Last Exit: A Free Skronk

Naked City might be one of the most overrated combos in jazz – or rock, or whatever. Theoretically, the band succeeded in combining a slew of genres that hadn’t, at the time, been sloshed together in that ever so inviting chaos. But really, John Zorn is one of those guys whose more intelligent and hard working than he is musically gifted. He can compose, surely. But it’d be relatively easy to think of a number of sax players that have a bit more clout behind their playing. The same can be said for the dude from Faith No More, but that’s an entirely different discussion.

Regardless, Naked City had its day, but only after Last Exit showed up and made it alright to combine rock, metal, jazz funk and dub. Including Bill Laswell (who would go on to work out some of the same ideas in a group called Praxis) on bass, Sonny Sharock with a guitar, on sax Peter Brötzmann and sitting behind the drums Shannon Jackson, Last Exit was considered an extension of the No Wave thing in New York. That might be reductive. Maybe not. But in Last Exit were some of the same noisome elements going on in the rock scene.

Forming in ’86 – which seems late to tie the group to the No Wave thing – Last Exit was the next step in the evolution of free jazz. With Laswell bringing influences not common in the genre, basically his concept of low down rhythm pulled from his love of dubs, the group was able to move back and forth between absolute screeds of noise, mostly courtesy of Brötzmann, and back into a groove. That’s the crux of any music. And what most ‘noise’ bands fail to realize today is that, yea, it’s creative to be able to wrench some insanely loud electronic noises from a box on the floor or a computer, but if that’s all there is, no one’s gonna really give a damn. There needs to be a back beat – Can had that figured out. And so did Last Exit.

First releasing a live disc, which included the bulk of its first proper album, it could be argued that Köln surpasses the group’s studio work. Sporting Laswell as the group’s producer, his influence can be heard behind the boards in those latter efforts perhaps more than in the music itself.

Brötzmann’s a monster. His ability to dominate any track in which he enters is probably why a great deal of his solo catalog remains a mystery to many. It’s not unlistenable and where current ‘noise’ bands disregard the listener completely, so does the sax player. Of course, proponents would say that that’s in fact that point. But Last Exit works despite this. Without the sax player’s presence, the group might come off as a bit more tame and his skronks do add musically to the blanket of sound that Sharock lays over top of these rhythms, but it seems at times that the group is fighting with him. It works, so it kinda doesn’t matter.