Zorn: The Big Gundown

[AllenLowe]

I just took this out for the first time in many years; in its day this was the project regarded as Zorn's masterpiece and was the recording that ascended him to some celebrity - and yet, it sounds to me, at this date, thin and un-realized, like a lot of near-good ideas assembled so that the total is neither equal to nor greater than the sum of its parts. After about 4 cuts I'm bored and restless. Anybody else?

[sambrasa]

Masterpiece, all time favourite, desert island disc.

[AllenLowe]

how about Gilligan's Island?

[JohnS]

No longer have it, but yes a disappointment overall. Good in parts.

[JSngry]

Zorn in general often leaves me feeling that if this is all that's left to be done, then I'm glad, delighted, even, that he's doing it so well, but, really, maybe we ought to all look for something else to be doing, maybe, sure, why not?. In other words, I can like him a whole lot more than I can love him.

And "masterpiece"? Relative to what? I use that word myself, but, really...does it mean anything concrete most of the time? I'm beginning to wonder...

I mean, I've very often very much enjoyed his work. But he seems to me to be more of a bass fisherman using a depth-finder than an old-school whale-harpooner.

Sign of the times, perhaps.

[kh1958]

I didn't like it.

[jlhoots]

There are others I like better, e.g. The Masada albums & the Lulu Hats (both of them).

[B. Clugston]

I like it. I'd call it his masterpiece. Plus it's got Big John Patton on "Erotico." The only disappointment is "Svegliatti and Uccidi" from the 2000 edition.

[Big Wheel]

I thought I would love this record and was surprised to find that I ended up liking Naked City much more on first listening. But definitely need to go back and listen to it again a few times.

[AllenLowe]

agreed on Naked CIty and Lulu; both more interesting.

[JETman]

Sometimes poseur, sometimes not. Always difficult to tell if he's yanking our chains or not!

[Chuck Nessa]

Don't know anything about it. I am out in left field.

[Teasing the Korean]

As a huge Morricone fan - I must have 50 of his albums - and a moderate Zorn fan, I would not consider this album a masterpiece by any stretch.

Edited October 20, 2011 by Teasing the Korean

[AllenLowe]

glad to hear some agreement - when this came out it was just a major event in the whole downtown thing, considered to be a breakthrough; I don't really remember what I though of it then. I was just very surprised at how little it did for me on this listen.

[JETman]

Don't know anything about it. I am out in left field.

C'mon Chuck. Don't be shy. You were there at the onset.

[ep1str0phy]

I really enjoy The Big Gundown, though I'll admit that I have a difficult to listening to it "objectively," or rather without an ear for the subsequent twenty five or so years of musical development. This sort of brutal, quick cut postmodernism is common parlance in jazz, rock, and experimental music now, and I have a hard time listening to The Big Gundown as anything other than a fine example of certain performance practices. On the other hand, I have a visceral, deep reaction to stuff like Material's Memory Serves or Massacre's Killing Time--the sort of music that wonderfully and perfectly captures a specific concept and time (probably more limited in "scope" than The Big Gundown, although by no means less thoughtful or technically spectacular). Maybe the narrower focus of those albums makes the music sound less esoteric/conceptual and more "free"?

The conceptual angle keeps stuff like the Lulu trios or Spy vs. Spy at a distance. The Ornette album in particular is a spectacularly drastic deconstruction of Ornette's music--actually really fascinating for the fact that it makes those warm themes sound alienating and disconcerting without altering them in any fundamental way. At the same time, I much more likely to "get" something aesthetic or deep out of the source material (be it Morricone, 50's/60's hard bop, or Ornette), if only because commentary on an idea is by its very nature a step removed from what made the idea so appealing in the first place.

Edited October 21, 2011 by ep1str0phy

[bertrand]

Is 'Erotico' the only track Patton is on?

Bertrand.

[BFrank]

Is 'Erotico' the only track Patton is on?

Bertrand.

Don't remember, but it's a great tune. I only have this on vinyl, and my LPs are packed away in boxes these days.

[johnlitweiler]

Haven't listened to this for years - an interesting curiosity, is what I recall. Spy Vs. Spy was sorta fun: a long, fast group improvisation broken up at random by some Ornette themes. It's a little hard to take Zorn seriously. He likes to aim for shock value. The 2 times I heard him leading groups he ran out of gas after half an hour then repeated himself (not exactly the same songs) for the next hour.

[Afric Pepperbird]

It's no Yankees, but it's worth a listen once a year.

[7/4]

I always thought Spy Vs. Spy was a blast, a lot of fun.

[JETman]

Still nobody who will come out and say what they really mean about this guy?

[AllenLowe]

I like the Lulu sessions.

[JSngry]

... when this came out it was just a major event in the whole downtown thing,...

See, that's part of the deal right there...that whole "downtown" scene often produced work that was more important to itself than it was to anybody else. Which is not to say that it wasn't creative or interesting, or any of that, it quite often was. It just...referenced and related to itself more than it did anything else, or so it seemed. For this to have been a "masterpiece"...again I ask - to who?

Maybe that's "provincialism" on my part, but when I heard, say, the AACM, I didn't hear a "Chicago scene" nearly as much as I heard music being re-birthed in response to the imperatives of what "we as a people" now knew to be true. The "Chicago factor" was in there, but it wasn't the primary indicator, not at all.

Never really got that out of the "downtown" scene. Or maybe what I did hear didn't compel me enough to dig deeper. A lot of fine players, but their POV is not always conducive to producing "universal revelations", if you know what I mean. Zorn is a prime example. I've heard lots of his work, and enjoyed lots of it as well. But he never really seems to me to be "transcending" as much as he does "regional". Even New York City can be "regional", ya' know?

Then again, when there really ain't no road bands, this might well be the way it has to go. Not my preference, but fewer and fewer things are these days. We'll all live, no doubt.

[JETman]

There are several musicians who started out "downtown" who have transcended that scene. Dave Douglas and Joey Baron are just a couple of excellent ones I can name off the top of my head. There are others. Zorn lives and breathes down there. He will never go beyond that world. He doesn't have the chops to. Sure, his knowledge of and respect for the history of the music is fine enough, but he remains trapped in his own little world. Therefore, the concept of masterpiece cannot possibly apply to him.