There's an inmutable smoothness to Coltrane. It's steady and distinct. I can recognize it anywhere. Pharoh Saunders sounds, at times, as if he plays with his nose (and he may for all I know), but he still blows with passion. With all the intellectual heavy weights that existed and brought such esteem to this complex instrument, why were the 80's so niave?There's a scene at the end of "St. Elmo's Fire" where Rob Lowes character is packing it in to persue the big time of being a rock n' roll saxaphonist. This is of course after an embarassing sax solo filled, blow your guts out scene that established him as the individualistic wild man "artiste" of the group.Sometimes when it gets bad in music, I like to think of this scene, and how much of the 80's mainstream music sucked, and I feel a lot better. Good music survives the uneasy climate in which it may be created, that's a given. I am not one to look at the 80's with any sort of wistfulness, becasue like a sax solo in the middle of a song, I know most of the 80's is better left in the past. To this day, I have very limited patience for a sax inside of poular music outside of a roll in the rythym section. And I blame it on the whole decade.If Hip Hop can survive the onslaught of rapping grannies that pervaded commercials in the 80's, perhaps there will be some soft spoken, dark horse on the horizon of sax players, to lead us into a great time of healing with a once beloved and proud instrument.For now I'll take my rock al dente, sans the saxamaphone.
I am says
You know contra I agree with you bout the sax in popular music.
But I have an boatload of ska to prove you wrong in the not so popular music.
ciphermedia says
I agree that the Sax was given crappy treatment in some 80's popular music but it was mostly mainstream/Top 40 stuff. You can't malign a whole decade based on that without showing ignorance of the vast amount of great music that was out there. Maybe you haven't been or weren't exposed to it, but it's there.
contrabandwidth says
I am - I agree there is some good Ska out there, but I would qualify the Saxaphones role in that as a rhythm, which I'm OK with (as I mentioned).
cipher - Probably one of the problems with MOG is that everyone is WAY into music (guilty), and can't always laugh at the ridiculous. I generally believe the 80's was a horrible time for music, and that's not to say great groups or bands didn't come out of it - but a lot didn't (for good reason). I still love a lot of the one hit wonders I was rocking to on my Walkman in first grade. But do I think Taco needed another hit, and that he was marginalized as an artist, nope. Of course I wasn't exposed to the non mainstream stuff from the ages of 4 - 13, but not many people are at those ages, unless your lucky. Over all there was such a push to create something different in Pop music after Punk (or at least more marketable, less nihilistic) that there was a lot of throwing stuff against the wall to see if it would stick. A lot didn't. Of course great things came out of the 80's like the rise of hip hop (and of course that other "rap stuff" like the Fat Boys, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Marky Mark - even if it was the 90's, it grew out of the 80's music climate). College Rock established a foot hold (what would later become "Alternative"). Like I said "Good Music survives an uneasy climate." I think in some ways it's good to have a shitty period in music, because people are forced to work hard and look for something that speaks to them, rather than accept what is fed to them.
There's an inmutable smoothness to Coltrane. It's steady and distinct. I can recognize it anywhere. Pharoh Saunders sounds, at times, as if he plays with his nose (and he may for all I know), but he still blows with passion. With all the intellectual heavy weights that existed and brought such esteem to this complex instrument, why were the 80's so niave?There's a scene at the end of "St. Elmo's Fire" where Rob Lowes character is packing it in to persue the big time of being a rock n' roll saxaphonist. This is of course after an embarassing sax solo filled, blow your guts out scene that established him as the individualistic wild man "artiste" of the group.Sometimes when it gets bad in music, I like to think of this scene, and how much of the 80's mainstream music sucked, and I feel a lot better. Good music survives the uneasy climate in which it may be created, that's a given. I am not one to look at the 80's with any sort of wistfulness, becasue like a sax solo in the middle of a song, I know most of the 80's is better left in the past. To this day, I have very limited patience for a sax inside of poular music outside of a roll in the rythym section. And I blame it on the whole decade.If Hip Hop can survive the onslaught of rapping grannies that pervaded commercials in the 80's, perhaps there will be some soft spoken, dark horse on the horizon of sax players, to lead us into a great time of healing with a once beloved and proud instrument.For now I'll take my rock al dente, sans the saxamaphone.
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