John Zorn: Classic or Dud?

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.

His next release in the Hermetic Organ series was recorded at St Paul's church in Huddersfield, reet Town of Culture we are! It won't be as good as the Áine O'Dwyer church cleaners recordings where you can hear the buzz of vacuum cleaners and visitors talking in the background to her beautiful playing in St Mark's Church in Islington.

Kurt Weill tribute

Yeah, "Lost in the Stars," the first of those all-star Hal Wilner projects.

I like that Aine O'Dwyer!

mine are

Bar Kokhba

Merzbow - 1930

the 3 Eyvind Kang CDs

Kletka Red

so six? feel like there's one I'm forgetting about

o right Kang's Grass is on Tzadik, also have the Maryanne Amacher and Terry Riley's Aleph

the Aine O'Dwyer is the best thing i've heard so far this year

I wasn't being disdainful of the Áine O'Dwyer album, it is beautiful.

i agree - it's gorgeous.

Yeah, it's great—I reviewed it for The Wire (next issue, probably). The requests for fewer long low tones are hilarious.

The new Book of Angels vol 28 with the Nova Express Quintet is totally ace. I haven't been much bothered about Zorn for ages but this is lush. Lol just noticed on the tzadik site that I'm behind the times, Vol 29. came out in June.

seventeen releases so far this year ! anybody keeping up ?

https://johnzornresource.com/discography

really been enjoying the "hermetic organ" series. here's vol. 6:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhsPT6AWAGI

John Zorn - The Hermetic Organ Vol. 6 - For Edgar Allan Poe

I'm a huge fan of John Zorn, and yet, I'm not sure I've heard anything he's done for a few years, at least not since all the Masada/anniversary stuff. So I'm probably, oh, 300 releases behind.

All the Simulacrum albums are really good. The two albums (so far) by Insurrection, a quartet featuring Lage Lund and Matt Hollenberg on guitars, Trevor Dunn on bass, and Kenny Grohowski on drums are also really good.

the whole beriah songbook is excellent (or at least the albums i've heard so far - sofia rei, zion80, abraxas, klezmerson, a couple others)

TRACTATUS MUSICO-PHILOSOPHICUS-PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS FROM THE INVISIBLE THEATRE

^^^

was listening to this one with the mouthful of a title the other day and it's good stuff, another one where he actually plays alto sax on it.

the other one with him playing alto sax (which has been a rarity in recent years) I'm thinking of was from last year and I've forgot the title but I think it was from the Burroughs inspired series and was very good stuff.

cool, thanks for the responses !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uN8A3TljOk

John Zorn rare interviews in his apartment

the one from last year i was trying to recall was In A Convex Mirror

if i'm not mistaken he's also playing sax (and organ simultaneously) on a number of the "hermetic" pieces

well it is easy get lost with someone so ridiculously prolific!

indeed ! but now i find it's confirmed by tzadik:

Including some extended moments with Zorn playing both organ and saxophone simultaneously, the improvisation is intense and varied, with a remarkable compositional arch and wildly dramatic changes of color and timbre. The saxophone blends beautifully with the organ, standing out at times while Zorn plays the organ with his feet, hands and elbows.

John Zorn : The Hermetic Organ Volume 8—For Antonin Artaud

i thought there was sax on vol. 6 but apparently not

x-post Did he not remove his kitchen, to use the space for his record and comic collection? "Sure, I can eat out!"

I have about 20 of his albums. His output is hilariously prolific, but you can pick and choose styles and it's mostly good stuff.

at roulette in NYC on saturday with TYSHAWN SOREY

https://roulette.org/event/john-zorn-heaven-and-earth-magick/

“hermetic” vols. 6 and 8 are both going on my EOY list btw, just incredible music

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/john-zorn-jazz-metal-interview-naked-city-1015329/

Very long and imo very good career history published today. Includes some new interview material with JZ himself as well as loads of players he's worked with.

this is great so far, thanks for sharing.

Wow, thanks!!!!

I don't think about Zorn much these days, but so much stuff flooded back while reading the article. Like younger asshole me blasting the first "Naked City" over the camp wide PA at the Maryland Boy Scout camp I worked at, or dragging my tolerant friends and their unwitting new Columbia roommates to see Zorn's Sonny Clark tribute at the Knitting Factory (after introducing the song "Dial S for Sonny" one dude in my crew quietly hissed out "Dial S for Sexxxxxxxy" and everyone cracked up) or learning about Carl Stalling and Weegee ...

Also flashed back to a zine a friend had in 9th grade with an interview with Yamatsuka Eye, the interviewer asking about someone masked on stage once throwing up, and Eye responding: "Yes, I am atomic vomit woman," and us not knowing if it was mistranslated or if he was just insane.

It's great to have a lot of the historical record filled in, but I really dug part 4 where it gets into 30-40 years of grafting different trees together, entirely different species, and bearing new and viable fruit.

“Grohowski’s a great example,” he [Spruance] adds. “He doesn’t just play jazz chops faster when he plays metal, and when he plays jazz, he’s not playing fuckin’ metal quiet. It’s really that kind of thing; you’ve got to have your feet in both worlds for real. That wasn’t happening in the Nineties. There were no players like that back then. I think it is a direct result of Zorn’s alchemical experiments in the Nineties.”

This is basically all my favorite Zorn stuff — I'm not a huge Naked City fan these days, but the s/t and Torture Garden cracked my head open at the time (I had the Shimmy-Disc cassette of Torture Garden) and loved Painkiller. I saw them once at the Knitting Factory, but Mick Harris got sick so Ted Epstein subbed in on drums. I also saw one of the few Bladerunner shows on their initial run, with Eye on vocals because they were opening for Boredoms. I never saw Moonchild, but I own all seven of those albums and they rule. I need to buy all the Simulacrum discs; they're incredibly intense, but when you're in the mood for what they do (imagine the highest intensity of live Deep Purple circa 1972, organ, guitar and drums just going at it, only it never stops, it stays that intense for a whole hour) there's nothing else like it.

Moderately related, I could have sworn I've read stories of Van Der Graaf Generator gigs where the deep rumbling organ made people barf.

Nice, looking forward to reading this. I had a big Tzadik phase in college, though I gravitated toward the more accessible records rather than the noise end of things.

I was just listening to the most recent Shabaka & the Ancestors record thinking how very much it had in common with Masada (the core group).

That wasn’t happening in the Nineties. There were no players like that back then. I think it is a direct result of Zorn’s alchemical experiments in the Nineties.

Is Zorn the 1990s Frank Zappa? Beloved of musicians whose fans have probably never heard of him, hugely influential yet too willfully uncommercial to ever achieve actual success. Not sure what Zorn thinks of his audience tbh, hopefully more than Zappa thought of his.

in a word, no!

Yeah probably not

He is so not at all like Zappa.

He definitely was inspired by Zappa's genre cross-pollination. I remember an interview wayyy back where someone asked him his favorite album and he said it was a tie between Uncle Meat and, uh, I can't remember the other one. But the lineage is there, imo. The present day composer refuses to die!

zappa ? fuck outta here

Yeah, I always thought the connection was obvious.

I'm sure Zorn hears something of value in Zappa; he hears something of value in almost everything. He's a sponge and an enthusiast. But he lacks the smirking-asshole gene, and he doesn't think he's smarter than his audience, and that makes all the difference.

I see no video of the 1991 Naked City show I saw where Mike Patton sung.
I did, however, find a review of the show in the NY Times by Peter Watrous.

Covering the ground of a well-stocked record store, John Zorn's group Naked City moves easily from reggae to country music, from mock be-bop to volcanic noise, from the chillingly tranquil stretches of Messiaen to rockabilly rumbles. And the band, with Mr. Zorn on saxophone, Bill Frisell on guitar, Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, Fred Frith on bass and Joey Baron on drums, does it quickly: the music is exciting, filling the listener with flashes of recognition.

At their show at the Marquee last Thursday night, Mr. Zorn and Naked City (joined by Mike Patton, the ex-singer for Faith No More) tore through tunes that lasted 30 seconds or so. For longer pieces, Mr. Zorn had styles flying by as quickly as telephone poles seen from the inside of a moving train.

Mr. Zorn has always advocated spectacle, which explains why his shows are more interesting than his recordings. Mr. Zorn's hard-core tunes, comprising noise and Mr. Patton's screams, hurtled by quickly, but for all their intended extremism they avoided the pain that real hard-core bands produce.

Mr. Zorn, the most visible member of the downtown scene, has always positioned himself as a 19th-century European Romantic, facing down a tyrannical bourgeoisie. But his affinity for basically anti-populist Romantic ideology gets fouled up in his stated populist philosophy of elevating overlooked musical genres.

At the show, the two strains clashed. With an academic's contempt for Western contemporary pop culture, Mr. Zorn kept his pastiches away from the ecstatic or the celebratory moment that fuels so much popular music. Eggheaded to the last note, the music avoided emotional revelation.

But the crammed Marquee showed that there is a substantial audience for Mr. Zorn's brand of musical tourism. It's easy to see why: the music is eclectic and yet free of cultural baggage, offering the listener the feeling of being an insider. And Mr. Zorn's posturing as an avant-gardist helps keep his shows entertaining, adding an element of buffoonery and quixotism that he may, or may not, intend.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/25/arts/pop-in-review-619191.html

I did find what is allegedly an audio recording of that show:
https://archive.org/details/19910418NakedCitywithMikePatton-TheMarqueeNewYorkNYUSA/01+-+intro.mp3

And yeah, that Rolling Stone piece is phenomenal.