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Re: Some of the overdue DVD reissues are not so overdue
by Bill Ashline 08 Jul '02

08 Jul '02

>From: "Benito Vergara" <bvergara(a)sfsu.edu> >ObZorn: I notice that Criterion has also released "Tokyo Drifter," which >I've never seen, and which Zorn has, I believe, praised to high heavens. >Does anyone here second his recommendations? > Yes, absolutely. Great piece of sixties kitsch where the main character wears this appallingly cheesy white suit. Strongly recommended. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx

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DVD Reissues and stuff
by Tosh 08 Jul '02

08 Jul '02

Tokyo Drifter is great as well as Branded to Kill. I think both has interviews with its director Seijun Suzuki. One (Branded to Kill) has film posters collected by Zorn. I don't read the many DVD magazines that are now out - but the U.K.'s UNCUT has a pretty decent review/commentary on extras on DVD's. Oh, and I also suggest 'Black Tight Killers.' Fans of the two Suzuki films I think would admire this Japanese film gem. -- Tosh Berman TamTam Books http://www.tamtambooks.com

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Re: Things I just don't get
by mr.dave＠attbi.com 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

Gaak! Don't mention 'Desert Island Discs' on the Zorn List - please! My e-mail box (not to mention my wallet) can't handle THAT again ... Dave NP: Bill Frisell, 17Oct90 Middle East, Cambridge MA > I don't find myself listening to his piano work much, but his > all-vocal "Chinampas" would be one of my desert island discs. >

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Re: Things I just don't get
by Samerivertwice＠aol.com 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

In a message dated 7/3/02 4:11:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Samerivertwice(a)aol.com writes: > 1) Steely Dan > 2) Why some jazzers feel the compulsion to set their terrible terrible > poems to music. > 3) Powerbook music > > Enlighten me, > Tom > And I agree with everything Patrice wrote (especially the gorgeousness of KIND OF BLUE), except his appraisal of William Parker. Parker is a monster player and a not half bad composer. Check out "Painter's Spring" and "O'Neal's Porch" for evidence. My 2 cents, Tom ______________________________________________________________________ Phil Spector: "I've been listening to a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber lately, and enjoying it. Someday I hope to set his stuff to music."

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Bowie/Merman
by Oppenheim, Phil 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

First of all, y'all say that like it's a *bad* thing. Did you happen to check out the excellent piece in the NYT about Ms Merman and what an amazing interpreter/ performer she was? Secondly: aside for their mutual predilection for chiffon, I don't really see the comparison. Surely Bowie's more like Eddie Cantor (theatricality, multiple character persona) or Jolson (tendency towards the maudlin) or Bing (idiosyncratic balladeer -- and duet-mate!) or even Carmen Miranda. That said, I *do* like the idea of The Thin White Duke taking on The Fat Old Broad ... -----Original Message----- From: Mark Saleski [mailto:marks@foliage.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 9:23 AM To: zorn Subject: Re: Worst Bowie >I think they meant Dave Bowie, stadium rock's answer to Ethel Merman > >skip h dang, i wish i'd made that analogy! -- Mark Saleski - marks(a)foliage.com <mailto:marks@foliage.com> | http://www.foliage.com/~marks <http://www.foliage.com/~marks> "Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together" - Anais Nin

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Worst Bowie
by Tosh 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

'Don't Let me Down' is the worst Bowie. But 'Outside' is great. I like the textures and melodies on that album. -- Tosh Berman TamTam Books http://www.tamtambooks.com

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Re: Worst Bowie
by TagYrIt＠aol.com 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

In a message dated 7/1/2002 1:03:10 PM Eastern Standard Time, berniecc(a)hotmail.com writes: > Subj:Re: Worst record by someone I normally love > Date:7/1/2002 1:03:10 PM Eastern Standard Time > From:<A HREF="mailto:berniecc@hotmail.com">berniecc(a)hotmail.com</A> > To:<A HREF="mailto:zorn-list@lists.xmission.com">zorn-list(a)lists.xmission.com</A> > Sent from the Internet > > > > David Bowie: Never Let Me Down > > Bernie. > True, but even worse than Outside? Dale.

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Re: things I just don't get
by thesubtlebody 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

Skip Heller wrote: >-- being able to play means being able to > project your ideas on you > >instrument, and having enough tecvhnique to do it > cleanly and consistently....you're > either doing it real good or not. It's more like > arranging, and there's a > lot of technique involved in arranging....Assembling music is not easy....You need precision..... > Constant precision -- > regardless of media -- is chops. > It's about hitting your mark > reliably, and nobody ever > had a better batting average for this than the > Ramones, who I think had the > perfect technique for all time. Skip, I don't like the way you've overdetermined what constitutes "technique", it's like you're courting predictability or manageability of aesthetics. Reliable? Who wants music that is "reliably" "precise", in just about _any_ sense of that word? I personally don't need more than a short tape of Ramones precisely because they were so, um, "reliable". Nothing is wrong with an artist basically doing one thing, workkking with one vocabulary, and even then with a vocabulary that she didn't invent, but refining is refining, and the examples Biill gave (SachikoM and John Wall) would seem to me to be pretty far from refining, more about defining. As they define what can be done with their chosen materials, they are establishing the very grounds of what is "good" and what "isn't". Aren't you saying that something is done well or it isn't, and pretty much falls on the spectrum, from the get-go, from the moment someone's ears receive it? I don't think it's decided like that. Gene Ammons was good because of the tradition he was working within, and the way his abundant personality just burst its walls in hurry to get out of that horn; John Hartford and Bill Evans were wonderful because of the way they made acceptable and even natural the "unnatural" way they bumped up against the inner membrane walls of their respective genres, allowed for cross-pollination from other places. SachikoM and John Wall work very similarly, with very few important differances, but among those differences, the implicit call for listeners to walk to tightrope, with little to hold on to. It's confrontation in a way, where the initial, natural response of the listener is, "I don't even know if this is music or not, much less whether it is good. By the way, what is "good"? What do I mean by that?" Then, of course, it's a short jump to "What does ANYONE mean by 'good'?" The effect, at its best, for me at least, is the euphoria of independence, it's that punk-ass feeling: total freedom to listen, clean ears, a form of baptism, taking that first breath back above the surface. Really bad experimental music (IMHO) makes me feel like I'm being lectured. Speaking of which, I'll shut up now, albeit with the last parting thought: I'm bothered by your view (as I received it) that in order to appreciate something's "precision", "reliability",and quality, in the context of it's technique, then something NEEDS to be codified from the get go. There is plenty of music that is interesting to listeners, esp. critical listeners, BECAUSE of its total lack of constancy in precision and unreliability in terms of cleanness. Furthermore, how on earth are we to know whether a person's ideas are effectively, much less cleanly and precisely, being comunicated in their music? We can't read their minds. Interference happens along the way, certainly between instrument and listener, btu also between perfromer and instrument. But you never actually said that music had to have technique. It just seems that when the T-word is used, it applies to widely-understood and codified systems of _techniques_. When we say "technique", we aren't just referring to a specific type of motion/approach/attack, we are speaking of a general body of such motions, we are referring to a person's entire method as judged against predetermined standards. But I'm pretty with your comments on arranging. They apply crucially to experimental composers like Bernhard Guenter, even more than they would to someone like Duke Ellington (whose experiments have had much longer to soak into our collective thinking). -----scott np: Edward Ka-Spel, KHATACLIMICI CHINA DOLL __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com

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technique
by Acousticlv＠aol.com 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

In a message dated 7/7/02 2:45:02 PM, zorn-list-request(a)mailman.xmission.com writes: << Skip, I don't like the way you've overdetermined what constitutes "technique", it's like you're courting predictability or manageability of aesthetics. >> dear scott, i wont pretend to speak for skip, but usually what technique means is mastery of one's instrument or skill; this provides the _means_ to accomplish what your intentions are, even if your intention is aleatory. luck is nice, but the skills to back it up are necessary. yrs steve koenig n.p.:lauren newton.patrick scheyder

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Final comments on Keiji Haino
by Arthur Gadney 07 Jul '02

07 Jul '02

>I read the interview -- yes, Patrice, I periodically buy a WIRE ;-) -- and >found it more jingoistic than racist, statistics aside. Didn't leave a bad >taste in my mouth, Well, you can call me old fashioned, but I always get a bad taste in my mouth when people talk about wanting the people to "wake up" and realise the ongoing "invasion" which is threatening their "race". Racist? Well perhaps not. It's not really a big part of the interview so he doesn't dig too much into it, but I think from what he is saying there is certainly not very far to saying that the "pure" japanese race is supirior to the new "westernised" version, which would be racism, right? Of course, I will give him the benifit of doubt becuase of the language thing and possible mistakes in the translation. But I also remember the Japanese "tradition" of racism and supiriority feelings. >Haino's remarks must certainly be seen in the proper context. As far as I >can tell, >he is a strong advocate of tradition; (...) His lyrics are not even in >contemporary >Japanese. He must feel that a culture which he loves is disappearing, and >that what >replaces is is often not very worthwhile. What if he was an American country singer who was a "strong advocate of tradition" and were singing songs in an old hilbilly dialect about the good old days when you could call black people niggers without anybody complaining. Would you also be so kind to him and say "He must feel that a culture which he loves is disappearing, and that what replaces is is often not very worthwhile."? If Haino was just talking about culture, I'd say, okay fine. I'd probably even agree with him. But he said "race", which is what worried me. >Furthermore, it is definitely true to some extent that the Japanese have >changed even physically from these cultural influences. Okay, I obviously didn't explain myself very well, because this has also been picked up elsewhere. I didn't mean to say that the Japanese have not changed in the last years. They certainly have, and somebody posted the following link which has some background information on it: http://www.sumitomo.gr.jp/english/discoveries/special/84_03.html It's ridiculous in my opinion, because why does it matter if they change a couple of centimeters? Races change. It's just how biology works, as far as I'm concerned. >(as George Bush thinks, but his remarks about this are >carefully filtered out the news reports in the US, as when he recently >asked >the Brazilian president if they "also had blacks in Brazil?"). I don't know how carefully they are actually filtered. I saw his entire 4. of July speech on CNN and it certainly had a fair share of his "remarks". I almost swallowed my tongue when he talked about the vicitms of September 11. and claimed that "all of them were American". Not exactly "racist", but still mindnumbingly ignorant and offensive. Certainly far more worrying than anything from Haino's mouth. >On the subject of Haino's supposed racism, you would be surprised to find >out just how many people outside of the USA feel that their culture has >been >invaded by the USA - Surprised? Why? We have pretty good statistics on this, for example Gallup International. It's no secret. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

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