John Zorn: Classic or Dud?

I gave that warning as much credence as the warning on my dad's LP version of the "1812 Overture" that had recordings of actual canons on it that for sure would make you go deaf. Or the text on the Cure's "Disintegration:" "THIS MUSIC HAS BEEN MIXED TO BE PLAYED LOUD SO TURN IT UP.” Ooh, dramatic.

That said, I can't remember what "Kristallnacht" sounds like. Maybe it killed me?

I've never listened to it myself, but apparently it's a track made up of hundreds of layered samples of shattering glass. And it's almost 12 minutes long, so I bet that's fun.

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

Copied from Twitter:
Marc Ribot is definitely the Michael Jordan of the Zorn catalog, though everything he does sounds like Mark Ribot. So you also gotta give it up for the versatility of Joey Baron and Trevor Dunn

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.

Nove Cantici Per Francesco D’Assisi

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rne-xtCILE

Caution: "Never Again" contains high frequency extremes at the limits of human hearing & beyond, which may cause nausea, headache & ringing in the ears. Prolonged or repeated listening is not advisable as it may result in temporary or permament ear damage. - The composer

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?

The Filmworks anthology covers a lot of ground. I also think the Book Beri'ah is a one-stop shop for a lot of the Zorn ideas since 2005

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

The only ones I would say are outright BAD are Weird Little Boy and Mystic Fugu Orchestra (which is an intriguing concept, but the fake 78 sound is poorly done and distracting). The rest are really just varying shades of "inessential." One of the Masada live discs has real shitty sound, so I'd reccommend the other, like, 20 Masada Book 1 albums before that one. Femina was real bland on first listen.

6) Favorite artwork?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61%2BSHvSbKCL._SL1200_.jpg

But most of the Dreamers albums have really cool packaging

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?

The Ribot/Dunn/Weston trio on Book of Angels 7 is absolutely smoking. The Taborn/McBride/Sorey trio on Volume 27 is amazing too. I wonder if that one didn't get that much attention because they went by Flaga instead of Craig Taborn/Christian McBride/Tyshawn Sorey Trio or something

8) How many if any of the albums would you not have recognized as a Zorn project had you not known they were a Zorn project

His sax style is unmistakable, so probably not anything he plays on. Some of the game pieces maybe. Some of the classical works. Probably others.

8) How many if any of the albums would you not have recognized as a Zorn project had you not known they were a Zorn project

Hermetic Organ stuff was my first thought on this

Yeah, he does play sax on 6 and 8 tho, I think

Nominating you for the congressional medal of freedom, a grateful nation thanks you for your service

If you had to pick, what stretch of time would you classify as your favorite and/or his best?

Are you going to tackle the broader Tzadik catalog next?

I seriously respect Zorn's writing ethic, especially wrt to not worrying about repeating himself or feeling like he has to reinvent the wheel every time (I can only assume). Like, just getting over yourself as you sit down to write the 67th piece based on the same scale (the wiki on the Masada books talks about how he wrote 100 pieces in a year for the first one, and 100 pieces a month for 3 months for the second one).

Nominating you for the congressional medal of freedom, a grateful nation thanks you for your service

If you had to pick, what stretch of time would you classify as your favorite and/or his best?

Are you going to tackle the broader Tzadik catalog next?

― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Wednesday, July 29, 2020 1:14 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Def the 1985-1990 run is his most schizo/diverse/unpredictable and has my three of my fave Zorns (Torture Garden, Spy Vs. Spy, Spillane)

I do plan on getting deeper in the Tzadik catalog, but probably not the whole thing

I think Spillane blew my mind open when I was 16. In some ways it did more to change my appreciation of music than any other album tbh. It still sounds absolutely inspired, even that Albert Collins side that I didn't quite get at the time!

Another question: those three you cite as faves (Torture Garden, Spy Vs. Spy, Spillane) are all from the same general coupla year late '80s span, which is also when Zorn was perhaps at his "popular" peak. That is to say, albums on Elektra/Nonesuch, ads in magazines, that sort of thing. Even "Torture Garden," which was not on a big label, was released the same year as the first Naked City album, so I'm sure some (like me) learned about it by way of that. I'm not sure of your age, but when did you first hear about Zorn, and did it coincide with his period of relative prominence?

I think first heard Zorn maybe my senior year of high school (1998) when I bought Locus Solus based on the review in the Spin guide, maybe? I didn't really like it or get it.

But then I bought the Black Box in college when I was a huge Bungle Guy and liked that a lot

A high school friend bought me the Classic Guide To Strategy Volumes 1 & 2 CD when I was 17 or 18 I think. I thought it was hilarious and fun and mind bending but lost the disc somewhere along the way and just never ventured into Zorn. Daunting discography + I’m not a huge skronky improv head

but I like what I’ve heard of eg Masada and I like watching Naked City/painkiller videos on YouTube

Is Baphomet any good? I cannot stream it anywhere which is strange.

I haven't listened to it yet, but have you heard the other Simulacrum albums? Maybe check those out first if you haven't:

Simulacrum
The True Discoveries of Witches and Demons
Inferno
The Painted Bird
49 Acts Of Unspeakable Depravity In The Abominable Life And Times Of Gilles De Rais
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Beyond Good and Evil - Simulacrum Live

John Zorn’s A Dreamer’s Christmas album is fucking great!! I don’t know jack shit about Mr. Zorn other than that awful Yoko Ono collaboration YouTube video that went viral and of course the fact that he’s released a grand total of about 52 billion albums in his lifetime. But this is great! Just mellow jazzy Christmas music with lots of vibes. Even my wife likes it, and she hates everything!

Crossing over with the Zappa thread (#onethread) that's one of the many things that makes Zorn great. He can be extreme and confrontational and unlistenable, but he's also a talented enough bandleader and composer that, unlike Zappa, he can also release albums that just about anyone would enjoy or appreciate. I once gave Bar Kokhba as a gift to my wife's mom.

Yeah the Xmas album has gotten near daily play at the Eye Open household this year

I want it all on Apple or Spotify. The game albums “Hockey” “Golf” or whatever. EVERYTHING. This is what your oeuvre was made for Sir. Make it happen please.

Maybe he's figured that there's nothing much in it for him to gift his entire back catalogue to some corporate behemoth in exchange for $.0005.

Yeah probably. Somehow I still want what I want though.

Yeah i dunno exactly how the numbers crunch but he seems like hes probably one of the few people around making ok money off of CDs, im sure hes not anxious to change the formula.

But yeah over the years Ive fantasized about some kind of Tzadik-only streaming service, or like a Tzadik app, would totally pay $5 a month for something like that.

I thought the Tzadik catalog was on one streaming service, Tidal or Qobuz or something - but not on Spotify.

Huh...I’m gonna look that up. Never heard of Qobuz before.

Qobuz has one or two other albums that Spotify and Apple don’t have (Spillane abs something else) and Tidal has the same stuff the big two have.

https://assets.boomkat.com/spree/products/727839/large/702397837923_T11_Image.jpg

John Zorn featuring Bill Frisell, Julian Lage and Gyan Riley
Teresa de Ávila

^^

love this

Thanks for the tip! I've almost never heard Frisell play acoustic, and I don't know those other dudes. Though it looks like Gyan Riley is Terry Riley's son?

I thought Julian Lage was famous these days! I didn't know that about Gyan Riley though.

lol, he could be famous, I've just never heard of him!

Yeah, Lage has been around for a while. He's got an album coming out on Blue Note next month that I like. And he's worked with Zorn before, as part of the group Insurrection.

He became famous as a child prodigy, played the Grammys at 12 and all. He's a little fussy but I like his playing well enough. Modern Lore from a few years ago was a nice album and I esp liked him in the Nels Cline 4. This trio did a Zorn album last year called Virtue - is this similar?

yeah very similar, but I think this one has better compositions and is more focused or something.

OK, tighter compositions with more focus was what I hoped for so that sounds promising.

just getting to this now, really loving it. hearing frisell play crisp & clean acoustic like this is a joy

it's quite complex and layered but has a simple beauty to it.

I'm really liking this so far. The compositions do seem tighter. The way that the contrasting ideas in "An Embarrassment of Raptures" are juxtaposed and reconciled is really satisfying. Haven't broken that much down yet but sounds like there's a lot of chromatic mediant movement in various pieces?

From that Perfect Sound Forever interview with Robert Quine, this is maybe the most shocking line:

I've done Coke and Nike commercials with John Zorn.

Read that too fast and thought it said he'd done coke with Zorn, and I immediately thought "no way has John Zorn ever been anywhere near cocaine"

lol

It's harder to picture Zorn doing high-level commercial spec work though.

There was a Sega Genesis commercial that used Naked City, but if Zorn has done other music for commercials (which I don't doubt) he's never publicized it and it probably doesn't sound anything like his music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdoVjrhJn8Y

I want to say those Filmworks collections include a few jingles.

I know someone who took a film class with a producer whose husband was a filmmaker (at the time I think they still lived in the Chicagoland area), and his teacher mentioned that John Zorn scored their first indie feature. Sorry to say, this was before I knew John Zorn's work (and apparently none of her students knew who he was either), but she said they all loved his music and reached out to him. He agreed to do it for NO payment, provided that he retain ownership of the music in terms of the masters, the publishing, etc. I guess he did that a lot, but it's really admirable. I forgot the names of everyone involved with that film (as well as the film's title), but it was a heist film that was shot around Chicago.

I did some searching, and I think the film was probably Thieves Quartet (released in 1993), and the music would be on Filmworks III

https://www.discogs.com/release/457819-John-Zorn-Filmworks-III-1990-1995

Impressive line-up: Zorn had Dave Douglas and Joey Baron with him, and apparently Quine played on one track.

Wish I had known this sooner. I just saw Douglas recently and was able to briefly chat with him before his show. Would've asked him about this, though I'm not sure he would've remembered anything about it.

Filmworks III also has 30+ little things he did for a big ad firm in the early to mid 90s, though obviously no brands are mentioned

Unless “Batman” counts as a brand

I’ve always wanted to make a fan edit of TRESPASS that uses his cues instead of Ry Cooder’s. It probably doesn’t work and Walter Hill may have been correct to drop them, but I love ‘what-ifs’ with rejected scores

Oh ok, I never really delved into the Filmworks records, but it makes sense that they'd contain unused commercial work (though often that's prohibited by contract, wonder if he reworked them or just did it anyway).

You should pick a few to listen to! Lotsa Quine.

Pulled out my copy of Filmworks III and here's JZ's info on those tracks.

I have a very special relationship with the commercial house of Weiden and Kennedy – when they need something off-the-wall, they call me. My deal is simple, but unheard of in the commercial music field. I never do demos – and I never "redo" anything. I do the job once – I do it the way I want – and I get paid whether they use the music or not. Hardly the description of a commercial sellout. Weiden and Kennedy is probably the only advertising firm who would do such a thing. Most commercial houses find it impossible to trust an artist in this way, but Weiden and Kennedy has rpoved that one can work in the world of advertising and still retain one's integrity and creativity.

I wish I could go into some details on these sessions, because the stories are priceless (you just can't make this stuff up). But needless to say scoring the spot "FRANCE" directed by GODARD was a particular high point. The Brooklyn cheer (RAZZ) you hear at the end of the spot was visually synched with the product shot, and I had to perform it myself (Arto didn't want to insult the client and refused to do it).

For legal reasons I can't mention the products and various companies that these spots were created for, but these sessions have been some of the most relaxed, enjoyable times I've had in a recording studio. The musicians and I always have a ball, and I think that comes across in the music.

Two people should be singled out on these tracks – ROBERT QUINE, who does some of his best playing on many of these short TV spots and has been a vital member of these groupings since my very first commercial sessions – recording engineer/sing-songwriter/synclavier genius JASON BAKER, whose easy going manner, indefatigable energy, unflagging focus and precise ear for detail makes working in the studio a pure pleasure – even when you're surrounded by "music editors," "clients" and "creatives."

Bob Quine has one of the most beautiful guitar sounds in the world, and his compelling comping patterns and solos are never less than perfect. He's often mixed down, or even out (!) of many of the pop/rock projects he usually works on, but here you can experience the savage bite of his "nasty tone" and the sensuous warmth of his "surf sound" up close and personal.

I hope you have as much fun listening to this music as we had recording it.

Very cool, thank you!

(btw how are you all listening to Tzadiks these days...cds?)