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As far as the duck thing, are you referring to his hilarious saxophone shenanigans?
I guess yes, and he does actually use the duck call thing as well on that disc. It's a bit hard to tell when the sax ends and the duck call thing begins. I should listen to it again, I haven't pulled it out in years. But as far as it being hilarious goes, the music itself isn't supposed to be funny. What is funny, though, is the liner notes, because they're
so serious. Unless that's supposed to be funny, too, in which case it might call Zorn's entire output/career into question. Speaking of funny liner notes, nothing beats the aforementioned
Locus Solus for that. It's something to the effect "When I was composing this album, I was absolutely sure it would go straight to the top of the charts. When I listen back to it now, I think 'Where, on Mars?'"
Definitely some of Zorn's music would lead many people to think that he's a total sham. However, as has been stated, if you've heard much of his stuff, it's more than obvious how gifted he is, and how his greatest strength is probably in composing totally legit. So yeah, interesting musician. The variety of stuff he's put out is staggering. The Filmworks series alone has enough quality and variety in it that it's just shocking that it was all composed by one person. Those things have some hilarious liner notes as well. One is like 'For film scores with X type of band, I always call in <this musician> or <this other musician> to play <instrument>. But they were both busy. So I called this other guy. It turned out OK.'
PS: That hamburger song sounds absolutely wretched. I look forward to never hearing it.