John Zorn: Classic or Dud?

Me too. I love the Dreamers stuff

John Zorn is one of the first/formative favorite artists of mine who nonetheless made me, at a certain point, just say 'enough.' So much of his stuff was so well packaged, played (by some of my favorite players) and recorded, and so much was expensive even by domestic standards, let alone as imports, that years ago I just had to give up trying to keep up. I haven't heard anything - let alone thought of - Zorn for longer than I can remember, though I have held on to some of my favorite stuff: Masada, Naked City, the soundtrack series, Big Gundown. Bar Kokhba and The Circle Maker.

(Ha, looking upthread, I think the last time Zorn came to mind was the last time I posted on this thread, five years ago!

I just got the first four Masada discs (three full-length CDs and a three-song EP). Listened to part of the first one this morning. It was good, but not life-changing or anything, and I didn't hear a huge amount of Ornette (except on the very first track) or anything ultra-Jewish in a shove-it-in-your-face sort of way. Most of it was just adventurous-ish hard bop. I guess I'll make my way through all of it (35 tracks) just 'cause it's there, but honestly my enthusiasm is already fading and I've only listened to about eight pieces.

I dunno, I think adventurous-ish hard bop is good enough. I suppose it does get interesting what be does with the various Masada themes in future projects/groups.

This Christmas album is well lounge-y...Not sure what I expected but we're clearly in the world of Christmas Cookin'/Ski Surfin'/Charlie Brown rather than Jazz Freakout Christmas.

I had a real Zorn-athon today. Listened to The Dreamers albums and then took in Mount Analogue for the first time. I bought my first Zorn Album 'Spillane' when I was 15 years old and 24 years later I still feel like I am a newbie. It was a split South Bank Show with Zorn/Sonic Youth that got my attention. Whenever I get bored of everything on my ipod I just delete it all and stick a load of Zorn/Mingus/Miles/Mozart on it.Every time I go back to Zorn there is always one of his albums that I previously didn't care much for, suddenly becomes my favourite album. The guy's music is an extraordinary goldmine. Now I am listening to Nova Express which is becoming another of my favourites.

Dreamers is his sort of post-Masada outfit, right? Sort of like another iteration of Electric Masada? I've heard their Book 2 disc is great.

Just check out The Gift, The Dreamers,Alhambra Love Songs and o'o and I guarantee you will find a lot to love. I am not great with his personel but I they all have Ribot on guitar and members of Electric Masada.

Electric Masada is a better band than Radiohead

I will be careful about getting too excited on here in future, lest I get cut again by laconic wit.

Sorry about my last nonsense post I have had a few today and am not sure what I was talking about.

Went to an excellent concert performance last night by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra of some of Zorn's orchestral pieces. Just great to hear a huge group of musicians really nailing some typically 'difficult' (to execute, at least) pieces. Can be heard here;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ppw1t

Try to check a couple - wish he'd play Chimeras live (its a for Pierrot Lunaire type ensemble, and it works)

There's this next month for Londoners.

I really like the extremely short-lived band Zorn had with Fred Frith on guitar, Bill Laswell on bass, and Dave Lombardo on drums. They only played four shows ever between 1999 and 2001, and recorded exactly one studio track, on the Taboo and Exile album (two other tracks on that disc feature Frith, Laswell, Lombardo, and Marc Ribot, but no Zorn). I have bootlegs of all four live shows, and they're pretty killer. A kind of cross between Pain Killer and Last Exit, with Lombardo erupting into double kick drum madness at regular intervals. Frith gets drowned out a lot. Oh, and at the New York show (which I was at), Eye joins on vocals for part of it.

Really? I saw their London performance and didn't think it worked at all - seemed like four different musicians doing their own thing rather any kind of collective endeavour. This may be conditioned by the fact that a) I'd seen a Masada evening at the same venue about a year before, which was one of the best gigs I've been to, and b) I find the sound of Laswell's electric 12-string particularly unlovable. Still, Lombardo was amazing, and we did get Derek Bailey in support.

I got to see a Naked City show in NYC back in the day at the old Marquee. The guy in the wrestling mask doing the vocals turned out to be, not Eye, but Mike Patton. It was one of the most fun shows I ever attended, seeing these four musicians with sheet music siting down looking totally serious whilst performing some of the most fucked up and precise noise ever invented.

So that's classic.

But the dude is incredibly prolific and only a small portion of it is even close to as interesting as that, so I understand if people disagree.

Another fond Naked City memory: I worked at the Tower Records in the Village from 1989-1990 downstairs in the cassettes department. Sometimes I would be asked to work in the separate room down there at the back where we kept soundtracks, jazz, world music and the like, sequestered from the more mainstream stuff. While working in there one was not allowed to play anything not for sale in there. So I always played Naked City (and also soundtracks for the first Decline of Western Civilization and River's Edge). Which pissed my bosses off and scared quite a few customers but I am also pretty sure I sold a few tapes too!

A 4+ hour Masada marathon this week in NY for his 60th, featuring 13 different iterations. There's a recording just gone up on D1m3 too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/arts/music/john-zorn-gets-a-masada-marathon-for-his-60th-birthday.html?_r=0

Wow.

Did you hear his NPR interview? Totally not what I expected - funny, talkative, self-deprecating, cooperative, etc. ...

I was there http://i.imgur.com/zi7hd.gif

Josh - will check that out, I've been a bit of a grump wrt Zorn in recent years but feel that I'm coming back around again, the London birthday concert a couple of months ago was fantastic.

WGW - was it all good? I'd like to have seen SC3 doing Masada

It was pretty phenomenal

It was supposed to be 3.5 hours, so the nearly FIVE HOUR performance did, in fact, feel like a marathon, complete with exhaustion

Obviously, for me, the rockcentric stuff was the best — Secret Chiefs 3, Abraxas, Krakower, and Electric Masada who might be the best working American rock band — especially since it was so monstrously loud in that room. Watching/hearing older folks cover their ears and complain to each other was a rare treat you usually only get to see on sitcoms, so it had that extra element. On the other end of the spectrum, it was the second time I've seen Feldman/Courvosier duo and I really love the kind of broken chamber music feel that Pareles pointed out. (Their Masada CD is really good too) Zorn didn't actually play until the very last band, so hearing his familiar sax sound after however many hours was like a jolt of electricity.

I'm pulling it in now, if anybody wants a W3Transf3r link PM me.

I bought the Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz: Abraxas Book of Angels 19 after seeing em at Masada Marathon and it is blazing

http://www.spin.com/articles/john-zorn-mike-patton-met-museum-of-art/

The whole day at the Met Museum from open to close... in 77 seconds:
http://www.spin.com/articles/john-zorn-mike-patton-met-museum-of-art/

I lost track of the Filmworks series several volumes in, but wow, is this perfectly Komeda-meets-Morricone-a-rific:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYOS-tx0vHE

this 'in lambeth' william blake tribute is fantastic. reminds me of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9zLcHSilHY

How many Zorn CDs does an ilxor have in their house?

i only ever physically owned naked city

I "physically" own naked city and masada live in sevilla

50 on the dot, incl. 6 multi-disc sets, incl. the Parachute Years box

But none in the last 8-9 years

I have all 7 CDs by the Moonchild band, and the 4CD Painkiller anthology. That's it.

I used to have a dozen cassettes, then dozens of Tzadik and Avant and Elektra CDs. Masada and Naked City were a huge hunk. And Film series. Now all is digital.

Kristallnacht
Bar Kohkba
The Circle Maker
Naked City
Astronome
Six Litanies for Heliogabalus
Chimeras

I think that's all I have. Not sure where else to go with him. The Bar Kohkba discs are easily my favourites.

Pretty much everything Masada and Masada-related is worthwhile, esp. Circle Maker and Bar Kohkba.

formerly about 6 cds which went missing during a house move and I bought the Spillane/Albert Collins album on vinyl way back. About a gazillion digital albums.

About a gazillion digital albums.

^

Tzadik is getting more and more a Zorn-only outlet it seems, save for some new groups. The back catalogue is huge so I´m still discovering great new things.

Last summer I bought Zorn´s Filmworks 3, a pretty good cd (lots of great guitar work). The duo-cd with Bobby Previte (Euclyd´s Nightmare) is quite accessible and I´m now getting into the early game pieces work as 'New Traditions in East Asian Bar Bands´ and 'Cobra'. As a composer, I can see that his way of composing hasn´t changed radically as it´s still short blocks with lots of things happening, but things have certainly have become more refined and working with a pool of musicians that know what he wants works really well (on 'What Thou Wilt' for example). On ´Rimbaud´ he started mixing composed music with improvised music.

There´s a teaser of a recent studio session on the Tzadik twitter account with Ribot and some other musicians that made me curious.

I also posted this to Tzadik thread but I mention it on here as well; Aram Bajakian's brilliant and seemingly underrated There Were Flowers Also In Hell lp from last year absolutely shreds.

this sounds great

Klezmerson: Amon: The Book Of Angels Volume 24 [#8328]
Get ready to be blown out of your seat! Klezmerson has created one of the most astonishing installments of the entire Angels series--a spectacular reading of Masada material drawing upon the rich tradition of Mexican music from Oaxaca to Veracruz. Touching upon Henry Mancini, Xavier Cugat, Psychedelia and so much more, this is without doubt one of the wildest, most creative, flamboyant and masterful readings of Masada material since the Secret Chiefs 3. The work of a maestro in total control of his craft, Amon takes Masada to unimagined places! Essential!

LOL, Volume 24.

Essential!

22 + 23 were both essential imho so i wouldn't be surprised if the trend continues

i meant 21 + 22. i didn't love 23 as much

Just sayin', once your series (one of several, not including a deluge of other projects featuring permutations of the usual suspects) hits the two dozen mark, even "essential!" becomes a tough sell.

i have a whole mess of Masada & Zorn cds in my basement from college years ('99 - '03). a couple of those live Masada discs will be worth digging up (the ones with good sound, because i know a couple of them were not great at all). a bunch of other Tzadik stuff too (Cyro Baptista, Milford Graves, etc).

Filmworks ultimately hit, what, 25 volumes? I've heard many, if not most of them, and they are all great, possibly even essential, if you're into Quine, or Ribot or Friedlander whomever. But jesus, 25 volumes! And that's just one hunk of the world's biggest musical iceberg.

i remember reading that he was starting a book 3 series soon?

Just this week I discovered Zorn contributed to a Kurt Weill tribute after listening to the BBC Jazz Files documentary. I also bought ´More News for Lulu' recently.

News on Book 3

Masada, a repertory Zorn has been creating for more than two decades now, will be completed with this third installment. As he explained, the first book contained 205 compositions, the second 316 and the third will have 92, for a total of 613 tunes: the number of mitzvoth, or commandments, in the Torah.

Ha, I like the "A Tzadik Classic!" label applied to some of these - https://www.tzadik.com/catalog.php?view=date

I also love that Julian Lage has been spending so much time in the Zorn-verse

Is Joey Baron no longer working regularly with Zorn?

I guess not? I listened to a nearly three hour podcast interview with him and it was insane to me that Zorn/Masada never came up.

Ok let's go https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=41

Oops - At the Mountains of Madness: Tzadik Records catalog now streaming

Speaking of the original Masada quartet, I see that Tzadik is coming out with a limited run box set of the 10 original quartet CDs, previously only available on DIW Japan. Pricey but tempting.

Oops, missed the fact that this was posted above. I was distracted by the streaming news.

Just watched this clip from 10 years ago, it rules:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4eO2o9u1j0