Michael said:
Saying that, I've been a Zorn fan since I was 11. It was basically from his appearance on The South Bank Show in early '89 when it featured Put Blood In The Music feat. Zorn, Sonic Youth, etc. I was watching it for Sonic Youth who I was then a recent convert of (all thanks to discovering the Master=Dik EP which is basically one of my favourite records of all-time now).
I too watched that show. And the first Sonic Youth I bought was the "Master=Dik" EP. Spooky. The line "London fuck you're pissing me off" is never far from my mind... All this Naked City talk got me going back through my by-no-means complete collection of (The) Wire, and it appears that Naked City played in the UK on two separate occasions, as there was this review by Ben Watson in The Wire 58/59 Dec 88/Jan 89, which suggests they played here in the Autumn of 88. "Naked City/Kronos Quartet London Royalty Theatre [Review of Kronos omitted]...John Zorn needs Kronos, though, to make his low cultural references (the latest DC Batman book, Napalm Death, Henry Mancini) sufficiently outrageous. However, this is not really cultural sacrilege, more high spirits. Naked City are not quite as weird as Zorn thinks: the set (James Barry [sic. I think he means John], the Batman theme, Morricone, Ornette) resembled those of the late Xero Slingsby. Zorn should come off the fence and apply himself to this music: slumming is only a joke for the rich. The band is not really as good (or rehearsed) as it needs to be: when the clash of styles is as mannered and deliberate as this, technical deficiencies become blatant. Zorn's alto balladry does not melt; Wayne Horvitz's cocktail piano does not float; Joey Baron cannot play brush drums to save his life (his over-emphatic, jolly drumming was an obstacle throughout). Lumbered with an electric bass, Fred Frith smiled charmingly but could not deliver the dazzle he is capable of on guitar. Bill Frisell, though, saved the day. His outing on Big John Patton's The Way I Feel was astonishing: long, curving lines segmented with extraordinary originality and precision, atonal intervals judged like a Dolphy or Taylor, melodic arcs worthy of Duane Allman or Frank Zappa [surprise, surprise!]. Though Zorn's freak-outs fail to tap the chaos-in-three-dimensions that Last Exit and Phalanx manage to derive from Albert Ayler, his enthusiasm is infectious: as he directed the band into alternating jazz-pastiche and punk-noise things brightened. With Snagglepuss his conduction made a funny and exciting collage of disparate elements (whereas his piece for Kronos, Tex Avery Directs De Sade, sounded whimsical and gratuitous), Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman sounded fine over free-rock thrash: Horvitz's electronics came into their own on Graveyard Shift. A fun band. But art? For that I'll go see the Raybeats. " Watson as opinionated as ever, and showing a far greater liking for colons than is usually considered stylish. In the same issue,The Wire's "Best of 88 include JZ's "Spillane", "Strange Meeting by Power Tools, Sanctified Dreams by Tim Berne, News For Lulu by Zorn/Frisell/Lewis and Lookout For Hope by the Bill Frisell Band. It was a good year! There's also a three page article on Tim Berne including him ranting over why CBS done him wrong, and a nice career history up to that moment. If anyone's interested I can transcribe it over the weekend. And here's the list of dates of their 1989 UK tour, for anyone who is interested. Has anyone tried to put together a Zorn gigography? I think that would make Patrice's discography look like a haiku... Naked City Tour of UK 1989 November 28. London Queen Elizabeth Hall 29. Coventry University of Warwick Arts Centre 30. Nottingham Albert Hall December 1. Durham Dunelm House 2. Cardiff Chapter Arts 4. Liverpool Bluecoat Arts Centre 5. Sheffield The Leadmill 6. Brighton Gardner Arts Centre 7. Birmingham Adrian Boult Hall 8. Manchester Royal Northern College of Music 9. Leeds Trades Club 10. Leicester Haymarket Centre I think I have a review of the Manchester gig in a fanzine somewhere - I'll see if I can find it. And finally,the review of "Torture Garden" that made me go out and buy it, without having a clue who this Zorn character was. It's by Mike Fish, which was the alias of The Wire's founder, Richard Cook, and comes from The Wire 85, March 1991. In those days they used to publish a list of musicians and all the track titles at the beginning of the review. Nice idea, but then that meant there was less space for reviews. "Naked City - Torture Garden Earache Mosh 28 LP It looks like a lot of music, but this 45rpm record is really an EP, containing less than 30 minutes and *click* Always there's this loud, violent, spasmodic *click* I haven't checked the timings but the shortest track appears to be Hammerhead and the longest *click* Pretty outrageous, I guess, if you can call a title like Gob Of Spit outrageous *click* Dark, obtuse rumblings *click* Is, after all, impeccably organised, you don't get any sense of spontaneous hardcore savagery because Zorn and cohorts have shaped and sculptured every neurotic shriek, every thirty-second blitzkrieg, every *click* No, it has to be, no I could say it might happen but no, just no *click* Who is Eye? This guest vocalist's Damo Suzuki-like howls add a certain *click* Rejected by major *click* Suck this, you hapless *click* Impression that Zorn is trying a tad too hard to be a blood brother with those disaffected rock zombies who created hardcore in the first place, while he was off doing that weird shit with Chadbourne and all those *click* Sumptuous *click* Nice sweet person like Frisell doing *click* Excerpts from a teenage operatic nightmare, maybe, with added *click* Favourite title: probably the winsomely detailed New Jersey Scum Swamp, unlocking *click* It's moving, it's alive it's *click* In an MTV world, there's *click* Refreshing pin-sharp recording, a clear improvement over Naked City's looser *click* Always the same old *click* Hardly seems worth baiting jazz fans or critics or whoever, since most who weren't bothered probably quit Zorn-watching back when *click* No, don't kill me, please, don't *click* Inside some noise-box of a *click* Just say nein *click* And then there's *click*. " Also reviewed in that issue: Sidsel Endresen's So I Write and John Lloyd Quartet's "Syzygy, which happen to be two records I like a lot. Anyway,hope this is of interest to someone, if only to see that critical opinion of Naked City at the time wasn't as high as people might think. Alastair . -- Personalised email by http://another.com