RTS Strategy for understanding 'Cobra' * By CHRIS WYROD "The collaborative environment that I use for my work is areal American tradition that's ignored because the European aesthetic, the big Romantic myth, is sooriented toward ivory-towercomposers - the Beethovens, the Mahlers. It's bullshit; all those guys had collaborators." So say John Zorn, whose recent proliferation of revved-up movie scores and Naked City's post- modern pie fights has made him the local hero wherever irreverence flourishes. Attitude aside, Zorn has always embraced diversity and respected individuality in music. Be it Mauricio Kagel's organic composition style, James Blood Ulmer's staccato free-blues or Hazel Adkin's cardboard recordings of primal rockabilly, Zorn taps into the music's kinesis. Yet some of Zorn's records almost disintegrate through the friction of juxtaposition. "Genryu Island" (Yukon Records) combines John's new language of alto sax flutters and squeals with Japanese musician Michihiro Sato's shamisen snaps; "Spillane" (Nonesuch) brings blues guitarist Albert King into Zorn's steamy underworld. Through his game pieces, Zorn turned to a new form of composition. With his serial box composition style and a prompter who loosely conducts the ensemble, Zorn deskills the composer while evoking musical situations that tax the performers improvisatory skills. Nothing is notated, yet the music is far from free. Innumerable rules, cards and hand-signals channel the extemporaneous flow. So while the rules of the game are Zorn's brain child, each realization of a game piece like Cobra is a collaborative effort. While Pool was Zorn's first piece with a RECORDS Various Artists all-purposE Alternative NRG view migh Hollywood Records useful d Likely the concept of some eco- environ m exec, the Greenpeace disc propagan "Alternative NRG" is a compilation cardboard of tracks recorded and mixed using a Either solar collector named Cyrus, built of the diff especially for this project. Of the 16 all of alte tracks, 14 were recorded live, with everything only the Soundgarden / Brian May hittersR.E and Midnight Oil songs finding their sounding origins in studios. An interesting ploy James. A t considering live tracks are almost Unfortuna always noticeably inferior to their well as an studio counterparts. However, as to the pa simple compilations of previously opening t available material have very little sounds far attraction for most people, the live general to prompter, it was not until Cobra that Zorn began genre-hopping instead of emitting No Wave bleeps. Zorn's urban-bred aesthetic of break-neck speeds and dizzying jump-cuts between genres finds its perfect medium in Cobra (inspired by an Avalon Hill war game). A Cobra performance may cut from a fractured polka to a dense fog of noise and samples, or from lounge jazz to speed thrash without hesitation. Anthony Coleman, keyboardist of the 12- Attitude aside, Zorn has always embraced diversity and respected individuality in music. member Cobra ensemble and organizer of the monthly performances at New York's Knitting Factory, has been playing Cobra since its inception in 1984. At some ridiculously early hour, he discussed Cobra's basic structure. "Cobra is a game piece. It was the first game piece that began to talk about genres, which got very important when John got to Godard (Nato) and Spillane, where you were told specific genres of each section. They are like aural snapshots. But by Cobra, he still wasn't controlling the musical material that much, but there were certain things that were beginning to come in." These "certain things" make up the open architecture of Cobra. They include a stack of cue cards that would rival any doctoral candidate's number of index cards. Coleman explained one of Cobra's many systems: "Ear systems have to do with very clearly audible changes. The kind of music being played continues, but the group of musicians playing it changes. On the down beat you get a kind of impression of what the last group was playing by another group musicians." Memory systems help give continuity and reflexivity to each Cobra performance. "You can log through sounds that you like and, when called, they can come back, so they create a rondo-form," Coleman explained. "An evening of Cobra is made up of several performances of the piece Cobra. So at the end of each piece, you get rid of those memories and you start with new ones." One of the most intriguing systems is the guerrilla system, which puts a new spin on the game by allowing three players (wearing green headbands) to dominate the performance. The guerrillas "tell people who can play, who can't play, organizes which kind of events happen and so on, rather than having all 12 people make the decisions," Coleman said. But the guerrilla unit can be killed if one of the trio becomes a spy or dissents from the guerrilla group. So Cobra isn't just about music. It's about politics, kinetics, cooperation and appropriation. The structure is amorphous, framing each performer's highly personalized style in genre stereotypes. Cobra isn't a spotlight for someone who's already been deemed "the most important composer of a new generation of musicians"; it's about a collaboration of like-minded performers whose composite is much more than a sum of individual talent. COBRA will strike the Michigan Theater tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 at the Michigan Theater and Schoolkid's records. Call 663-0681. and charms Cobra tonight at the Michigan Theater. se bootleg. A less positive ht be that it is a loathsomely emonstrative tool for nentalist scum, as the da on the ironically large sleeve indicates. way, the disc covers many ferent aspects of the catch- rnative music. It contains g from mainstream heavy .M. and U2 to such different acts as Yothu Yindi and the very least, it is eclectic. ately, it can't be used very introduction for the listener articipating groups. The track, R.E.M. 's "Drive", from ideal live and sets the ne for the album. There are comp might be seen as some sort of Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. tracks demonstrate. And the studio tracks are naturally freed from the pitfalls native to live tracks. It is a shame these fine songs are not the representative of the album. There should be three reasons that might lead you to buy this disc. One: you may be a hard-core, completist fan of one of the bands on it. Two: you may like several of the bands on it and so you can have several different tracks you would otherwise be lacking. Three: you may be a hopeless green-head and need to buy it to stay on good terms with your Birkenstocked friends. If you meet one or more of these criteria, feel safe in buying this compilation. - Ted Watts Uncle Tupelo Anodyne Sire / Reprise With its spare acoustic guitars, twanging distorted electrics and high- lonesome vocals, "Anodyne," Uncle Tupelo's major-label debut, appears to sound like everything you've heard before, but that's part of the point. Uncle Tupelo is based upon musical tradition and their music doesn't deviate in the slightest from the pioneering country-rock of Gram Parsons and Neil Young or the traditional country of Hank Williams, George Jones, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. Like the best country music, the thing that makes "Anodyne" special is its context. Although the music See RECORDS, Page 8 Life After God Douglas Coupland Pocket Books "Your 20s are horrible," Douglas Coupland told the audience at his book reading at Borders, "but it gets better after that. Of course, there are other things that fill the vacuum." Coupland, who inadvertently damned everyone in their 20s with the label "Generation X" a few years ago (the title of his first book), makes a case for his pessimism in his latest book "Life After God," a collection of short stories and simple illustrations about life after growing up. The stories started as small books he gave away to friends, but ended up as an odd- sized collection. While he's not at fault for making us the slacker- faithless-fast food-MTV-Pepsi- postmodern angst generation the rest of the mass media has labeled us, he does capture the moods and feelings of the recently turned twentysomethings quite accurately and originally. The characters are simple but lively. Divorced parents, an olderfilm student brother who never left home, an HIV-positive yuppie and a dying dog named Walter are all familiar, but depressingly recognizable. Surrounding them are drug dealers, a desert drifter, Patty Hearst and an array of dissatisfied lovers who float in and out of the protagonist's life. What they all share is a loss of faith and an unexpected isolation. "The whole ensemble had made a suitably glamorous backdrop for my belief that my poverty, my fear of death, my sexual frustration and my carry me off into some sort of Epiphany. I had lots of love to give - it's just that no one was taking it then," Coupland writes in the second vignette "My Hotel Year," capturing a mood for all of his characters. The connection of these stories are the simple illustrations above every two or three pages. Coupland's renderings are no more complex or detailed as Kurt Vonnegut's were in "Breakfast of Champions," but they put a personal stamp on each scene. In "Patty Hearst" the narrator talks about his sister who left five years ago. When he attempts to relocate her at a convenience store, it is raining;above the section is a simple rendition of rain filling puddles. A scribbling of a Campbell's chicken noodle soup can evokes an innocence in the narrator when his sister describes Patty Hearst's abduction over a lunch of soup. Each picture sets a mood for the following two or three pages. Although the stories are preceded by quotes like "For anyone who's ever broken up with someone else" or "You are the first generation raised without religion" (not to mention the cheery title), there is a dark humor in the book, stemming from the accuracy Coupland gets with our generation. In "1000 Years (Life After God)" Julie, a free-spirited youth-turned. suburban mother of two, comments, "I'm trying to escape from ironic hell: cynicism into faith; randomness into clarity; worry into devotion. But it's hard because I try to be sincere about life and then I turn on a TV and I see a game show host and I have to throw up my hands and give up ... Clarity would be so much easier if there weren't so many cheesy celebrities around." She also nicknames her rambunctious children "Damien" and "Satan" behind their backs. It's not a complex book, but it creates its own voice of a generation without being pretentious or coming off like a John Hughes movie from the '80s. And best of all, if you can't afford to fork over $17 (our generation is poorer than our parents) there are 30-second adaptations of six of the stories currently running on MTV. - Kirk Miller I --Adm§L- P' i.p. W., I PRE-M EI) SEMINAR Nos Uni "Ifyb your w hat is Now p iversity of W isconsin-Platteville u have built castles in the air, vork need not be lost. swhere they should be. ut the fodationds under them." -Henry David Thoreau f1 eeeee**eeeseeeeoeeeeee Are ou Leaving : iAnn " Arbor Soon?: .*a DO YOU NEED TO SUBLET YOUR. APARTMENT OR HOUSIE?. *# * . #* * # # ! " # qetting ready, acing the MCfIg T MCS, the appfication, admissions, & interviewing V MEDICAL SCHOOL: Overview &strategies for success!!! V RESIDENCY: Choosing the right speciaty for you! TIME: Thursday, March 3rd, 7pm! ~ PRE-MED ISSUES: Learn Your Way Around The World * Study abroad in Seville, Spain, or London, England, for a summer, for a semester or for a full academic year Courses in liberal arts and international business 0 Fluency in a foreign language jDI required * Home-stays with meals * Field trips * Financial aid applies (except for summer session) PLACE: Sheldon Auditorium RM. G-2310, Towsley Center U of M Medical School f.