John Zorn - Naked City - John Zorn in a nutshell, and it's a tight fit.

John Zorn, while virtually unknown to the public at large, has built an astonishing body of work over the past thirty odd years.  He has performed or composed the music on over four hundred CD's.  He plays astonishing saxophone and builds bands for his various projects from some of the world's finest talent.  His works include extensive recordings in a vast array of genres - jazz, classical, avant-garde, rock, hardcore metal, world, surf, holiday, klezmer and soundtracks from art films to cartoons.
 
His work flows from an American tradition most closely from Duke Ellington and Carl Stalling.  Like Ellington he is extraordinarily prolific and composes for specific groups of musicians, building works around the individual sounds of his players.  Like Stalling's Warner Brothers cartoon soundtracks he composed cut & paste works with elements of popular culture, classical and jazz all mashed together.

In February of 1990 Zorn had not yet achieved legendary status.  Most considered him a free-jazz sax player in the NYC underground scene, if they considered him at all.  His recordings included Japanese influenced works and well received tributes to Ornette Coleman and Ennio Morricone.

I found Naked City because of the band.  John Zorn - sax, Wayne Horowitz - piano, Fred Frith - bass, Joey Baron - drums, Bill Frisell - guitar (more about him on a future post) and Yamataka Eye - vocals.  This underground super-group could go in any direction at any time.

In Naked City we find a clear encapsulation of John Zorn's past and future ideas.  And a startling number of them are crammed into fifty-three and a half minutes.  It's all here: the film music, free jazz, and  hardcore rock emerge from the noisy onslaught.  Even the provocative cover graphics foreshadowed his future design esthetic.

 The music breathes and growls like an urban monster.  And the band locks into groove after groove on original tracks like the swinging New Orleans jazz of The Latin Quarter or the covers of classic crime film themes from The Pink Panther, James Bond and Chinatown.  They shift on a dime with aural blasts of metallic violence between the more familiar songs.  Each player absolutely shines for a few bars then falls back into the collective flow before emerging again.

Despite the clear influences and the distinct body of work from the individual players, Naked City sounds like nothing that ever came before or really since.  Loud and aggressive, the music jumps from genre to genre.  It literally sounds like the soundtrack to a modern cartoon set in the heart of  the most cosmopolitan city in the world.  Danger lurks around every turn as well as incredible musicianship and laugh out loud musical jokes.

This all sounds like a studio created work, pasted together to form a sonic noir thrill ride.  But we have proof that this incredible band actually produced this music on stage at the Knitting Factory when a  live album was released twelve years later.  Recorded in 1989, the set-list is very close to the previously released album, but each work has a unique feel and charm of it's own.  Like hearing the first Naked City album refracted in a fun-house mirror, bent and distorted but completely recognizable.