John Zorn: Classic or Dud?

Wow.

A much longer yet undoubtedly more pleasant experience than merzboxing.

I'm currently listening to #216 of 270

What's the longest streak in a row (if any) that has been a real struggle? What has been the longest streak in a row (if any) that has been a real joy?

to my ears, Zorn's genre-hopping is mainly about the encounter of cultures writ large (Jewish, American, Japanese, etc.) and/or subcultures (the avant-garde, jazz, hardcore, etc.). Sexuality is by no means absent from these juxtapositions, especially in his earlier, more overtly 'transgressive' works, but foregrounding it is not a priority for him as far as I can tell.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, June 23, 2020 1:49 PM (two days ago)

Very OTM

There's an assertion in a lot of his work that anything can be appropriated as "material". Iirc somw of his game pieces used 'found' composition fragments to this effect. The question of attribution that Sund4r has raised is something I've thought about for sure.

Anyway. I always suspected that The Suspension Bridge at Iguazu Falls is based on Encontro by Projecto III.

xxxp woah

What's the longest streak in a row (if any) that has been a real struggle? What has been the longest streak in a row (if any) that has been a real joy?

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, June 25, 2020 6:12 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You'll have to wait for the AMA!

You better make good on your promise. I'll be sharpening my questions.

I'm like 80% in (maybe even more since those Parachute sets are multi-CDs), so I don't see myself stopping

Are you building a comprehensive power rankings list?

One for the AMA then, I reckon the game CDs would have been the biggest slog for me but is there anything in there along the same lines as 'Cynical Hysterie Hour?' I love that CD.

Do you have actual cds for most (all?!) of these? Or is this what people still use slsk for.

What would the toppermost ones be in a poll, Naked City, Spillane, Masada - Live In Sevilla?

I'd deffo put Alhambra Love Songs and Nova Express in there, just to be controversial and because I liked them.

I wonder if it's possible not to enjoy any of Zorn's work at all just by virtue of its sheer sprawl.

Do you have actual cds for most (all?!) of these? Or is this what people still use slsk for.

― change display name (Jordan), Thursday, June 25, 2020 6:42 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Most Tzadik Zorn stuff up to like 2005 is on Qobuz in CD quality.

I own about 67 Zorn albums on CD

The rest I have to pirate

I obviously would want to put in a fat, well-informed Tzadik order if I ever get employed again

re zorn w/out zorn i've been following rjc since the imprint launched...
Deveykus - Pillar Without Mercy

Have to give Zorn credit for putting out orchestral recordings that were out-of-print for years, or not available at all. He's also good at doing special one-off projects with people who don't play very often together (such as Blue Buddha and Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor tribute projects, among others).

Another nice Tzadik initiative I recently discovered is a 3-album project with jazz musician/arranger Karl Berger. "In a moment - Music for Piano and Strings" is wonderful. Berger has his own studio and the sound of the room adds something special to the music.

I recently reread the Borah Bergmann interview in The Wire, especially commenting on Zorn's Serious Composer ambitions. I didn't like his "Meditations for Piano" at first but now I think it's great.

Some other personal Tzadik favorites:

All 3 Sephardic Tinge albums
Tim Sparks - Neshamah
Tobias Picker - Invisible Lilacs
VA - Hallelujah, Anyway - Remembering Tom Cora
Eyvind Kang - Yelm Sessions

I thought of the kitchen-less John Zorn during covid lockdown. I hope he managed to eat.

I just went back to this 2015 email interview I did with all 3 members of Simulacrum. It goes into a lot of detail about how they work in the studio, how much rehearsal they have when Zorn writes new music, what's actually on the page, etc., etc., so read that if you want.

Zorn was a big influence on my listening in the '90s. I visited NYC in the summer of '94 with my parents and I dragged them to a Masada show at the Knitting Factory (that was before it moved to Soho, when it was still a fairly modest basement kind of space in the East Village). Dave Douglas wasn't there, instead Marc Ribot filled in on guitar. We were sitting at a table probably 10 feet from the "stage". It was completely amazing, but my parents were not impressed by Zorn's "smirking asshole" side (which he definitely had [has?]). At one point he cussed out the sound person because he wasn't happy about something about the sound. All that prolific hard-to-find output was incredibly tantalizing in those pre-streaming days, when visiting record stores was a kind of pilgrimage. In some ways maybe it was about sheer abundance for me, unfathomable mysteries, ars longa vita brevis and all that. Later I moved to NYC and caught a lot of shows with Zorn and related projects at the Soho Knitting Factory, Tonic, etc. I remember one show he did with Mike Patton as the Horse-Cock Kids at the Knitting Factory where they came on like an hour late, played for 15 minutes and left the stage. The lights came up. People booed. That was it. He definitely was capable of being an asshole. But somehow you knew that he was being an asshole with absolute sincerity. You believed that short abbreviated set was exactly what he wanted to present that night, even if you were kind of pissed about the price of the ticket.

I remember one show he did with Mike Patton as the Horse-Cock Kids at the Knitting Factory where they came on like an hour late, played for 15 minutes and left the stage. The lights came up. People booed. That was it.

A friend of mine (dead now) was at that show and said someone chased them to the dressing room afterward shouting "What the fuck?"

All that prolific hard-to-find output was incredibly tantalizing in those pre-streaming days, when visiting record stores was a kind of pilgrimage. In some ways maybe it was about sheer abundance for me, unfathomable mysteries, ars longa vita brevis and all that.

Same. Truly cant remember how i first discovered Zorn as a kid growing up in the hinterlands of the midwest, but I think it may literally have been from just being in the local punk record store and seeing the hugely well-stocked section of Zorn CDs and thinking "who is this person I've never heard of with 45 albums?" And every time I got one it sounded completely different from all the others.

I think I learned about him through a few vectors. One, probably reviewed in Option magazine. Two, Naked City was on Nonesuch, which I was gravitating to for cool stuff like Steve Reich. Three, "Torture Garden" was on Shimmy Disc, and my hip friend in 9th grade was really into Kramer and stuff like B.A.L.L., which were somewhere in the same noise/lo-fi realm as Sonic Youth or Amphetamine Reptile (as I remember it). And then there was Eye and the Japanese noise scene, which was hiply exotic in 1989. I know I would get excited whenever we went up to New York from Philly and I could find all those Avant imports and stuff, or when I was on tour in a band and I'd stop in some used record store somewhere and find some Tzadik thing I had never heard for $5 or whatever.

I'm a little less clear how I glommed on to Laswell, though. Maybe when the Axiom label was started and someone lent me Bahia Black's "Ritual Beating System," calling it one of the coolest records ever made (it was)? That was 1992. Dunno if I knew of Last Exit, say, or Material, though I did have "The Third Power" around the same time, and was into the Golden Palominos, so who knows.

For me it was when The South Bank Show (in the UK) broadcast Charles Atlas' documentary 'Put Blood In The Music', then my mates and I all immediately ran out and bought Spillane and made the leap from Sonic Youth to Zorn, Branca, Chatham etc.

In the late 80s Nonesuch was part of Elektra so they sent promos out to record stores (through the distributor, I guess?). A friend of mine's family owned a record store and they got a promo CD of the Naked City album and gave it to me. That was my in. Then I bought the first Painkiller record because it was on Earache and I was already listening to Godflesh and Napalm Death.

Zorn was definitely at the intersection of a lot of contemporary composers, noise, metal, and jazz. Didn't have to go far in any one direction to find some really cool stuff. Likewise, didn't have to go far from that cool stuff to hit Zorn.

my hip friend in 9th grade was really into Kramer and stuff like B.A.L.L.

That’s a pretty hip 9th-grader!

He was pretty hip!

In the late ‘90s, I saw the actor Michael Richards at the Knitting Factory – he was seeing a show, and looking around shiftily in a “recognize/don’t recognize me” way – and I thought it was so funny to see that particular “Kramer” there... but I didn’t know anyone who would really appreciate the joke.

I think if Zorn had been born a few decades later he would definitely be making electronic music and compulsively releasing new albums on Bandcamp every week, instead he's had to build this whole infrastructure of musicians, scoring, recording, cds, etc to scratch his itch.

RE: Naked City

Zorn produced and arranged "Hard Plains Drifter" on Bill Frisell's "Before We Were Born" album. It sounds like a Naked City piece (it was done at the same time period the NC studio albums were done). In the "Bill Frisell: An Anthology" songbook, there's a 4-page hand-written transcription of the piece made by Frisell, containing 38 different sections. This was done to be able to play it live. It looks similar to the transcriptions I´ve seen posted in this thread. It's a nice book with lots of funny drawings (I didn't know Frisell could do that too).

TIL that Joey Baron plays drums on David Bowie - Outside

Also on Laurie Anderson's Bright Red, which also was produced by Brian Eno and came out the year before. That could be what he's doing there. I just noticed how many downtown/ Zorn people are on her Strange Angels album, too.

Now Youtube just keeps serving me up latter day John Zorn albums, which I'm ok with. This particular salsa (Masalsada?) track is pretty sick:
https://youtu.be/VlTqNwb0veg?t=522

Been listening to The Big Gundown after hearing the news of Morricone's death - it's not on Spotify in the U.S. but it's here if you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7bIhV-Zckk

What a great album, not only my favorite Zorn album but probably my favorite jazz of the past 40 years.

wow, yeah. the first time i heard this it didn't really click for some reason. but hearing it now, it sounds so very good.

i think this album was the first I learned of Vernon Reid's pre-Living Colour jazz days.

Zorn's tribute to Morricone, a public post: https://www.facebook.com/TzadikLabel/posts/3433097923389983

Hey, does anyone know what rap song sampled the lick at 29:00? It's driving me crazy (and I'm not sure if it samples the Zorn record or the Morricone original, but that particular moment really rung a bell). I thought it was something off Aesop Rock's Labor Days but not finding.

dare we compare the five notes of his famous ‘coyote call’ in The Good Bad and The Ugly with the four opening notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony?

Zorn otm, tbh.

xpost I assume someone sampled the original. Seems like something you'd hear from Def Jux, yeah, or Dan the Automator.

Huh:

https://www.spin.com/2020/07/a-brief-guide-to-the-endless-hip-hop-samples-of-ennio-morricone/

Ah, found it:

https://www.whosampled.com/sample/357599/Aesop-Rock-Flashflood-Ennio-Morricone-Amore/

Gotta say, it actually sounds like it sampled the Zorn version! The particular attack of the glockenspiel & flute together, etc.

Hmm https://archive.org/details/19880727JohnZornsEnnioMorriconeTributeBand-VeronaItaly

Between March(?) 2020 and July 2020, I listened to all 272 John Zorn albums

ASK! ME! ANYTHING! 🎷

— Christopher R. Weingarten (@1000TimesYes) July 29, 2020

O_O

Any ambient standouts?

Ooh, I've got a few (that I want to ask here):

1) Who would you consider the MVP across the whole catalog? Joey Baron? Bill Frisell?

2) What one release from Zorn's oeuvre would you gift a total neophyte and/or regular, like your mom or something? My go to (with limited experience and results) has been Bar Kokhba.

3) Similarly, which Zorn release would you put on if you really wanted to clear a room. Like, for sure?

4) Is there one Zorn release that features enough aspects of all his attributes that listening to it would give you a good idea what to expect out of the most of those 272 albums?

5) Are any of the the releases outright bad? Or just not to your taste?

6) Favorite artwork?

7) Any combination of musicians that you think didn't get used enough, or maybe were gathered for together one release but you wish had gotten together again?