It was 20 years ago the other week…
Really, the title says it all. Here’s a complete concert—2 1/2 hours of music in all—by John Zorn‘s group Naked City, with Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, Bill Frisell on guitar, Fred Frith on bass, Joey Baron on drums, and Eye Yamatsuka (as he was known then) and Brutal Truth‘s Kevin Sharp on vocals. This was recorded at the Marquee in New York on April 9, 1992. I never saw Naked City live myself, though I’ve seen Zorn perform in several other contexts (a Painkiller show at the second Knitting Factory; a duo with Keiji Haino at CBGB; a quartet with Derek Bailey, Reggie Workman and Susie Ibarra at Tonic; and his group with Frith, Bill Laswell and Dave Lombardo—plus Eye again—at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival). I enjoyed their work quite a bit at the time, though, particularly the self-titled debut, Torture Garden, and Leng T’che. Anyway, enjoy.
