Naked City

by Chris Kelsey
 
Naked City was something of an avant-rock/free jazz New York supergroup in the late '80s and early '90s, featuring an all-star cast of New York jazz experimentalists and led by the most-famous downtown musician of them all, John Zorn. Comprised of Zorn on alto sax, Wayne Horvitz on keyboards, Bill Frisell on guitar, Fred Frith on bass, and Joey Baron on drums (and occasionally vocalist Yamatsuka Eye), Naked City, more than any other Zorn-led group, established him with a rock audience. The band had an enormous repertoire and its sets were famously unpredictable. Zorn says that he conceived the band as a compositional workshop; the challenge was to write as much as possible within the limited format. Once he stopped &hearing and writing for the band,& it disbanded.