July 2003 - zorn-list - mailman.xmission.com

Re: summer reading list
by Ben Axelrad 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

>>Summer's almost done and there's no summer reading list thread yet? =) >>What >>are you Zornlisters reading? Books I've really enjoyed are: Curtis White "Requiem". Quite enjoyable, despite the pretentious description on the back. Fragmented stories about famous composers, an English prof surfing the net for porn, a "prophet" inteviewing murderers and madmen, bestiality, but the most exploitative parts are the potshots at NPR and Terry Gross. Stevie Smith "Novel on Yellow Paper". I think Bush has got both the dictators and the cenobites! Jalal Toufic "Over-Sensitivity". Film/art criticism that reads more like poetry, deals with voice-overs, dance, radical closures. Helps to be familiar with Resnais, Duras, Hitchcock, and Tarkovsky. Mentions "friend and ally John Zorn". Guess Zorn's cultural zionism is not an issue of contention. Raymond Federman "To Whom It Is Concerned". An author plans an (autobiographical?) novel about two cousins, both who lost their family in the Holocaust, reuniting in Israel. Robert Creeley "Collected Poems". Forget the years, but this is the (big) early collection. My favorite goes something like Send me your poems/ and I'll send you mine./ Together we'll declare spring//And jeer at the others/all the others//I'll send you a picture/ if you send me one too. (so poorly paraphrased) On deck: Stephen Levinson "Pragmatics" & other linguistics textbooks Thomas Bernhard "Three Novellas" Uwe Timm "Morenga" Ronald Sukenick "98.6" P. Friere "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" >I'm taking Joseph McElroy's Actress in the House (from the first couple of >chapters it may be the most clearly written in a convention sense of all >his books); Lyn Hejinian's Border Comedy ( along non-narrative poem in >many sections all of which seem to all of the vowels all the time. For >anyone who care, Hejinian is married to ROVA's Larry Ochs, she co-edits a >series of books for a press named Atelos with support from Hips Road (the >non-profit that also supports Tzadik), & Border Comedy is dedicated to >Zorn.); & Lavish Absence by Rosmarie Waldrop (a memoir about her >translations of and collaboration with Edmond Jabes) with me on vacation >this weekend. Lyn Hejinian's "My Life", an (also non-narrative) autobiography which devotes a prose poem to each year of her life, is really quite good. Is Clark Coolidge at all affiliated with this group? He put out a book years ago called "The ROVA Improvisations", which consist of a series of improvised poems to ROVA songs, then more poems based on the improv'd poems (sort of like Ostertag does poetry). I tried CC's "Solution Passage" but couldn't understand a word. Is Atelos still functioning? It doesn't look like their website has been updated lately, and I thought years ago they mentioned brining out a new work by Fanny Howe but now now word... >When I'm back home in mid-August, I hope to spend some time with Immemory >by the French film maker Chris Marker, which is a CD-ROM published by Exact >Change I can't believe that no Marker films have been released on DVD! There's only the English version of La Jetee on one of the "Short" DVD magazines and his work on "Night and Fog." Ben _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Re: summer reading list
by Samerivertwice＠aol.com 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

In a message dated 7/29/03 1:53:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time, zsteiner(a)butler.edu writes: > I just finished "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino. > Experimental, but very fun to read; not a common combination. It is > also the only book written in second person, that I have read. > > Zach > > EXCELLENT book, as is his "Six Memos For The Next Millenium" and "Invisible Cities." Tom ______________________________________________________ Discs I'm listening to at work: John Zorn -- Filmworks XIV Eleni Madell -- Country for True Lovers Richard Thompson -- Ducknapped!

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Jarmusch
by ahorton 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

Begins and ends with "Mystery Train." My favorite of his flicks by far. But there's always DBL and surprisingly, "Night on earth." andreowwwww

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Re: summer reading list
by Samerivertwice＠aol.com 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

In a message dated 7/29/03 3:37:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, velaires(a)earthlink.net writes: > I always got the sense that it was that character talking to himself in his > own mind, ie second-person omniscient. I loved that book. > > sh > > I too loved the book, but after awhile I got tired of the 2nd person narrator. I interpreted the book (and the narrator) as trying to capture the experiences of many young people coming to NYC in the 1980s and getting swept up in the fast lane. Tom ______________________________________________________ Discs I'm listening to at work: John Zorn -- Filmworks XIV Eleni Madell -- Country for True Lovers Richard Thompson -- Ducknapped!

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Re: Cobra
by Herb Levy 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

"Alasdair Maloney" <alasdairmaloney(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >I have been listening to various versions of Cobra, and the other >game pieces recently. And while I think I understand the basics of >the game piece concept, I am not sure what the actual "rules" etc. >of Cobra are. >Can anybody help me? Count me among the folks who don't think it's really necessary to "know" the rules to actively hear what's going on in these pieces. Most listeners don't really "know" the grammatical rules that go by the name of music theory and they get along just fine listening to most music created with those structures in mind. Generally, in the game pieces Zorn created sets of rules for how the musicians can interact which allow for a lot of leeway in terms of what the musicians do, not unlike the rules of sports and games like poker or baseball. Someone may have a very good hand in poker, or be on a hitting streak in baseball, but the actual outcome of any particular game, or play within a game, is at least as dependent on how EVERYONE plays as it on the rules of the game. If all the other players fold early in a poker game, it doesn't matter how good your hand is, you're not going to win much. Zorn's game pieces are not about the particular notes that any musician or group of musicians play, but about how groups of musicians interact, how the rules of the game enable and limit interactions of various kinds. If you want to try to hear this level of structure in Zorn's game pieces without seeing it in performance, the best way may be to focus on the changes that occur when the music played by a particular subgroup of the ensemble is interrupted by another kind of music or at least by another group of players. Does the first group continue playing, stop, fade out, begin playing in the new style? If the kinds of music continue does the music/do the musicians interact, co-exist without interaction or actively disrupt each other? Is the first group interrupted by a single musician or a group of musicians? In what ways is the second type of music different from the first, in what ways is it similar? Do earlier groupings and/or styles of music recur? Do certain kinds of changes between musics recur, even if the specific groupings and/or styles do not? Another possible handle on how these pieces work in general might be to think of them as being analogous to some of the Naked City compositions that have a lot of stylistic shifts in them or the pieces that Zorn has composed for classical performers and ensembles, which may also involve lots of radical stylistic shifts. While these pieces rarely seem to involve much improvisation, paying attention to the how the changes of style, texture, personnel, etc work within these composed pieces may help you to consider the same kind of changes in the improvised game pieces. -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb(a)eskimo.com

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RE: summer reading list
by ahorton 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

>===== Original Message From jason tors <jasontors(a)yahoo.com> ===== >I read Haruki Murakami's The windup bird chronicles. Great book, set in >tokyo in the 80s, a man in search of his estranged wife and himself. >Hes got some interesting jazz references in there. Some amazing >historical WWII stories, delves into some mystical stuff. Great >translation. Really worth the read. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" is one of my favorite books of all time. Murakami is an insanely good writer- if it's THAT good after translation, I can only imagine how good it must be to native speaker/readers. My recent reads: "Hey, Nostradamus!" by Douglas Coupland (his best book in a while. A pseudo-return to the form that garnered him cred to begin with) All issues of "The Believer" - the best new mag. Just interesting, varied writing about a plethora of topics. An offshoot of McSweeny's. The "Pay not to play" issue of Chunklet. Like "the onion" of indie rock. Probably the best rock 'zine of all time. Every book by Steve Erickson. He's the next Thomas Pynchon. When will he get his due? "The visionary art of Joe Coleman"- now that's an interesting dude. And more. Andrew

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Re: summer reading list
by Samerivertwice＠aol.com 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

I've read two Bill Bryson books in the last three weeks -- "A Brief History of Nearly Everything" and "I'm a Stranger Here Myself." Both were excellent with the former was far more educational and the latter being a bit more entertaining. Right now I'm reading Augusten Burroughs's "Running With Scissors." Critics say it's the best memoir since David Eggers's "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." I'm not so sure about that but so far it's been pretty funny. Before Bryson I read Chaim Potok's "The Chosen" for the first time and enjoyed it so much that I bought "My Name is Asher Lev." That's on deck. Cheers, Tom In a message dated 7/29/03 1:43:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, bvergara(a)sfsu.edu writes: > Summer's almost done and there's no summer reading list thread yet? =) What > are you Zornlisters reading? > > David Keenan's "England's Hidden Reverse" (on Current 93, Coil and Nurse > With Wound, among others) just arrived the other day and it's on my bedside > table next to a pile of issues of Mike Carey's comic "Lucifer" (probably the > best of the "Sandman" spinoffs, if not sometimes as good). > > (I see Keenan also has a book on My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless" -- > http://www.continuumbooks.com/series_details.cgi?sid=311&ssid=FCU862K3I86CU8 > 8HE7R01H -- anyone read anything from this series yet?) > > Anyone else have any recommendations? I'd rather read something else than > catch up on the last two Harry Potter books... > > Later, > Ben > http://www.thewilyfilipino.com > > > ______________________________________________________ Discs I'm listening to at work: John Zorn -- Filmworks XIV Eleni Madell -- Country for True Lovers Richard Thompson -- Ducknapped!

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Lizard/Jon Anderson
by CuneiWay＠aol.com 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

>>...until Jon Anderson's voice pops up (***shudder***) What a hip thing to say! Wow! Do you write for The Wire? <grin> Steve F.

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Re: summer reading list
by Samerivertwice＠aol.com 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

In a message dated 7/29/03 2:19:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, zsteiner(a)butler.edu writes: > Is Roberto Benigni unable to play any one other than himself? It seems > that every movie he is in he is the same character and he always falls > in love or is in love with his real wife. Would it be fair to call him > an actor? > > Zach > > > About as fair as it is to call Woody Allen an actor. Tom (who thinks DBL is Jarmusch's best film) ______________________________________________________ Discs I'm listening to at work: John Zorn -- Filmworks XIV Eleni Madell -- Country for True Lovers Richard Thompson -- Ducknapped!

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Classical music primer / webcasts / Cool, cool water
by Mr Paul Audino 29 Jul '03

29 Jul '03

Hello, all - A trio of questions, combined into one e-mail: 1) Can someone recommend book that is a good primer on classical music? I know more than a bit about the subject already, but my current bias is towards 20th Century stuff. I'm looking for something to help me explore the previous centuries in a little more depth. 2) I've been experimenting with Total Recorder, a software tool that can be used to record streaming audio, among other things. I've been pretty happy with the results, so now I'm looking for any recommendations of, well, things that I should record. For example, the BBC website has archived 15+ concerts from the WOMAD 2003 festival (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/world/womad2003/profile_index.shtml) If anyone knows of any webcast archives, radio shows, etc. that might be worth checking out, I'd love to hear about it. 3) I've been really behind in reading the digests, but am almost caught up now. A few weeks back, someone asked about a classic country song that included a refrain about "cool water". I only saw one response to that inquiry, and I can't remember the artist mentioned. In my mind, however, those words are most strongly associated with the Marty Robbins song "Cool Water" from his album _Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs_, a 5-star album in the history of country music. There's a sound clip of the song up on Amazon.com. Regards, Paul __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com

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