Zorn/Lewis/Frisell: News For Lulu Genre: Jazz Label & Year of Release: Recorded 1987, released on Hat Hut, 1988 (2nd edition 2008) Category: Quirky My Rating: 5/10 Personnel John Zorn, Alto Saxophone George Lewis, Trombone Bill Frisell, Guitar I own the second edition of this album that has a live version of “Melanie” as a bonus track that is notable for giving Frisell his only solo break of the entire disc. There are 21 tracks here spread over 78 minutes but I'm going to skip the track-by-track since essentially the approach is always to play the music straight and it's all broadly consonant Jazz. The final three tracks of the original album are all live and to my mind better recorded (or at least more warmly recorded) than the studio tracks. The composers - Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Freddy Redd & Sonny Clark - are all evidently regarded as minor figures of the Hard Bop movement: all were black and none of them, incidentally, played an instrument represented on this album (unless you count tenor saxophone as being the same instrument as alto!) Given that it was recorded only two years after the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet and contains seven tracks by Clark (one of them played by the earlier ensemble) you might expect this to be a very similar album but News For Lulu is a very different beast due to the instrumentation. The effect of Frisell's quiet, clean electric guitar, Lewis's precision ‘bone blowing and Zorn's often thin tone is to suggest a reduction of these pieces to a sort of “minimal” version of each piece. In the absence of a rhythm section one appreciates the timekeeping of the musicians all the more since they largely play the music with an exact sense of swing. The very rhythmic latitude that makes the Masada quartet so compelling would not work here, where improvisation is economic and tightly controlled. Incidentally the dry digital recording emphasises this: there is precious little reverb. I would have liked to hear Frisell consistently mixed louder, as he is on the live tracks. The result is a good showpiece for Zorn's technique which still has a lot of his customary stylistic mannerisms but is reined in by the music itself. Although @ATR has expressed an affection for this album (and I know that it is highly regarded by many fans) I don't really care for News For Lulu feeling that it is a very long album of music of which a little goes a long way. The starkness of the configuration ultimately makes me feel you'd be better off listening to the original bands. This would, however, have been a great trio to see live as I'm sure there would have been a fascinating rapport between the performers. Zorn's engagement with the Jazz tradition at the end of the eighties (we'll be coming to Spy vs. Spy soon) is intriguing because for me the Jazz he was born to play is Masada and he hadn't discovered/invented that yet. Could Zorn have taken the other path and formed a Jarrett-style Standards trio, producing album after album of polite conservative albums? Technically, yes, he certainly could have done but the polite acoustic Jazz albums that he has released in the 21st century have in common that they virtually never feature his alto. Zorn had built his alto style for a certain sort of music and ultimately that is the music on which he plays: that Moonchild track we just looked at is much more representative of the direction he took with the instrument.
Spy vs. Spy is a solid album of Ornette Coleman compositions but unfortunately it sounds as if it was recorded in an airplane hangar.
True dat. I'll be posting my comments on that album some time in the next couple of days. I'm conscious that all though the number of Zorn fans on the boards is not very great, even fewer of them are participating in the thread than I had hoped. I think that the answer is that the Zorn discography is so voluminous that this thread is going to have to get a lot bigger before people will have enough range of material to give their own views. I think that I'm going to be ploughing a fairly lonesome furrow for a while yet!
This! Though I have a lot of Zorn records—75ish?—I haven’t heard most of the ones you’ve posted about so far. I’m enjoying the thread though!
I liked the Naked City s/t album when it was new and saw a very good concert by them in 1991 or 92 (I also heard Spy vs. Spy but was not as keen on it). Also saw Cobra in 1994 which at the time seemed to me to just meander randomly until it hit a cool combination of sounds around 10 minutes before the end of the set, which they repeated for the encore. Never got the itch to check into much of what Zorn released on his own label but I'll be checking this thread from time to time.
Not as if there haven't been a few dedicated Zorn threads previously and his music comes up in the jazz threads from time to time. Another series of his that I like is Filmworks. I've never met Zorn himself but I've known and worked with many musicians who have. Very admirable profile and accomplishments. Never been to The Stone either, but I was in the audience with Irving and Stephanie many times in the 70's.
Very true. I started two Zorn threads already: John Zorn Appreciation Thread Have You Heard All Of John Zorn’s “Filmworks” Recordings?
I'd like to see one or two live performances of Cobra since it's the “headline” game piece. I've got three recordings of it (four if you count Hat Hut as two) but there are some Zorn works where you aren't hearing the work until you're seeing it live. Fortunately there are some performances or part performances of YouTube.
John Zorn: Filmworks III, 1990-95 Genre(s): Soundtrack, Jazz, Pastiche, Blues Label & Year of Release: Tzadik, 1997 Categories: (Mainly) Accessible, sometimes Quirky or Relaxed My Rating: 4/10 This album in the long-running Filmworks series features 56(!) cues from four movies (so, no, I'm not going track-by-track). I'll indicate personnel as we go. Recorded in July 1993, tracks 1-12 (for the movie Thieves Quartet) are performed (aptly enough) by a quartet: the quartet of Douglas, Baron, Zorn & Cohen that would later become Masada. The music here is noir pastiche along the lines of The Bribe. Zorn's sax is creamy & sleazy (so nice to hear him play like this occasionally) while Douglas, generally muted, is suitably smokey. Robert Quine guests on track 11. The quartet stretches out a little on the “End Titles” but at only quarter of an hour this set of cues is a tantalising glimpse of the (admittedly lesser) quartet that Masada would have been had Zorn not composed for it a unique repertoire. Track 13, “Music for Tsunta” (recorded in 1988) is only 3’31” but features a crack band of Frisell, Emanuel, Marclay, Baptista & Previte (all on their customary instruments) with David Hoestra on Bass Tuba and Peter Scherer on Keyboards. The music was composed for “short animation tests” and led to other work with Japanese animator Kiriko Kubo. Here it is a lovely little example of the types of clever fragments that Zorn can summon up. Tracks 14-24 is the soundtrack to Hollywood Hotel, performed by Zorn on alto with Marc Ribot on electric guitar. This is a wide-ranging set of cues: Zorn begins again in that creamy register but we get chaos on track 15 while Track 20 begins deep in game piece territory with the duo producing disconnected musical gestures. Overall, though, I am most reminded of Ribot's junkyard Blues style as exhibited in his work with Tom Waits. Tracks 25-56 are cues written for the advertising firm Weiden + Kennedy and performed by small ensembles from a personnel list of about twenty musicians that reads like a Who's Who of Zorn alums: Emanuel, Ribot, Baptista, Ribot, Quine, Laswell, Baron, Friedlander, Cohen & Mori amongst them. Most of these tracks are under a minute and several around 15 seconds so it would take me much longer to write about them than it would to hear them. Many of them simply start and are cut-off without development although some are intriguing little microcosms. For several tracks we get two consecutive takes of the same thing. You could argue that an hour-long disc of fragmentary cues is a perfect example of the early Zorn aesthetic: get in, make a noise, get out. The entire album could function as a file card soundalike composition of its own ... but that is to be too generous. Actually, this disc is quite frustrating for the listener because nothing hangs around long enough to make an impression. I'd say in fact that a quarter of the disc at any sitting is about right but it feels like homework for the student of Zorn rather than something to spin for pleasure.
The one I saw was at Oberlin College and Zeena Parkins and (if I recall right) Marc Ribot were in the ensemble. I had no idea what the game rules were.
I’m not sure what the point of just posting random Zorn albums is and why you feel it’s important not to go at least in some kind of order? It makes for a very disorienting thread any way you want to spin it.
Thanks for doing this. You could spend a lifetime listening to and studying his work. My introduction to Zorn was as producer of the first Mr. Bungle album immediately followed by hearing the first Naked City album. I was hooked right away. The only trouble was that I lived in Keene, NH and it was hard to get his albums...unless you had a friend who worked at a local record store, which I did. He ordered the other Naked City albums on Avant as Japanese imports, one for me and one for him. After I graduated from college in 1993 I moved to NYC and started working in the Jazz department of the HMV on 72nd & Broadway. On day one the buyer asked me who I liked, when I mentioned Zorn his eyes widened and we became fast friends. He was maybe 20 years my senior and had been following Zorn since the 70s. In September of 1993 Zorn booked a month at the original Knitting Factory to celebrate his 40th Birthday. To promote it he did two days of interviews on WKCR, on day two they took telephone questions and (indirectly) I was able to speak to him. Almost every night he played with a different band. I managed to see four nights: Spy Vs. Spy, News For Lulu, Improv with Fred Frith and the first night of 4 Naked City gigs. Spy Vs. Spy was my introduction to Tim Berne, whom I would later work with and News For Lulu introduced me to the great Hard Bop of Sonny Clark, Kenny Dorham, Freddie Redd and others. A year or so later the first 10 Masada albums were released and I got to see them a few times. The last Zorn I picked up was the Book of Beriah box and I'm still digesting it. It's very difficult to keep up with his output.
That was at the height of his fascination with hardcore and played a part in the recording and sonics.
It’s a disorienting catalog, so why not? I’m enjoying the random sample approach. I (unsurprisingly) disagree with some of the ratings. I’d give: John Zorn: Taboo and Exile - Music Romance Volume Two: 9/10 Simulacrum: Simulacrum: 8/10 Brian Marsella: The Heirophant: 10/10 John Zorn: New Traditions In East Asian Bar Bands: 10/10 Moonchild: Ipsissimus: 8/10 and both the News for Lulu albums: 8/10. “New Traditions” is a treasure, I’m not aware of any album like it. Thanks @Sordel, great thread!
It depends on how long I stay the course. A “guide to Zorn” that started with Chadbourne, the game pieces and Naked City would be a massive turnoff to a newcomer, so I've concentrated on giving a little bit of a wide range of material to start to map out the territory. It would have been ambitious enough to do, say, all the Book of Angels discs but then you're not even touching on a massive range of his styles. If you'd like to do an album-by-album thread for Zorn, please do! Or you could do all the Filmworks releases in your existing Filmworks thread: I don't own all those and I'm unlikely to buy them all unless this thread goes on for years. We've got hundreds of threads here for a band that recorded thirteen albums; I would think that we could have six or seven for an artist who's recorded 400. @Nycademon ... I like your high ratings but I haven't even touched my favourite albums yet and I wonder whether my personal ratings would have any credibility at all if I ended up giving 50% of the catalogue 10/10!
Ha. Well, I’m no aficionado of speed metal but the Bad Brains albums don’t have that sound. Back in my own days of producing David Baker used to joke about the ‘Ramonerizer’ effect that could be added to the mix.
Doesn't Spy Vs. Spy address it in the liner notes...on the back of the booklet it says, 'This recording should be played at an increased volume because of its wide stereo field.' Recorded over two days at Power Station, NYC Engineer: Steve Rinkoff Mixing Engineer: Martin Bisi Producer: Zorn Associate Producer: Elliott Sharp
Since you're discussing it already: John Zorn: Spy vs Spy - The Music of Ornette Coleman Genre: Hardcore Jazz Label & Year of Release: Recorded 1988, released on Elektra/Musician, 1989 Category: Scares the Horses My Rating: 6/10 Personnel John Zorn, Alto Sax Tim Berne, Alto Sax Mark Dresser, Bass Joey Baron, Drums Michael Vatcher, Drums I won't do a track-by-track this time because the first half of the album is very much all one thing. The first eleven tracks are basically Ornette Coleman's heads played full-tilt with very little space for improvisation or expansion: Zorn & Berne play either in unison or in parallel. I'm guessing that they were all recorded on the first of the two days of recording and that the second day's recordings ditched the formula. Track 12 “Ecars” has a little more room to breathe. Track 13 “Feet Music” has a Rock backbeat and, at 4’45” is the longest track on the album. “Broadway Blues” has notably more structure. On “Space Church” the band starts to feel much more like a Zorn band. “Zig Zag” is almost playful. “Mob Job”, at over four minutes, is perhaps the closest that the album comes to a “normal” Jazz performance although it's also pretty out there. This is the first album I've approached in this thread where we have to discuss Hardcore which, in this context, is the style for which Zorn first became known: the Naked City style in which pieces are played very fast with a Post-Punk aggression. In the brief liner notes we get the statement “F*cking hardcore rules” which is a good example of the mood in which this infamous album was performed. It would be wrong, however, to think of this as an album that cocks a snook at Jazz tradition. Indeed, the liner notes include a full list of the original tracks and the albums where they can be found, and Zorn thanks Ornette and Denardo Coleman, not least one imagines for permission to perform the music. This CD is mastered by Bob Ludwig but mastering was too late to save the sound quality: this is a deliberately ugly noise, helped by the fact that we have two drummers playing as loud & hot as they can along with saxophonists who toss off the complex heads with swaggering imprecision. The acoustic is reverberant and it sounds like it was mic’d way back from the instrumentalists. In terms of Zorn's development, this album is pivotal. Only two years earlier Zorn had been playing conventionally on the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet album and only five years later he would form the Masada quartet based on Ornette's quartet. The band on this album anticipates the energy and vibe of Masada, especially in the interplay between Berne & Zorn which transfers almost exactly to the relationship between Zorn & Douglas. If for no other reason, this is an argument for having this disc on your wish-list. Jazz purists seem to hate this album but Ornette himself can be pretty hard on the ear at times. Personally I can't hear this album without the knowledge of seeing Zorn perform: I can hear how much the band is into this music and having an absolute blast playing it. This is the absolute opposite of polite, reverential Jazz but you probably have to be a Jazz fan to dig it. (It says something that after listening to this album through on headphones I went straight back and listened to the first half again!)
I saw an interview with Zorn recently where he said that he wanted Spy Vs. Spy to sound to the late 80's audience like Ornette's original music sounded like to the late 50's audience. By the time Spy Vs. Spy was recorded Ornette's music had become almost part of the standard repertoire. If you have the Beauty is a Rare thing box, go read the quotes from other musicians about what they thought of Ornette when he hit the scene. He was all but outcast by the old guard.
I remember Down Beat had an article about a Spy vs Spy concert with David Sanborn joining the group (three saxes). Although I was an Ornette fan, as I mentioned above this Zorn disc didn't do a lot for me. I will check it out again soon.
Thanks for posting that: what a fascinating snapshot of Zorn's oeuvre approaching 30 years ago, just on the cusp of Masada. Am I right in thinking that First Live 1993 was recorded on one of the Radical Jewish Culture nights?
Every performance of Cobra was necessarily different. One of the performances I saw was so exciting I thought the roof was going to blow off the place. Zorn was jumping up and down like a maniac directing the performers.
Well the CD says September 2nd...however...on the WKCR broadcasts I mention earlier he played a tape of what he called the very first Masada gig, but with a different band. I have the tape somewhere. My guess is that the September 2nd recording was the first with the traditional lineup. I think the older recording had Ribot and Wolleson if I recall.
