From: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (Zorn List Digest) To: zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: Zorn List Digest V2 #690 Reply-To: zorn-list Sender: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-zorn-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Zorn List Digest Thursday, July 1 1999 Volume 02 : Number 690 In this issue: - Re: who is Billy Jenkins? Duras:Duchamp Hidden Picture photographers Re: blasphemy Re: classic guide to strategy Re: Duras:Duchamp Hidden Picture Re: Duras:Duchamp Hidden Picture Billy Jenkins Krucifly's 'trane Re: classic guide to strategy Re: Billy Jenkins Re: Krucifly's 'trane as vague as i wanna be Re: Krucifly's 'trane RE: as vague as i wanna be I promise to be good to your eyeholes... DENVER--COBRA--MORE... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 11:10:09 +0100 From: Richard Gardner Subject: Re: who is Billy Jenkins? > From: "Patrice L. Roussel" > Subject: who is Billy Jenkins? > > In the intro of the PENGUIN JAZZ GUIDE, this musician is mentioned > next to Derek Bailey. Although the guide lists a few records by this artist, > I was puzzled to see this name for the first time (maybe an indication that I > should go out more often). Does anybody on the list know this musician and > have recommendation? > > Thanks, > > Patrice. > Billy Jenkins and his band the Voice of God Collective have been around for years. I only have the Balham album but did see him live a couple of years ago. The music is difficult to describe because I think there is a heavy streak of irony in there. Taking jazz and pop forms he produces a loose, wild stew of sounds featuring himself on guitar (and 'performance' - he is a performer and often very funny) and varying bands of British improvisers. Its certainly not on my main play list but the album and performance were certainly very entertaining. To anyone on the list: What is the news on the video of Masada's performance in Poland? Richard Gardner - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 06:51:52 -0500 From: "Marks, Andy" Subject: Duras:Duchamp Hidden Picture What's that picture look like, the one thats hidden underneath the CD tray? - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 09:15:16 -0400 From: Perfect Sound Forever Subject: photographers Since people are bringing up problems that the paparazzi has caused musicians, I remember a recent Odyssey show at the Knit where someone was going crazy, flashing away. Blood Ulmer actually had to say something about it in the middle of a number. he was very cool about it, saying something like 'OK brother, enough now...' At another show there, when I went with a photographer, the band's manager asked us to take pictures during the first two numbers and then to give the band a break. She said that this was pretty standard procedure and I could understand that. Let's face it- photopeople are an important part of this industry and are needed to document it. A little decorum though... We don't wanna get things to the point where we're locusts (i.e. Lady Di). Jason - -- Perfect Sound Forever online music magazine perfect-sound@furious.com http://www.furious.com/perfect - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:09:26 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: blasphemy On Thu, Jul 01, 1999 at 02:05:57AM -0400, XRedbirdxx@aol.com wrote: > no man, it's cool, speak your mind. i'm still curious if there's any > reactions to my such remarks on "the classic guide to strategy" awhile back. A heads-up to those who like or are interested in The Classic Guide to Strategy: Zorn will be performing it this coming Tuesday night at Tonic. - -- | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/~jzitt | | Latest Solo CD: Gentle Entropy http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 16:16:17 +0200 From: patRice Subject: Re: classic guide to strategy Joseph Zitt wrote: > > A heads-up to those who like or are interested in The Classic Guide to > Strategy: Zorn will be performing it this coming Tuesday night at Tonic. > hi y'all. i don't have the "classic guide..." cd, so i can't look this up myself. anyway: do any of you if said cd is based on the book of the same name by the greatest samurai of all times, miyamoto musashi? patRice - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:26:14 -0400 From: "Michael Berman" Subject: Re: Duras:Duchamp Hidden Picture The picture beneath the tray is the last work ever done by Marcel = Duchamp. It is titled "Given: 1. The Illuminated Gas 2. The Waterfall" = 1969. It wasn't revealed until after he died (he had claimed that he had given = up art in favor of chess in 1923, but from 1946 until his death in 69 he = was secretly working on this piece). It can only be seen at the = Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the Duchamp room. It is hidden in the = corner of the room. it is not a painting, its an instillation. You = must peer through a tiny hole in an old wooden door, to view the seen = (as the picture suggests). The figure itself is painted leather over = plaster relief, mounted on velvet. Most any book on Duchamp would have info on this piece and its relation = to his main body of work, most notably "Large Glass (The Bride Stripped = Bare By Her Bachelors, Even" his most celebrated "unfinished" work, = also in the Philly Museum. The best essay is by Octavio Paz. "Given" in french (how he titled the piece) is Etant Donnes. The title = of Zorns composition. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 10:25:08 -0400 From: Joseph Zitt Subject: Re: Duras:Duchamp Hidden Picture On Thu, Jul 01, 1999 at 10:26:14AM -0400, Michael Berman wrote: > It wasn't revealed until after he died (he had claimed that he had given up art in favor of chess in 1923, but from 1946 until his death in 69 he was secretly working on this piece). It can only be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the Duchamp room. It is hidden in the corner of the room. it is not a painting, its an instillation. You must peer through a tiny hole in an old wooden door, to view the seen (as the picture suggests). The figure itself is painted leather over plaster relief, mounted on velvet. I was at the Philly Museum a while back with some friends who'd never been there. Looking at the Duchamp exhibit, one wandered into a small room which was empty except for one wall being made of wood. He asked why it was emtpy. I told him to look through the knothole. The look of revelation was priceless :-) - -- | jzitt@metatronpress.com http://www.metatronpress.com/~jzitt | | Latest Solo CD: Gentle Entropy http://www.mp3.com/josephzitt | | Comma: Voices of New Music Silence: the John Cage Discussion List | - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 12:19:09 +0100 From: Richard@rcvs.org.uk Subject: Billy Jenkins > Does anybody on the list know > [Billy Jenkins] and have recommendation? I know a little of his stuff. He's a London-based guitarist who I suppose you could put in a similar camp with Eugene Chadbourne, without the country influences; a scrabbly, but very technically able player whose music is full of jokes, ridiculous conceptual things and so on. He did a series of gigs based on boxing, for example, in which he duetted with someone in three-minute "rounds", each of which would be rudely interrupted by a bell. It was funnier than it sounds, and musically interesting, too, since it put into question that idea of improvisations having a "natural" length. He's widely regarded as an underrated, "difficult" but brilliant musician -- difficult mot because he has an extreme aesthetic, but because his aesthetic is too complex to embrace mere volume, atonality or noise. My own favourite disc is "Scratches of Spain", vaguely a Miles tribute of course. Not very free-improv-esque, though; funky big band jazz compositions with wild, free-form solos. Too much fun. It's on Babel Label, which has a web site, but I don't offhand know the URL. Hope this is of some help. > [George Lewis] has a cd on Avant called "Voyager," I'd forgotten I had this album. What a fine and unique disc it is, too, if you can find it. Rich - -------------------------------------------- http://come.to/musings.com NOTE: reply to musings@mail.com if possible; the address this message has come from is not permanent! - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 99 11:09:59 -0500 From: kurt_gottschalk@scni.com Subject: Krucifly's 'trane I'll take a stab at the Coltrane recs. First off, it's hard to go wrong, and for my money (which has been a good bit invested) he got better and better year after year like few do, culminating in the phenomenal last recording "Expression." But I wouldn't start there. There's a few chrysalis points in his arc. One happened in 1962 or 3 with the Live at the Village Vanguard recordings, where he established before the audience what would be one of the tightest, most sympathetic quartets in all of jazz history. Really. The permutations leading to that night are on a 4cd set called Live at the Village Vanguard. The original record of that name is phenomenal, and costs less. But the real starting point for new ears is 1965. The year began with the quartet's best work and ended with the addition of Pharoah Sanders, the remarkable Kulu Se Mama, and the final trajectory into Live in Japan, Live at the Village Vanguard Again and Intersellar Space. There was a 4cd set of all works from 1965 -- maybe someone can help with the title -- that, if you can drop the $35-40 or whatever it costs, is the place to begin, I think. From there you can decide if you want to go back into the classic jazz or forward into the definition of free blowing. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 11:26:45 EDT From: XRedbirdxx@aol.com Subject: Re: classic guide to strategy In a message dated 7/1/99 10:16:34 AM Eastern Daylight Time, gda@datacomm.ch writes: << hi y'all. i don't have the "classic guide..." cd, so i can't look this up myself. anyway: do any of you if said cd is based on the book of the same name by the greatest samurai of all times, miyamoto musashi? patRice >> having it would not particularly help answer your question. as i mentioned before the liner notes are frustratingly near-impossible to read. i may be being fussy, but putting the notes out like that, to me, has a whiff thumbing their noses at the very people who buy their work and pay to see them play. joseph - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 08:44:59 -0700 From: "Patrice L. Roussel" Subject: Re: Billy Jenkins I wanted to thank all the people who shed some light on this musician. Patrice. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 15:49:44 GMT From: Scott Handley Subject: Re: Krucifly's 'trane Kurt wrote: >But the real starting point >for new ears is 1965....There was a 4cd set of all works from 1965 -- maybe >someone >can help with the title... Unless this is a new release, within the last year, I don't believe there was ever a 4CD of the 1965 work. There _was_ a double disc called THE MAJOR WORKS OF JOHN COLTRANE which includes two versions of the incredible ASCENSION, OM, KULU SE MAMA, and SELFLESSNESS. It's definitely worth having; a real "top five" for the casual yet adventurous Coltrane listener. There was the 4CD LIVE IN JAPAN. >From there you can decide if you want to >go back into the classic jazz or forward into the definition of free >blowing. Perhaps I've said this before, but I would recommend the blindingly intense SUN SHIP (last "classic" quartet record together, I believe, before Elvin and McCoy got the jitters and split...though I' not sure of that disco detail...) before ANY other record, if I were recommending to listeners with moderately ecperimental ears and a taste for the non-casualty pomo variety. TRANSITION is record number two. Maybe LOVE SUPREME would be three, or four. SUPREME may get props from the Marsalis and Redman camps, but it isn't the end-all-be-all, though its religiosity and mystification say an awful lot about the end-all and the be-all. Nothing wrong w/Trane's p.o.v. (please don't go there: we've already covered that...), I'm just suggesting that LOVE SUPREME sows seeds that get reaped in _spades_ on records like TRANSITION and SUN SHIP and (in an amazing way) MEDITATIONS. And for some strange reason I find it fun to listen to those records and then put on Parker/Guy/Lytton/Crispell's NATIVES AND ALIENS. I mean, as far as I know, Trane was a decisive influence for both Evan Parker and Marilyn Crispell (she even locates her "conversion" experience back to her first time hearing LOVE SUPREME and her first time hearing Cecil). Which, since obviously I'm on an EP fixation/kick, leads me to loudly proclaim vis-a-vis Trane: NATIVES AND ALIENS is a great way in to Evan Parker's "thing". Beautifully recorded, and the band sounds so good. Marilyn Crispell is so scary...I can only imagine what a live performance by her would be like. (FORCES IN MOTION leads me to believe she has a pretty diminutive, generous personality as well.) Cheers to all, - ---s _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 99 12:17:26 -0500 From: kurt_gottschalk@scni.com Subject: as vague as i wanna be OK, I glossed over a coupla issues in my comments about whether or not JZ should be able to have a temper or whatever, and have received some questions for clarification. These have been discussed here before, but we always have new folks. These might be good candidates (with revisions, please) for the faq, if they're not there already. Zorn's purported misogyny -- this comment related to the controversy surrounding some of the naked city record covers, and also the show of japanese "porn" movie posters that was up during the monthlong retrospective at the old knit 6 yrs ago. This is still, surprisingly, a hot issue in some NYC activist circles, and the Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence for one was most outspoken about it. I have strong feelings about not restricting ugliness which I won't get into here. Zorn, to my knowledge, has never commented on the subject, but some of the records in question were rereleased as "black box," the cover art was inside. same with the painkiller box, for what it's worth, which had much more disturbing imagery on the original releases. Zorn and Madeleine -- this has gone round and round, and was even on the knit's web site. i guess about 2 yrs ago or so, vaclev havel and madeleine albright were hanging with havel's pals (i suppose) lou reed and laurie anderson. they went to see masade at the knit, sat in the balcony and yammered away all night. zorn fucked them off, loud and clear, apparently knowing and not caring who the disrupters were. these are both interesting and telling events that get at the motivations of an artist who talks little about himself. they deserve better tellings than i've given them, but like i said, hopefully they're well told on the faq. bye. - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 12:46:58 -0400 From: Tom Pratt Subject: Re: Krucifly's 'trane > Perhaps I've said this before, but I would recommend the blindingly intense > SUN SHIP Absolutely. This seems to be a very neglected record, but it's definitely mindblowing. > And for some strange reason I find it fun to listen to those records and > then put on Parker/Guy/Lytton/Crispell's NATIVES AND ALIENS. I think 'Natives & Aliens' is good (though I'm not much of a Crispell fan), but I'd recommend checking out 'Imaginary Values' by the Parker/Guy/Lytton trio. It's my favorite of all their discs and is some of the most incredible group improv I've ever heard. -Tom Pratt - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 09:54:51 -0700 From: "Benito Vergara" Subject: RE: as vague as i wanna be > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-zorn-list@lists.xmission.com > [mailto:owner-zorn-list@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of > kurt_gottschalk@scni.com > Sent: Thursday, July 01, 1999 10:17 AM > These might be good candidates (with revisions, please) > for the faq, if > they're not there already. The part about the CAAAV protest and the album covers (now, was it "Leng T'che" or "Torture Garden" which provoked this specifically?) are in the FAQ. Reminds me of how I told an Asian friend in NYC, whom I was going to visit, that I wanted to see some Zorn concert, and his response was, "Oh, *that* racist guy." Suffice it to say I went to the concert without him... As for Zorn and Albright, there was a nice, succinct retelling of the incident in that issue of The New Yorker a few weeks ago. Later, Ben http://www.bigfoot.com/~bvergara/ ICQ# 12832406 - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 18:49:36 GMT From: uranus musickness Subject: I promise to be good to your eyeholes... I am an artist based a little bit North of Seattle. I am trying to keep myself busy doing what I love, playing sick music and drawing bizarre pictures. I just wanted to let you know I am available to help you out with the visual end of promoting your music. (Flyers, Cd covers etc.) I am currently working for Timothy Young (Zony Mash, Very Special Forces) doing flyers for his projects. I am available fairly inexpensively and take pride in what I turn out. My style is sick and twisted in the style of Mad Magazine or other pieces of filth like that. Although I can draw cute bunnies as well. I do things the old fashioned way. I draw it... If you would like to see examples let me know... (Influences: Don Martin, Basil Wolverton, Roman Dirge, Raymond Pettibone) John Schuller _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 15:21:12 EDT From: COBRAgroup@aol.com Subject: DENVER--COBRA--MORE... Hello Zorn-list! My name is Nathan Fuhr. I created the COBRA Ensemble - Cincinnati, in September of last year. Although Zorn's Cobra has been the focus of the group, we've done a few other projects, an original piece w/ dancers, arrangements/pieces of mine; all more-or-less within, and (almost!) touching both extremes of, the spectrum of the Zorn aesthetic. (By the way, for the record, the name and concept of the group is based on that of the COBRA artists of 1948-51.) Although I may continue work with the Cincinnati group on a less frequent basis, I will be moving to Denver in the fall for a position with the Colorado Symphony (i'm a conductor). Providing I can hook up with the right kind of musicians, I seek to create a group there; perhaps similar but not the same. Not only have I learned a tremendous amout this first time around, but whatever the group takes on is determined exclusively by the strengths, artistic sensibilities, and personalities of the players at hand, which could be quite different on the Denver scene. In addition to Cobra and other Zorn works, pieces such as Stockhausen's Stimmung, Kagel's Exotica, or Uri Caine type projects would be worthwhile foci--and if it feels right, originals. I would be content just doing Cobra too, but only if doing it damn well; uniquely and sincerely--of course having fun, but not mindlessly mimicking the KF disc or just goofing off. If you're in Denver and interested, drop me a line. Also, if you know of any players on the scene, please feel free to let me know of them, or pass the word on. I'm looking forward to meeting potential collaborateurs and open to ideas, but certainly making no promises at this point. I'm just testing the waters, hoping to get a head start getting acquainted with serious musicians in Denver/Boulder that may be hip to this; musicians I obviously would not find via my work with the symphony. This project is not a must, if I don't feel I've found the right players/chemistry, I'll let it go. But, admittedly, I wouldn't mind out-doing what we've done here in Cincinnati thus far. Thanks! Nathan Fuhr COBRAgroup@aol.com P.S. - I have been warned. Please do not contact me just to get copies of Cobra. It's not my place to do anything with it but make music. - - ------------------------------ End of Zorn List Digest V2 #690 ******************************* To unsubscribe from zorn-list-digest, send an email to "majordomo@lists.xmission.com" with "unsubscribe zorn-list-digest" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message. A non-digest (direct mail) version of this list is also available; to subscribe to that instead, replace all instances of "zorn-list-digest" in the commands above with "zorn-list". Back issues are available for anonymous FTP from ftp.xmission.com, in pub/lists/zorn-list/archive. These are organized by date. Problems? 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