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2010 will prove to be a year-long tribute to John Lennon in honor of what would be his 70th birthday, which is October 9.

Yoko Ono has begun the kick-off by appearing at NAMM last week, the international music products association, to show her support of music education. Quincy Jones and Jackson Browne joined her at the press conference in Anaheim, California.

During her speech,Yoko voiced her support of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a non-profit state of the art mobile recording facility that tours schools throughout the United States. It provides students from all over the United States with a chance to have hands-on experience at composing, performing and recording in a real studio.

We reported last week that Yoko has reunited the Plastic Ono Band, for performances in Oakland as well as Brooklyn on February 16, with an exciting line-up that will include former Plastic Ono Band members Klaus Voorman, Jim Keltner and Eric Clapton, as well as her son Sean Lennon.

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John Lennon's 70th birthday: these tacky souvenirs and adverts insult his memory

You get the biggest prize when you die, a really big one for dying in public," John Lennon said in one of his final interviews, in 1980. "I don't appreciate the worship of dead Sid Vicious, or dead James Dean. What do they teach you? Nothing. Death. Sid Vicious died for what? So that we might rock? It's garbage, you know. I'll take the living and the healthy."

When do the dead stop having birthdays? If John Lennon had lived, he would have turned 70 next Saturday, an imaginary anniversary being commemorated with the rerelease of remastered versions of his solo recorded output. These can be bought separately, or alongside a hardback book of Lennon's artwork as part of a handsome, LP-sized John Lennon "Box Of Vision" ("the exact same John Lennon Box of Vision that will be stored inside the John Lennon Time Capsule"). Can you hear a faint voice, twisting in the wind: "It's money for dope, money for rope…"?