John Zorn: Bladerunner Project

I wanna know what brand of coffee Jonathan Mayhew's drinking – I need that kind of energy. Not merely does he write books that get published by great university presses, but he's who knows how far into blogging 100 books of fiction, he's gotten thru 170-odd books of poetry in his "9000 books of poetry" project, and now he's started a project of blogging 300 of his favorite jazz albums of all time. I'm guessing he'll be thru this one by April or so.

Me, I continue crawling along at my own petty pace, trying to listen thru the "unplayed" smart playlist on my iPod. But here's something worth a listen: the Bladerunner Project, a John Zorn outfit from back in 2000, including the godlike talents of Zorn, bassist Bill Laswell, guitarist Fred Frith, and heavy metal drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer, Fantômas, etc.). Pretty standard Zorn stuff – mostly funky, largely improvised, lots of sheer noise – but with some way cool wailing from Frith (an unfortunately rare thing) and lots of flashy funkification from Laswell. So far as I know, the lineup's never made a formal recording, but there are lots of videos on YouTube, and you can download a high-quality recording of their 5 July 2000 Paris concert here, which includes a scrappy version of "A Love Supreme" and a very cool cover of "Prelude (Part 2)" from Miles's Agharta (yes, I confess, my favorite Miles album).

monkey glands

So who's my intellectual hero, now that Guy Davenport's dead? Gotta be Jonathan Mayhew. I get a jittery shot of monkey glands every time I read Bemsha Swing, or at least get inspired to do something new. Right now Jonathan's kick-starting his novel-reading by blogging 100 novels – no particular list, no particular order, just whatever direction his nose takes him. So I'm going to play junior copy-cat, & see how long it takes me to blog 100 books of poetry. (Tag: 100 poem-books.) Like Jonathan, no rules, no lists, just whatever hits me; re-reads count, as do books I've been working at for months. It'll help clear out some of the vast "unread" shelves, at least.
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Congratulations of the new-parental category to Tony Tost and Josh Corey. And a teeny bit of Schadenfreude: these poetically-prolific young sprouts'll never know what hit 'em.