The Almanac Advises for March 20: "Some moralists see multiple marriages as degrading the institution of matrimony and point to the negative role it may have on stepchildren. Others see it as a better alternative than remaining in an unhealthy marriage, where the possibility of infidelity looms."

On This Date in 1933: Avant-garde artist and musician Yoko Ono is born in Tokyo.

The Almanac Advises for February 18: "There are often tensions in two-career marriages, especially if one partner is more successful in his or her field of expertise than the other. Professional jealousy can be a factor that can place strain on the relationship, with one result being that a spouse may begin to interfere with the more accomplished one's work."

We'd like to think that John Lennon would be remembered solely for his contributions to music and social change, but a growing number of folks see things differently -- turning his corpse into the gift that keeps on giving.

The latest member of that bandwagon is Betty Glassow, a hairdresser who kept a lock of Lennon's hair squirreled away for more than four decades before deciding to put it up for auction earlier this week. The stylist, who bundled the late Beatle's follicles with a note he'd passed her way, raked in about $48,000 for the trimmed tresses, but her auction house representative -- naturally enough -- insists that Glassow parted with the mane with altruistic motives. Nick Muston told the Associated Press "She feels that rather than these things being stuck in a drawer with nobody enjoying them, real enthusiasts [could] get their hands on these things." We can imagine Lennon spinning in his grave -- and Yoko Ono finding a way to broadcast footage of that action on pay-per-view.

'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)'
--John Lennon/Yoko Ono (1971)

What you get when you combine the weight-of-the-world Beatle with Phil Spector and the Harlem Community Choir: A bombastic wall of Christmas sound with a heart of gold and a banner headline's timelessness. The prevailing sentiment – "war is over, if you want it" -- is an exercise in mass-scale positive thinking on par with believing in Santa Claus.

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While we've never been prone to writing fan letters to celebrities who're still walking on this mortal coil, we can understand why some folks might choose to do so -- after all, there's always an off-chance that Courtney Love might send a half-smoked Pall Mall daubed with MAC Russian Red lipstick. But as far as communing with stars who've long since moved on to another plane of existence? We'd think it prudent to save our postage -- but , not surprisingly, Yoko Ono looks at things a little differently, and has decided that the city of Reykjavik, Iceland needs a special mailbox just to hold missives sent to her late husband, John Lennon.

The letter depository is actually part of a larger conceptual art project -- as far as we're concerned, so is everything else in life, but we digress -- centered around the Imagine Peace Tower, a 30-meter high structure to be stuffed with messages of peace and well wishes sent along by Lennon devotees. About the only thing missing from the project is a talking train to shuttle said followers back and forth -- which strikes us as a job for 'Shining Time Station' conductor Ringo Starr.

Next: Frontman Gets Inked On Stage