Pat Metheny on Kenny G

I'm not a musician. At best, I know what I like and what I don't like. I have found that the best of any genre is worth listening to, whether it is jazz, rock, country, classical, Chinese opera, Northeast Thai khaen, Tuvan throat singing, whatever. I discovered the existence of Kenny G at a pirate audio tape stand in Thailand about 20 years ago. I asked if he had any jazz saxophone and he offered me Kenny G. I said I never heard of him. He said he was very popular.

When I finally played it, I realized this was my punishment for buying pirate tapes. This is not jazz, was my thought, it's barely elevator music. Look, I'm not putting down people who like Kenny G. They probably have a much more developed understanding of things I know nothing about. Kenny G is easy listening jazz and maybe he's caused fans to listen to more serious jazz.

But he just isn't for me. It would be like doing a crossword puzzle aimed at a ten year old. It isn't challenging to the point of being boring. But I couldn't have told you why.

The other day Kenny G came up in a conversation, and Peter asked if I'd seen Pat Metheny's take on Kenny G. I hadn't and so today I finally googled it. Let me also say that the moment I first heard Pat Metheny in the old Visual Art Center of Alaska, I knew I had to get the tape - it was As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls. Metheny is a genius. (Below courtesy of quesapa:



Or this longer excerpt from sitiofandotcom on YouTube)







I don't completely understand all the musical terms, but the way Metheny explains it, there are actual technical and competency issues that make Kenny G a lesser musician than a lot of well known - but less popular - saxophonists.

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.

Metheny also explains why G appeals to audiences.

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 key 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, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp.

He also says that he doesn't begrudge Kenny G his success, though it is difficult seeing much more talented saxophonists barely making it while G reaps in the profits. For Metheny, it was G's taping over an old Louis Armstrong song that pushed him to publicly rant about this.

Why am I putting this up here? It fits nicely into the theme of this blog - how we know what we know. Sometimes people can have a sense of something - in this case that Kenny G just didn't cut it in comparison to other well known (and even lesser known) jazz saxophonists - but we don't have enough technical knowledge to explain why. It's nice to get your gut feeling supported and explained by an expert.

But there are plenty of times when my gut is wrong. And a major problem in the US today is that a lot of people rely way too much on their feelings, take the word of celebrities (as opposed to experts) who tell them they're right, and conclude that global climate change is not an issue and that President Obama is a socialist who wants to indoctrinate their children. So I'm posting this here, knowing at least one knowledgeable musician is likely to read this and if Pat Metheny is a false prophet here, Phil will let me know.