IJMC - Metheny Kills Kenny G

I was just realizing, that although I am sending like, oh, two posts at a
time instead of one a day, that this is the most regular the IJMC has been
for oh, I dunno, a year? What does it say that I have to travel to a
different continent to make this list a priority again? Granted, I have
spent a fair amount of time on the list this year, just not as much on
sending stuff as on fixing the poor server...also, I can say, for some
reason, I am really enjoying sending things again. That feeling has been
missing for a while...guess a bit of apathy built up after around five
years of posting to everyone...but this trip seems to have ripped that
apathy asunder and returned me to my posting bliss. Right. Well, whatever,
I am writing, you are reading, and Geneva beats behind me.           -dave




Dear David,

I write to ask you, nay, plead with you to send this out on the IJMC. You
can help educate thousands by showing the difference between actual music
and crap.

The Question and Answer below comes from the Patt Metheny website. Metheny
is among the best and best known Jazz guitarists out there and this deals
with his view of Kenny G.  Though the arguments are about Jazz, the views
expressed can be generalized to deal with the current music industry as a
whole.

Do Good.  Send this.  Thanks!


[Been there, done that, it is sent. -dave]


Question:

Pat, could you tell us your opinion about Kenny G - it appears you were
quoted as being less than enthusiastic about him and his music. I would
say that most of the serious music listeners in the world would not find
your opinion surprising or unlikely - but you were vocal about it for the
first time. You are generally supportive of other musicians it seems.

Pat's answer:

Kenny g is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all
until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested
me one way or the other either live or on records. I first heard him a
number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff lorber when they opened
a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent
a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of
that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an
advanced player, even in that style. He had major rhythmic problems and
his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to
pentatonic based and blues- lick derived patterns, and he basically
exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a
professional soloist in an ensemble.

Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual
music. But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of
the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks
(holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were
lots of harmonic clams in them) at the keys moments to elicit a powerful
crowd reaction (over and over again) . The other main thing I noticed was
that he also, as he does to this day, play horribly out of tune -
consistently sharp.

Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had,
and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious
listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fuelled by the fact that
he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a
really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his
instrument over the past sixty or seventy years.

And honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who
see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when
so many of them who are far superior as improvisers and musicians in
general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not
thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better
improvising musicians than Kenny G on his chosen instruments. It would
really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.

Having said that, it has gotten me to thinking lately why so many jazz
musicians (myself included, given the right "bait" of a question, as I
will explain later) and audiences have gone so far as to say that what he
is playing is not even jazz at all.

Stepping back for a minute, if we examine the way he plays, especially if
one can remove the actual improvising from the often mundane background
environment that it is delivered in, we see that his saxophone style is in
fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably
objective listeners would normally quantify as being jazz. It's just that
as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind,
it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate
with professional improvising musicians. So, lately I have been advocating
that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty
much of the rest of the world outside of the jazz community does anyway -
and let the chips fall where they may.

And after all, why he should be judged by any other standard, why he
should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his
instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an
improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does? He
should be compared to john coltrane or Wayne shorter, for instance, on his
abilities (or lack thereof) to play the soprano saxophone and his success
(or lack thereof) at finding a way to deploy that instrument in an
ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the
context of his instrument's legacy and potential.

As a composer of even eighth note based music, he should be compared to
herbie hancock, horace silver or even grover washington. Suffice it to
say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't
fare well. But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was
all "until recently".

Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on
top of a 30+ year old louis Armstrong record, the track "what a wonderful
world". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on
earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his
incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for
presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our
music.

This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the
pre-existing tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie
Cole did it with her dad on "unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was
her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but
we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who
were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry
Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I
lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to
seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could
turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to
one of my personal heroes.

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the
music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever
lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling,
wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks
(even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have
imagined possible.

He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused
musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all
over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked
their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing
their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong
brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a
musician.

By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever
tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be,
Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we
all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this,
"let it slide", at our own peril.

His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture
implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have
for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical
terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring.

Since that record came out - in protest, as insignificant as it may be, i
encourage everyone to boycott Kenny G recordings, concerts and anything he
is associated with. If asked about Kenny G, i will diss him and his music
with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay.

Normally, i feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of
their level, just trying to play good and don't really benefit from public
criticism, particularly from their fellow players. But, this is different.

There are some things that are sacred - and amongst any musician that has
ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, Louis
Armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. To ignore this trespass is to
agree that nothing any musician has attempted to do with their life in
music has any intrinsic value - and i refuse to do that. (I am also amazed
that there hasn't already been an outcry against this among music critics
- where are they on this?????!?!?!?!- , magazines, etc.). Everything I
said here is exactly the same as what I would say to gorelick if I ever
saw him in person. And if I ever do see him anywhere, at any function - he
will get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

Note: this post is partially in response to the comments that people have
made regarding a short video interview excerpt with me that was posted on
the internet taken from a TV show for young people (kind of like mtv) in
Poland where I was asked to address 8 to 11 year old kids on terms that
they could understand about jazz.

While enthusiastically describing the virtues of this great area of music,
I was encouraging the kids to find and listen to some of the greats in the
music and not to get confused by the sometimes-overwhelming volume of
music that falls under the jazz umbrella. I went on to say that I think
that for instance, "Kenny G plays the dumbest music on the planet" -
something that all 8 to 11 year kids on the planet already intrinsically
know, as anyone who has ever spent any time around kids that age could
confirm - so it gave us some common ground for the rest of the discussion.
(Addendum: the only thing wrong with the statement that I made was that I
did not include the rest of the known universe.)

The fact that this clip was released so far out of the context that it was
delivered in is a drag, but it is now done. (It's unauthorized release out
of context like that is symptomatic of the new electronically
interconnected culture that we now live in - where pretty much anything
anyone anywhere has ever said or done has the potential to become common
public property at anytime.) I was surprised by the polish people putting
this clip up so far away from the use that it was intended -really just
for the attention - with no explanation of the show it was made for - they
(the polish people in general) used to be so hip and would have been
unlikely candidates to do something like that before, but I guess
everything is changing there like it is everywhere else.

The only other thing that surprised me in the aftermath of the release of
this little interview is that anyone would be even a little bit surprised
that I would say such a thing, given the reality of mr. G's music. This
makes me want to go practice about 10 times harder, because that suggests
to me that I am not getting my own musical message across clearly enough -
which to me, in every single way and intention is diametrically opposed to
what Kenny G seems to be after.