Dickie Dunn here. For all of you sports fans out there, we're in the home stretch of the countdown until football season gets rolling. Thus marking the start of another "season" of sports. For people like me, it's like a bear waking up from hibernation, ready to bust out the 'tato skins and nachos and stop all pesky outdoor activities. Until that first pre-season game, you get my opinion about stuff that nobody cares about except me. So like the cook at the Paul Bunyan Lodge in "Great Outdoors" bon appétit !
No charges have been filed and we have very few witnesses. But we had plenty of victims as Kenny G killed the sax as a viable instrument for Rock and Roll bands.
Let’s start with a quick quiz. Remember Huey Lewis and his band called the News? Too easy? Ok how about the J Geils Band? Still too easy? Ok, name me a popular rock band that features one of its members playing a saxophone? A bit harder huh? I’m 34 years old and growing up I listened to plenty of acts that featured a saxophone. Besides the above mentioned two, there was the John Fogerty Band, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band; Billy Joel even had one in his act. Nowadays unless you count Lisa Simpson and her pal Bleeding Gums Murphy, we got nothing. (Ok, ok I know the sax is still very popular in Jazz but I bet you couldn’t name me one artist on Billboard’s top ten Jazz records for July 17, 2008.
Some people would blame Motley Crue or Van Halen. I blame Kenny G. This 52 year old from Seattle, WA turned the saxophone into an instrument only played by wussies. Now I’m pretty sure Kenneth Gorelick aka. Kenny G didn’t start out wanting to accomplish the infamous task of ruining the sax for a generation of artists. But I tell you this, what Dan Fogelberg started, Kenny G finished. Obscure Denis Leary references aside, I have a couple of theories on why you don’t see the sax anymore.
The Heart of Rock and Roll is still beating.-
I think there are only two reasons why someone joins a band, to get rich and to get laid and not in that order. You think David Lee Roth would need paternity insurance in the 80’s if he was playing the saxophone? I don’t think so either. That one you can blame on Kenny G. I’ve seen the kind of chicks that have attended his concerts over the years, not exactly the extras from a “Girls gone Wild” video. Nostalgic people will go on and on about the music was more pure back in the day. Although I think you’d be hard pressed to find too many people to wax nostalgic about the purity of music at the beginning of the MTV era.
Onto the money part. Judging by what I’ve seen pass for music these days, it’s hard to still consider it an art form. Guys like Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon, they wrote lyrics and music that defined a generation, and the music still holds up after all these years. I could be wrong but to these guys wrote music because they had all this pent up creative energy that needed a channel and that was songwriting. They were probably still guilty of wanting to get laid ( who doesn’t) but I don’t feel like they were only in it for the money. Most of today’s artist’s I doubt could make that same claim. You could argue about the artistic merits of “I kissed a girl” but it would be a short conversation. At least the part where I was paying attention would be. That being said it’s really become about the money. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be compensated for what they create. In fact I was one of the roughly ten people in this country who’d never heard of Napster until that drummer from Metallica with the bad breath made song stealing into a huge deal. But mostly about the money is different than all about the money.
I think it’s our fault. Somehow we settled for the crap that the music industry is turning out. They appealed to the lowest common denominator and we bought it up. A song with a good beat and easy to remember lyrics became valued over any song that actually made a statement. Sure, Justin Timberlake’s “Cry me a river” and Miley Cyrus’s “ 7 things I hate about you” make statements but don’t expect me to pay good money for what amounts to a break up note. Maybe Blues Traveler had it right, "It doesn't matter what I say, as long as I sing with inflection....the hook brings you back"
My blood runs cold, my memory has just been sold.-
Now, imagine you’re a young angst ridden teenager with a passion for lyrics that you just have to turn into music. You’ve seen Almost Famous about 300 times. You don’t know much but you’re pretty sure of one thing. You want to be a Rock Star. Are you going to pick up and learn the guitar or the saxophone? Don’t feel bad, I would choose the guitar too. Can you imagine a young Kurt Cobain learning to play Blues scales on the sax ? Yeah I don’t see it either. So, if the pimply kid in the marching band no longer stands a chance of joining a band and joining said band is the only way he’s ever going to get laid?…time to pick up the guitar because as they say, if you can’t beat em, join em.
Sometimes I think I’ll shuffle off to Buffalo-
So what happened to this generation of bands? Nowadays everything is over synthesized and remixed. Maybe there is just no room for a saxophone solo after the first verse of today’s songs. I don’t recall seeing a saxophonist in the latest Rihanna video. In this pre-packaged canned era of music, the sax just doesn’t fit. I’m not sure this is a good thing. Is there a reason that some of the more popular songs of late sample music from long ago? Sure is. Kenny G could be responsible for more than just killing off the Sax, he could have single handedly ushered in the Grunge era and all the depressing songs that go with it. Of course it’s debatable whether Kenny G’s songs are more depressing the some of the stuff that’s come out of Seattle in the 90’s. I’m not even going to try to figure out why a place that spawned Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain could also turn out Kenny G.
Still, it’s hard for me to fully condemn Kenny G. He did what he had to do to get laid and or rich. I just hope he can live with the carnage he’s caused.
