Eat All Your Salt and Pepper,
Young Man,
Or No Chutney For Desert

John Zorn and Mike Patton
At Slim's in San Francisco 8/12/96

Avant-garde composer John Zorn sat on a stool with alto sax in hand while Mr. Bungle vocalist and solo composer Mike Patton crouched down, almost hiding, behind his electronic sound box and tape mixer. They opened their set with an ear-piercing imitation of a flock of mating predatory birds; Patton vocalizing the birds screeching sexual rites while Zorn squealed their frantic mating ritual. Throughout the show their dissonant improvised music was sometimes spacey, often punishing to the ear, and always far out. The question is whether this is experimental genius or a couple guys who know some truly weird tricks.

Like the cruel and clumsy slaughter of a flock of geese Patton released his dazzling range of irritating babbles, screeches, mumbles, stoned scats, whimpering dog noises, and Darth Vader breaths. While no actual "songs" from his solo album Adult Themes For Voice was heard all the same voice and microphone techniques were used. Patton's technique (and this is only an educated guess) is to sample his own wide range of vocal effects before the concert and log them into his computerized sound box. From there, given Zorn's cue for a particular mood, style, ambience, and general aesthetic, Patton accesses his own voice several times over, makes a live mix that sounds like a home eight-track recording and then sings, screams, wheezes, grunts and does the funky monkey on top of it.

Controlling the show like a two man Cobra performance, Zorn supplied the short term ideas that inspired each brief piece with hand signals and leading sax parts. His concept is simple, improvised block structure, much like Carl Stalling's compositions for Warner Bros. cartoons. There was no musical architecture as one finds in Mingus or Bach. The pieces ranged from demented Gregorian Monks flogging themselves, horror movie soundtrack numbers, aquatic spaciness, and torture victims' agonized death gurgles. The two performers focused best early on in the show when Zorn played an edgy and melancholy 20's style jazz piece while Patton whimpered and cried like a beaten and abandoned black-eyed mutt.

Zorn's virtuouso playing ranged from old style bar jazz to the hyperactive squealing he's known for from the Naked City and Painkiller albums. His disjointed, schizophrenic style is the perfect complement to Patton's over-wrought but fascinating banshee vocal approach.

The music expressed Zorn's (he spends six months of his year in Tokyo and the other six months in New York) anguish over jangly over-crowded and over-worked city life -- not to mention his own intellectual neuroses. And Patton, the true master of irritating noise in the 90's . . . well, who knows what his problem is. Toilet training? Ritalin? Too many triple lattes?

While there is no doubt this is a testimony to the current state of jazz in the 90's, the self-indulgence of the two ego's involved becomes a problem after ninety minutes of listening. There was simply too much irritation in the tooth-on-edge mood and randomness of sound. Perhaps a lyrical moment or two would have added more variety to the performance.

Zorn and Patton's imagination and talent, which would be dazzling condiments and spices at a musical birthday party, became the main course here, and this reviewer began to gag.