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Zorn List Digest       Friday, October 16 1998       Volume 02 : Number 502



In this issue:
-
       RE: Postmodernism
       Re: TONIC - November Schedule
       RE: sean
       Re: sean
       Re: mingus open letter to miles (long)
       Lacy help
       spoken word suggstions
       Re: Lacy help
       Re: Lacy help
       Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk
       Re: Spoken Word + Music
       Re: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk
       Re: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk
       Re: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk
       Meridiem Live (January)
       Re: oops - zorn content!
       Re: sean
       Re: sean

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:56:17 -0400
From: Charles Jacobus <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: Postmodernism

Why not. I recently read that Postmodernism itself
"died" a few summers ago. (Or was it a few winters
ago? Damn, now I can't remember. I've already
forgotten all about it, which is, interestingly enough,
symptomatic of Postmodernism. No?)

All in fun...

Charles.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:    dennis summers [SMTP:[e-mail]]
> Sent:    Friday, October 16, 1998 10:42 AM
> To:    [e-mail]
> Subject:    Postmodernism
>
> I won't swear to this, but I'm fairly certain that the *word* postmodern
> came from architecture, although I agree that the *philosophy* began
> earlier. I haven't done a word search on those French guys to see if they
> ever used that word.
>
> I'm ready to let this thread die if you are?
>
> yours in postmodern zornocity --ds
> ***Quantum Dance Works***
> ****http://ic.net/~denniss****
>
>
> -

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 08:13:23 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: TONIC - November Schedule

On Fri, 16 Oct 98 9:18:17 EDT  "M.Ho" wrote:
>
> > >11/14    Roy Nathanson/Dougie Bowne/Rob Thomas
>
> Is this correct?  Has Dougie Bowne recovered?

Looks like. He is playing on the Bolan tribute which was recorded late Spring.

    Patrice.

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 11:18:49 -0400
From: "hijk" <[e-mail]>
Subject: RE: sean

I was not that impressed with the Sean Lennon album.  However, I did see him
live opening for Sonic Youth and I was very impressed.  The band was really
tight and I almost forgot that I was there to see SY.  That's always the
sign of a good oppening band.

(Julian???)

Jeff Kent
[e-mail]


- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 08:20:55 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: sean

On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 23:59:34 +1000  "Julian" wrote:
>
> Um, I'm just curious, don't ask me why... has anyone checked out Sean
> Lennon's album, and if so, is it any good at all?

It is a fairly sweet album. Sean has an almost feminine voice, which can
surprise at first, but I got used to it fairly quick.

There are a few tracks with enough quirkiness to hold the attention of a
listener who has interest in music beyond straight rock.

My impression is that Sean is still looking for his way, but he has some
ideas and a charming way (non pushy) to expose them.

In short, not a killer rock record, but one that is quite pleasurable.
Makes me curious about what direction he will take.

    Patrice.

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:35:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Joseph S. Zitt" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: mingus open letter to miles (long)

Thanks for posting this! Quite intriguing...

BTW, there's a new (to me at least) paperback edition of Jack Chanber's
"Milestones". It includes the two volumes that had been released
separately in hardcover, as well as a new introduction covering events
after the original bio was published.  It's a good reference --
sufficiently so that, as Chambers shows pretty convincingly in the new
introduction, Miles referred to and cribbed from it rather extensively in
creating his own autobiography.

- - ---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ===== [e-mail] ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Maryland? = <*> SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List <*> = ecto \||
|/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt ====== Comma: Voices of New Music \|


- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 12:40:02 -0400
From: "hijk" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Lacy help

I just picked up 2 Steve Lacy LP's.  Can anybody elaborate?

Clangs - Duets with Andrea Centazzo on Ictus #0001

Scraps - Sextet w/S.Potts, M.Smith, I.Aebi, K.Carter, K.Tyler on Saravah
#10049

Thanks,

Jeff Kent
[e-mail]




- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 12:54:18 -0400
From: [e-mail]
Subject: spoken word suggstions

well i have a few suggestions that are a little different than what people
have been suggesting.

i just picked up an album called "the priest they called him". it is a
collaboration between william s. burroughs and kurt cobain. it's a very short
album (coming in just under 10 minutes) but i think it was worth the $11. kurt
cobain is generating some feedback under burroughs' spoken text. i don't think
the two ever met during this collaboration but i could be wrong.

also i hear that jim carroll is accompanied by some noise artists on his new
cd.

if anyone is in the boston area or will be on november 5th i am producing an
evening of spoken word that will include a few performers accompanied by
music/noise. if anyone is interested in more details please email me
privately. thanks

the other jt
[e-mail]
or
[e-mail]

>>  I am looking for
>> good spoken word, good being where the music and the words interact.
>>
>> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>


- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 98 12:46:35 -0500
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Lacy help


>Scraps - Sextet w/S.Potts, M.Smith, I.Aebi, K.Carter, K.Tyler on Saravah
>#10049

"M. Smith" is one Michael Smith, an elusive and intriguing character I wouldn't
mind finding more about. I think he had a duo record with Lacy (Smith is a
pianist) on IAI from around '76. I have a strange Polish release of his from
1978 I think, called 'Geospheres', much of which is unusual and enjoyable, kind
of a Braxtonish approach but with an underlying romantic moodiness (the cover
painting--a laughably bad one in a spacey '70's style--shows a rather satanic
visage). A friend was a little obsessed about this guy last year, trying to
locate other releases or to find his current whereabouts (last heard of in
France, I believe), but with little luck. Anyone know?

For that matter, is Kent Carter still active?

Brian Olewnick

Brian Olewnick

Brian Olewnick





- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:49:49 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Lacy help

On Fri, 16 Oct 98 12:46:35 -0500  [e-mail] wrote:
>
>
>
> >Scraps - Sextet w/S.Potts, M.Smith, I.Aebi, K.Carter, K.Tyler on Saravah
> >#10049
>
> For that matter, is Kent Carter still active?

After many years (decades?) of silence, as far as jazz is concerned, Kent
Carter is back and has been playing quite a bit recently.

    Patrice.

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 15:06:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: William York <[e-mail]>
Subject: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk

> >Do these artists hold any regard for innovation? (You don't exactly make
> this clear)
>
> Innovation is a slippery term. At one extreme is an artist (whose name
> escapes me), who simply paint copies of Modrian paintings for exhibition (I
> think I'm remembering this right). Although this seems a little extreme to
> me, her "recontextualizing" was all the rage a few years back. But it's a
> short step from that to Hip hop mixers or John Oswald, and then on to people
> like Zorn who at least write something new in the style of ...

From my possibly uninformed perspective I can't help thinking that a lot
of this postmodern stuff is a result of overanalyzing or, at least, at
trying to guess at the motivations of musicians (or architects or
writers).

For ex. on Rahsaan Roland Kirk's "Rip, Rig, and Panic" (from 1964 -?-) the
first song breaks down from an agressive and then very modern jazz number
into a solo stride piano solo.  Another song has him doing some
electronics stuff that he said was inspired by Edgar Varese w/ sirens and
broken glass.  He also did a lot of old ballads and Ellington stuff on
other albums, and a lot of qouting from different genres and time periods
in his solos.

I doubt he was thinking about post-modernism or recontextualizing and I
don't think DJs were thinking about it.  So why assume that Zorn or some
other folks are thinking about it?  Is it because people think blacks
aren't smart enough to be arty, or that white folks can't play
non-European music without adopting some ironic or colonializing stance,
or being "postmodern"?

Maybe I'm missing something

















- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 10:28:40 +0000
From: Dan Kuehn <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Spoken Word + Music

The original post mentioned a recording with Allen Ginsberg, so I was
surprised no one mentioned Hal Wilner's projects, in particular the two
Wm Burroughs projects, "Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales" & "Dead City
Radio"....

"Annie" is a classic, produced by Hal W & the Disposable Heros of
HipHoprisy.  Chilling and hillarious!
- --
Dan Kuehn



- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 17:42:48 -0400
From: Taylor McLaren <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk

William York <[e-mail]> wrote:
>I doubt he was thinking about post-modernism or recontextualizing and I
>don't think DJs were thinking about it.  So why assume that Zorn or some
>other folks are thinking about it?
Maybe I'm too hopelessly mired in the reality of being an English student
to see otherwise, but I'm not sure how it's possible to say that any sort
of DJ could be thinking about anything *other* than recontextualization
when s/he goes to work. Even radio types who do nothing more than play
compositions back to back can be guilty of forcing a reconsideration of a
given track simply by placing alongside another to which it is somehow
assumed to be related. The whole notion of turntablism (another term that I
like less every time I see it, and still less every time I use it) pretty
much entirely depends on recontextualization, or the question of how
disparate items from a DJ's record collection can be put to use together in
an interesting/novel/groovy/informative way. (Heck, there are three tracks
on the new DJ Spooky album in which he explicitly says as much.)
  In the case of more traditional instrumentalists... well, I'm a bit more
willing to debate that one. There's an obvious distinction, after all,
between performing music yourself (see the recent bit about non-Jews
playing Jewish music if you want to argue about validity) and playing
*back* the recordings of somebody else's work. Cover songs work in much the
same way, since I find it hard to believe that anybody could honestly set
out to record a worthwhile cover or anything without feeling that they were
bringing something unique and personal to the music in question. In either
case, it's probably safe that the music signifies entirely different things
to the original composer, the person doing the playbacking (*that* is an
ugly non-word), and probably even the individual members of the audience.
So yes, post-modernism likely relies a bit too heavily on analysis and
meta-analysis, and it generally brings you to the point where you realize
that you can't say anything definite about your subject matter (one of the
reasons why I refuse to take any "social science" courses which aren't
expressly historical at this point), but it's also a viewpoint that
reflects the anxious artistic mindset ("belated" is another favourite term
in some English circles) of our loosely-defined times.

Speaking of cover songs, I meant to ask something about this a while back,
though I don't think that I was originally going to post anything about it
to this particular mailing list. About a month ago, Time Magazine ran a
brief interview with Lauryn Hill (she of Fugees fame), detailing her
chart-busting new record and yadda-yadda-yadda. Alongside the page or two
of hype, though, there was a vaguely interesting sidebar listing what the
author considered to be some of the most influential rap albums of the past
twenty years or so. In the course of waxing rhapsodic over the Fugees'
release, _The Score_, s/he (I forget which) made some offhand disparaging
comment about the Wu-Tang Clan as being of less than critical importance to
the rap scene as a whole, and it got me thinking...
  What little I've heard from the Fugees (all of one predictable track)
struck me as being pretty much warmed-over R&B that added little or nothing
to an already dippy song; the Wu-Tang Clan, on the other hand, have struck
me as being more or less vital to the progress of rap for the RZA's ideas
on sampling, and on building more than simple beats out of pre-existing
elements (concentrating instead of evoking atmospheres and constructing
entire mythologies out of cultural cliches). While I've never been terribly
impressed by any of the Clan's vocal contributions to this mix, it seems as
though the Clan as a whole might very well advance rap beyond the point of
being a twenty-year-old exercise in rehashing the dozens and
what-have-you... they might make it more than an excuse to talk about what
great MCs they are, basically.
  Which got me thinking... what's the difference between the two? Both
cover songs (even not very successful ones) and cut-and-paste collages that
back up typical rap numbers pretty much represent the low end(s) of the
innovation spectrum, don't they? At the same time, they can both lead to
some pretty spectacular reworkings of established classics. I guess what
I'm looking for here is some sort of input on why somebody would try to
distinguish between the efforts artists who focus on either of these two
approaches to recontextualization. Can anybody actually justify the
comments made in Time, or...?
  Oh, and I really like _Torture Garden_.

- -me



Is it because people think blacks
>aren't smart enough to be arty, or that white folks can't play
>non-European music without adopting some ironic or colonializing stance,
>or being "postmodern"?
>
>Maybe I'm missing something
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-
>
>

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 18:05:05 EDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk

In a message dated 10/16/98 5:34:21 PM, [e-mail] wrote:

<<Can anybody actually justify the comments made in Time, or...?>>

Having just recently completed a decade working at Time, I'd like to say that
Chris Farley's music criticism (he was the one who wrote the aforementioned
piece, and he does most of the pop/rock stuff for Time) doesn't deserve
analysis on any level except that of "How the hell did this guy get this job
anyway?". Claiming that Lauryn Hill, the Fugees and Erykah Badu are among the
top 10 hip-hop records of all time is only one of his numerous stupidities.

In a more recent issue, he described the new Unkle record as "You know the way
you felt the first time you saw Pulp Fiction, before the hype or the backlash?
Listening to this album feels like that. Very cool." Leaving aside the fact
that the bulk of the hype preceded Pulp Fiction's actual release, and thus the
only people who actually saw it pre-hype were media types, this Unkle record,
for anyone who has been following the Mo' Wax scene for the seven or eight
years it's been around, represents the commercialized end to a scene that was
creatively played out for the last few years. While I understand that he's
speaking to the American public and not to the Zorn-list, it doesn't excuse
his lack of knowledge and musical history.

oh, one more. he called PJ Harvey's _To Bring You My Love_ the single worst
record of the year it was released in (1994 or 1995, not sure). huh.

whew. rant over.

Jon

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 15:33:56 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Postmodernism (?)/ Rahsaan Roland Kirk

On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 18:05:05 EDT  [e-mail] wrote:
>
> oh, one more. he called PJ Harvey's _To Bring You My Love_ the single worst
> record of the year it was released in (1994 or 1995, not sure). huh.

I thought that qualifying the guy of stupid was harsh, but if he really said
that about this PJ Harvey record, then I am willing to say that if the word
"stupid" did not exist, we would have to create it specially to qualify him.

    Patrice.

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 15:47:46 -0700
From: Jeff Spirer <[e-mail]>
Subject: Meridiem Live (January)

MERIDIEM: Percy Howard, Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, Charles Hayward

San Francisco: The Great American Music Hall Wednesday, Jan 13
Seattle: Arospace Thursday, Jan 14,
New York: The Bottom Line Saturday, Jan 16.


Jeff Spirer
B&W Photos: http://www.pomegranates.com/frame/spirer/
Color and B&W Photos: http://www.hyperreal.org/~jeffs/gallery.html
Axiom/Material: http://www.hyperreal.org/axiom/

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 15:53:34 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: oops - zorn content!

On Sat, 10 Oct 1998 00:19:11 +0000  patRice wrote:
>
> hi fellow zornsters!
>
> i found out from the swiss tzadik distributor that the release of jz's
> "music for children" cd has been postponed for europe. they didn't know
> when it is going to be available.

This record is also absent from Forced Exposure's list of new releases...

    Patrice.

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 16:17:34 -0700
From: cd <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: sean

I agree.  I saw him live (also as opener) and was also very impressed.
Very good attitude.  he played a few "pop" tunes, but was not afraid to
explore other sounds (e.g. very noisy distorted punk, rap).  My guess is
that those who were there only because of his name were quite suprised
(many probably not impressed).  A mention must go out to Yuka Honda for
adding great energy to the set.  Speaking of Sean, Yuka, and Sean's
bassist Timo, what happened to that second Cibo Matto album which was
apparently "in the can" almost a year ago?  Are they just waiting for
the end of Sean's touring?

hijk wrote:
>
> I was not that impressed with the Sean Lennon album.  However, I did see him
> live opening for Sonic Youth and I was very impressed.  The band was really
> tight and I almost forgot that I was there to see SY.  That's always the
> sign of a good oppening band.
>
> (Julian???)
>
> Jeff Kent
> [e-mail]
>
> -

- -

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 16:13:23 -0700
From: "Patrice L. Roussel" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: sean

On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 16:17:34 -0700  cd wrote:
>
> bassist Timo, what happened to that second Cibo Matto album which was
> apparently "in the can" almost a year ago?  Are they just waiting for
> the end of Sean's touring?

It is planned for February 1999.

    Patrice.

- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V2 #502
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