The Arts at Macworld: The John Lennon Bus

John Lennon would have turned 67 year old last October, had he not been gunned down by a psychopath on December 8th, 1980. As truly bizarre as it may sound, in that pre 24 hour cable news era, and pre internet era (it was around but mainly used by the military and research colleges), it was Larry King that took phone calls on his radio show and played Lennon’s music all night long for a grieving generation.

Fortunately, Lennon’s music, art, and legacy live on, in many ways. One of those ways is the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, which was on display at Macworld on Wednesday. The Lennon Bus is a non-profit, mobile recording studio equipped with both traditional musical instruments and today’s high end audio and video technology. That technology includes Apple’s Logic (http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/logicpro/), Reason, Apple’s Final Cut Pro (http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/), Live 6, and JVC Pro video cameras.

The Lennon bus provides tours to middle school, high school, and college aged students, and encourages and assists them in playing music, writing songs, engineering recording sessions, and producing music videos. The bus is divided into two major sections: a traditional recording studio in the back, with keyboards, guitars, basses, and drums; and a multimedia studio in the front, containing audio and video recording and editing tools.

Yoko Ono Lennon describes the bus as “Precisely the kind of project John Lennon would have loved.”

You can read more about the John Lennon Bus at http://www.lennonbus.org/ and the associated John Lennon Song Writing Contest at http://www.jlsc.com/.