I Like John Zorn

[Seneca]

Naked City is one of my favorites.

[iconoclastic cat]

1. Oh man, I have some memories of that album while under the influence.

[Withywindle]

2. Oh Man, I saw him play with Masada....

...at the Chicago Jazz Festival a few years back. Blew the top of my head right off in the best possible way.

[Kire]

3. Painkiller

Zorn plays with producer Bill Laswell on Bass, and Mick Harris (Napalm Death) on Drums. Best track: "Scud Attack"



I can't rightly show the cover of "Guts of a Virgin". If you google it, you'll find out.

The censored version looks like this:


On the cassette I used to have, it says something like the images intended for the cover were confiscated by her majesty's custom's officer. (I've heard that the sex pistols did the same thing).

Years later, they put out the intended image of a disemboweled woman on a CD box set.

[CanuckAmok]

4. Here's my fave Zorn:

My favourite track of his is off one of the "Film Music" CDs, but I forget which one. He covers "Contempt", which is best known as the overture to Scorsese's "Casino". It's fucking great.

[Kire]

5. 'Hico Killer' w/ Albert Collins might be my fave

on the Spillane album

[derby378]

6. Perfume of a Critic's Burning Flesh

Off of Naked City's Grand Guignol, courtesy of the Torture Garden sessions. Hard. Fucking. Core.

Zorn also appeared on the Praxis compilation Sacrifist along with Bootsy Collins, Buckethead, and the members of Blind Idiot God. Not to mention Laswell and Harris. And Bernie Worrell.

On edit: And Yamatsuka Eye. Never forget the all-seeing Eye.

[Kire]

7. Best. Album Cover. Ever.

The leopard went around his cage
from one side back to the other side
he stopped
only when the keeper came around with meat
a boy who had been there three hours
began to wonder
to wonder
to wonder
in his life he (indistinguishable)like that

[CanuckAmok]

8. I have "Sacrifist"

Fuckin' scary, man.

I often think that if average teens were exposed to Zorn instead of 50 Cent and Limp Bizkit, all the cities of the world would lay in burning ruin.

[Kire]

9. Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht
recorded November 1992
released 1993
ONE DISC: seven tracks, 43 minutes

This album documents the history of Jews in Europe and Israel in the middle of the 20th century. It's the soundtrack for a movie that doesn't exist. The song titles tell half the story: Shtetl, Never Again, Embers, Rectification, Looking Ahead, Iron Fist, The New Settlement.
There's enough music here for two full CDs. It's a triple album compacted into single-album form.

From The Essential Klezmer:

John Zorn's turn toward composing overtly Jewish-themed music began with Kristallnacht, recorded November 1992. Latter-day klezmorim David Krakauer and Frank London lend a patina of authenticity to the album's opening track, "Shtetl (Ghetto Life)," a poignant portrayal of Jewish life in Eastern Europe harshly interrupted by the voice of Adolf Hitler and what sounds like the incitement of a mob.

What follows next is twelve minutes of ear-shattering ugliness — Zorn's sonic metaphor for Kristallnacht, the historic Night of Broken Glass, the nationwide pogrom that announced Germany's intention to destroy European Jewry. Zorn rightly makes the horror virtually unlistenable, and the album even comes with a warning from Zorn against "prolonged or repeated listenings."

The pieces continue in this vein, alternating moments of pensive meditation with violent noise, performed by an ensemble including violinist Mark Feldman, guitarist Marc Ribot, and keyboardist Anthony Coleman. (Zorn himself does not play on the album.)

It is a hugely ambitious, audacious piece of work, a musical representation of the Holocaust that will undoubtably earn a place among the supreme musical statements of the twentieth century.


In Zorn's massive catalogue of albums, a few stand out. This is one of those albums.

Kristallnacht was the official start of the Radical Jewish Culture movement of the 1990s. Jewish musical styles and Jewish history are explored in every track, from the traditional to the most modern. Never Again, for example, is a song, a statement, a compostional tour de force, and a wall of white noise all at once. Every track on this album has the same feel. The music is layered and linear at the same time, documenting recent Jewish history from as many angles as possible.







Track 1: Shtetl (ghetto life)
An overture on trumpet, clarinet, and violin. It shifts to fear as German voices interrupt.

Track 2: Never Again
The night of broken glass.

Track 3: Gahelet (embers)
The aftermath. Very quiet for 3 minutes, with voices on the radio at the end.

Track 4: Tikkun (rectification)
Violin, guitar, and percussion play in cartoon- block style. Shifting between fast and slow.

Track 5: Tzfia (looking ahead)
The sound of people scattered and running, crumpled paper, and then peace.

Track 6: Barzel (iron fist)
Two minutes of marching, pounding, and sirens. The iron fist drives people out of the new settlement.

Track 7: Gariin (the new settlement)
Drums, bass, and guitar tap out a stuttering march. The sound of construction, frenzied building, and chaotic city life. It backs off in the last minute, ending with tapping drums.


From the Tzadik web site:

This premiere work of Radical Jewish Culture features a virtuoso ensemble of creative Jewish musicians. Seven movements tell the story of the Jewish experience, survival through the Holocaust, the building of a Jewish state, diaspora Jewry and its attraction and resistance to assimilation, the rise of Jewish nationalism and the ultimate problems of fanatical religious fundamentalism.

http://www.omnology.com/zorn01.html

[derby378]

11. Got it right here next to Naked City's RADIO

Honestly, I'm in awe. Two DUers that own Kristallnacht? Whoa.

[Kire]

13. I've got Radio, too.

I never knew anybody that liked them. I freaked out all of my friends and ended up listening to it alone in my room.

I wrote a paper about him in college. I presented it to the regular session of the Eastern Sociological Society. I was 19 years old.

We diagrammed the song "Speedfreaks" on the Grand Guignol album to illustrate Frederic Jameson's theory of the Pastiche. 34 different styles of music in 57 seconds.

[CanuckAmok]

12. It is truly (nearly) unlistenable.

I think I've listened to it in its entirety once.

One can only stand so much, even from a genius.

[Kire]

14. "Repeated or prolonged listening will cause ear damage"

It actually says that on the liner notes.

[derby378]

15. I've used some music from KRISTALLNACHT...

...to open a lecture on Holocaust revisionism. I think many of the attendees approved.

But no, I didn't use Never Again. That would be a bad idea.

[Kire]

10. Produced 'Mr. Bungle'

Frequently works with the man with the voice, Mike Patton.