Saigon Pickup

John Zorn (alto sax), Bill Frisell (electric guitar), Wayne Horvitz (piano, keyboards), Fred Frith (bass) and Joey Bron (drums). From the album Naked City (1990).

In the mid-70s Bill Frisell began to move away from bebop and mix jazz with other musical genres. He developed an atmospheric style and discovered that using a guitar with a flexible neck could change its intonation. Combining experimental techniques and signal processors he created a sound unlike any other guitarist. In 1978 he traveled to Belgium, where he wrote music, recorded with double bassist Eberhard Weber and toured with Michael Gibbs, one of his teacher in the Berklee College. There he also met Manfred Eicher, founder of ECM Records, and within a year he moved to New York.

In the early 1980s he began recording abundantly as a sideman and as a leader for the ECM label becoming its resident guitarist and being highly regarded by critics for his accessible, but sophisticated work. In addition, he collaborated with the most creative musicians on the musical dowtown scene of New York. He was also a member of the Paul Motian groups from the early 1980s until Motian death in 2011. In 1989 he moved to Seattle and signed with Nonesuch Records, recording a number of albums as a leader including Have a Little Faith from 1992, in which he plays a selection of American classical and popular music by several musicians with whom he felt inspired, and This Land from 1994 with his own compositions.

The theme is exposed by Horvitz in a very elegant way, as if it were classical music, accompanied by Bron and then Frisell joins in imitating the sound of violins with the guitar. Suddenly we hear a few moments of hard rock, then country, and then Horvitz comes back with the theme. Again hard rock and country sound briefly, and then the group plays jazz. Next we hear weird noises and then Horvitz performs a passage with reggae rhythm with the electric piano. Afterwards Zorn makes a brief solo followed by Frisell and then Zorn goes crazy howling with the sax. To end, Horvitz re-exposes the theme, which degrades until it becomes gloomy.