I went to The Barbican yesterday to see John Zorn, Milford Graves, Tony Oxley, Gavin Bryars, Bill Laswell, George Lewis and Mike Patton play a tribute to Derek Bailey. They played in various permutations, but nothing they did could stop me feeling that Zorn is over-rated. Tony Oxley was outstanding, of course, and Milford Graves is a great drummer too (and I was seeing him for the first time) but, that apart, I thought what was played was generic free jazz (far from being the contradiction in terms it ought to be), with little to distinguish it from lots of other free playing you can see without first being fleeced for £25.

I should add that it was something of a treat to see George Lewis play. I've seen film of him before which didn't have a great impact, but tonight there was a sort of poetic integrity to his contributions, as well as a light touch (quite welcome after Laswell's ham fisted efforts). By coincidence, on the day of the concert I happened to be reading his essay on 'Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives', which struck me at first as just Black Nationalist special pleading but, the more I read it, the more convinced I was about the *extent* to which European art music embodies a reaction to innovations in Jazz (which Lewis claims works as the 'epistemological other' of European art music). I mean, I know there's a debt, but he really emphasises how crucial Jazz was to these changes, as well as showing how, eg., Cage tried to supress the debt.

Tonight was the second of Zorn's residency at The Barbican. Yesterday's results were mixed - the overall picture was messy and unfocussed, but at least we got to see Tony Oxley do his thing for five minutes, which is short but still better than most gigs by anyone else. Miford Graves lent a second breath of life to the proceedings.

Tonight was a tribute to what the MC announced as a major influence on Zorn's work, the 'outsider' Aleister Crowley. Now, Crowley was interesting (if at all) inasmuch as he set out to create an alternate western esoteric tradition. Unfortunately for us he was a failure - not because the project itself was awry but because his character was so shallowly petty-bourgeois at heart that he ended up discrediting the tradition he wanted to build - not the kind of heroic failure you want to celebrate; rather the sort of dismal embarrasment that it might be better to pass over in silence. And what is Zorn's connection with Crowley? As far as I could tell, absolutely nothing beyond the fact that Crowley seems to have kudos as an outsider among people who really need to spend more time getting things into perspective. The fact that Crowley was being celebrated alongside Derek Bailey (to whom the previous nights efforts were dedicated) should casts doubts on Zorn's intentions from the beginning. Still, the work can transcend its inspiration, so it remained to be seen what Zorn would actually make of it all.

There were three, supposedly linked events on offer tonight. First up was a group consisting of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas) on vocals, Joey Barron (Masada) on drums and Trevor Dunn on bass. They were supposed to present "a hardcore song cycle scored for voice, bass and drums" (already released on Tzadik as 'Moonchild'). Whether they succeeded I can't say, but they turned out to be a decent hard core trio who would go down well turned up louder and playing a sweaty club, maybe The Garage. In The Barbican they looked out of place. I am being generous really: in truth this looked like post-modernist progressive rock; skilled but empty, feeding off the energy of hardcore but adding nothing to it in return.

Next came a film by Crowleyite dimwit and pseudo-rebel Kenneth Anger, about Crowley's paintings. Admittedly I had left the hall by now but I got to catch this section anyway on the handy Barbican TV monitors that let you sneak out to the bar when things get dull, and by this time I was in no mood to spend time with Crowley's daubings. I defy anyone, even the most literally-minded of Thelemic boy scouts, to deny that his paintings are largely dreck. They are even devoid of real biographical significance, as they are too cliched to tell you much about anything, even their author, beyond the most obvious facts. Still, the audience gawped loyally and applauded at the end. OK - maybe they are just very, very loyal.

The clincher came with the last piece, 'Evocation of a Neophyte and How the Black Arts were Revealed unto Her by the Demon Baphomet', which, says the marketing "brings the mystery of Enochian Ritual into the Barbican through a beautiful new work for soprano soloist, mixed choir, harp, contrabassoon and percussion, performed by musicians from the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Brad Lubman". What this meant in practice was a soporific limp through music that would struggle to make it as the soundtrack to the least memorable of Hammer Horror films. The choir and harpist ran through some painful consonances while the percussionists struggled to sound portentious. On a scale of one to ten, I would say that Zorn pulled this out of his arse when he was completely out of ideas. Astoundingly, when it was all over it was met with a torrent of applause, convincing me in a flash that Zorn's fans have the soggiest and most limp of conformist insticts. I believe they were applauding themselves for listening to 'classical music'. Presumably the choir were in shock that this crock went down at all.

I saw Zorn's Naked City play the Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool almost twenty years ago. That night there was a smack of danger about. Five minutes into an explosive set a quarter of the audience had left. Tonight, not a soul stirred as they were treated to a gobful of hard-core frolics then pissed on from a great height by a musician - I mean Zorn - who has made a name and a career for himself as a maverick but who, at close quarters, seems devoid of inspiration.

Note to Tony Oxley, Milford Graves and George Lewis - ditch your connection with this guy; you don't need it.