I’m with you (mostly). I felt that Metheney’s criticism was rather even-handed until that point in the essay, but such apoplexy — such offense taken, as if this were Piss Christ or an obscene Muhammad cartoon and Metheney were a fundamentalist rabble-rouser — was pretty much laughably absurd.
Really? S’far as I can tell neither Louis Armstrong nor anyone else was in any way harmed by Kenny G’s act of disrespect. Don’t get me wrong, it’s stupid, it’s arrogant, it’s unlistenable. But as a candidate for the absolute low point in Western culture (that we forgive only “at our own peril”!) I think it’s a remarkable poor choice. This is mountains out of not molehills but tiny, tiny piles of sand.
This whole thread kinda reminds me of how many of the musicians I play with, hate playing the cliche songs like, Brown Eyed Girl, Sweet Home Alabama, Saturday Night, etc, and those are some of the simplest and most popular songs a club band can play. And whenever they are played, people jump up and shout, run up to the stage, start dancing. . . I think one basic musical truth is that a lot of people like simple music that’s familiar to them, and I think Kenny G understands that. And a lot of great musicians hate simple stuff that’s cliche.
All true. And yes, these types of bitch-fests tend to sound like snooty cork-sniffers laughing down their sleeves at the hoi polloi.
By the same token, Kenny G, in putting his overdubs in a Louis Armstrong song, is implying…well, that he is worthy of doing so. Sure, it’s a late-era commerical softie from Satchmo, but Kenny G is still claiming he has a right to be in the mix.
To the extent you just look at it as music that works or doesn’t, you can decide for yourself if it works or it doesn’t. Done.
But to someone like Metheny, it came across as someone dropping a Big Mac onto a plate of find creole cuisine, or hanging a Thomas Kinkade painting in the Met next to the masterpieces - even if the Armstrong song is one of his lesser works, where does this twit get to come along and claim association? And what has he accomplished, in terms of the craft of music, that gives him claim? From that perspective, the answer is “nothing.”
Sure. Any reasonable person can understand that Metheney possesses skills and experience that increase his sensitivity to poor choices in his field of music. But “This is terrible music, and I think Kenny G should be more respectful to a pioneer” isn’t the same as “Kenny G has shat upon a great man and thus shown himself to be a doer of evil, and unless [del]burned at the stake[/del] challenged represents the lowest attainable point in our culture. If I see him I will literally stab him”.
This is putting ketchup on steak. Heck, it’s not even like hanging Thomas Kinkade in the met — it’s not as if we have to hear Kenny G’s overlay whenever we listen to What a Wonderful World now.
At the risk of sounding horribly sexist, I’m going to replace “people” in your post with “women”. And yes, I know I’m generalizing and that there are are plenty of exceptions, and that my “evidence” is anecdotal, but:
When I worked in bars where the radio was played, it was always women who, as soon as a song came on that that they didn’t like or didn’t know, would ask me to change the station.
In bars with a jukebox, it was always women who would sit next to the jukebox and play the same one or two songs over and over and over.
In bars with a live band, it was the women who would jump up and run out on the dance floor (sometimes dragging their men behind them) when the band played the kinds of songs you mentioned.
I remember my younger sister, when we were teenagers, buying full albums by artists she liked, and then completely ignoring most of the album tracks in favor of playing the radio hits over and over and over.
Go to a Rush concert and wonder where all the women are. They’re there, you just don’t notice them until the band plays “Tom Sawyer”, and then you hear them all start cheering because the band is finally playing the one song from their catalog that the women have heard before.
I don’t even blame the women. I blame the pop music industry, which pushes “artists” over “songs”. And frankly, most pop music is targeted directly at girls, not boys. The industry presents male artists the girls will all want to marry, and female artists the girls all want to be. And so the hit songs get associated with how the artist makes the girls feel.
And sometimes it’s not the artist him/herself, but rather the most well-known image associated with the song. My favorite example: Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll”. Did that song become insanely popular because everybody thought it was such a great song? Or was it because 10 million young women saw Tom Cruise dancing to in in his skivvies?
Again, as a cover-band musician, I looked at tullsterx’s post more as a comment on the musicians - some think that they are above giving the people what they want - even when, in a cover-band-in-a-bar-type situation, that means playing over-played oldies. If you don’t like playing Brown-Eyed Girl (or Play That Funky Music White Boy, or Love Shack, or the Eagles, or, or, or…) then why did you sign up for the gig? That’s basic professionalism, and often somewhat or totally lacking from your average pool of musicians - I say this with love, but it’s true!
Now, as to *why *those oldies are in constant rotation - that’s a much larger question that, per my comments on your post about gender, can lead to trouble…
Yeah, I think there lots of truth in your post. . . I’ll think that one over next time some drunk guys in ball caps ask us to play some Skynyrd, or Poison, or Kid Rock, or Kiss. I have trouble believing it too, but there are lot of guys that love the simple cliche stuff. But, those guys are not musicians. Personally, I think the Normal People vs Musicians line is the most prominent line in this thread. And as usual, figuring out how this all relates to women, is a damn mystery. But, I agree, a lot of women love that stuff too.
I love this wording. So true. I will off-handedly refer to “normal people” as “civilians” when trying to relate a story from a musician’s perspective. That, in and of itself, can be interpreted as dismissive or stereotyping, and I need to respect that. At the same time, music is so primal in our make-up that folks who are strongly musical vs. low-musical-responders (made up wording, but I hope you follow) really seem to come at Life completely differently, as a general rule.
Ultimately, I think this fits within the context of the OP. Non-musicians interpret Metheny from a “one guy disagreeing with another guy, but both having points to make” POV, whereas musicians start their interpretation based on what is instantly clear and obvious in terms of Metheny’s “rank” as a craftsman vs. Kenny G’s, which is like, I dunno, a 3rd Level Master vs. maybe a decent new Master with a design shtick that is popular, but barely-competent craft. Changes the foundation upon which all the facts lie.
I have a few friends who are music teachers and who play in bands on the side. I find that their taste in music tends to run towards things that emphasize the skill of the musician playing.
I don’t enjoy a lot of it. The one fellow, who is a jazz trumpet player, favors stuff that is actively irritating to me. I can understand about not wanting to play the same popular songs over and over again, but it strikes me that there is such a thing as pleasing your audience and pleasing your fellow musicians. Sometimes they are the same thing and sometimes they are not.
But, I was just thinking about Brad Paisley and Kenny Chesney. . . I’m not a country guy, but some guys I played with LOVE Brad Paisley and DESPISE Kenny Chesney. I was like “OK (shrug)” then I saw Brad Paisley play and Kenny Chesney play. Kenny Chesney is more of a guitar-strumming crooner and Brad Paisley is a freaking amazing guitarist singer. And that got me thinking. . . you would never compare Pavarotti and Sinatra, so why would you compare Louis Armstrong with Kenny G. . . unless Kenny G did the comparison himself. . . which he did. I guess it’s a lot like Sinatra doing opera. . . and getting pounded for it.
All true. Paisley was a guitar wunderkind from a young age - if you haven’t heard his instrumental album, Play, and like guitar, you’re missing something. Okay - here’s an interesting comparison: he has a track on their called ClusterPluck (yeah, yeah ;)) that starts off - maybe in its own separate track - with a roll call of Top Telecaster Chicken Pickers, from James Burton, John Jourgenson, Vince Gill, etc. - the top of the top. The implication being, since Paisley lays down right next to them with his own chicken-pickin’, he must think he’s pretty good. Ah - but he is; totally holds his own.
I doubt this is unique to music, it is true for any craft form. As an Architect there is no doubt in my mind if I posted the buildings or details that float my boat that the vast majority of you neophytes () would hate them. When I see what is popular and what people like it always amazes me but I have long ago come to terms with it relative to my own tastes and work.
When I hear musicians talk like this it is about the technical mastery and artistic mastery of the music, and while I can appreciate that for me in the end it does boil down to ‘did I like it’. Same goes true for my profession, I can wax on forever about the subtle nuance of the design intent, but the bottom line is do people like it and does that matter to you as the artist involved. For me it doesn’t matter if other Architects or lay people like my work, luckily for me enough do, that I make a rather decent living at it and I am mostly happy with the finished product.
If I did an addition to a Frank Lloyd Wright house am I good enough to play with the Master? Who knows, at least none of my buildings leak! I have 30 years in my profession but I can bet you dimes to dollars someone would bitch about my addition and how it wasn’t worthy of the original. Happens all the time in this profession but in the end it is a building and this is just a song.
Metheny came across as sour grapes to me. I am not a bit fan of either of them though to be honest and besides they both have stupid hair cuts. There are lots of Architects out there who are highly successful that do schlock design work (in my humble opinion) but I don’t begrudge them their success. I feel the only person I have to please is myself (oh yea that client thing too), but so far my clients are easier to please than I am. Metheny should focus on his own playing (and get a decent hair cut) and not worry about KennyG it seems to me.
Sounds like snobbery. It’s not that he is bagging on Kenny G. It’s that he is bagging on the people that listen to him. It’s the whole ‘If you listen to X, then you don’t know shit about music, man!’
I don’t listen to Kenny G. and can’t stand his music. I don’t like Pat Metheny’s much better. Kenny G. found a way to connect with an audience and that is a musician’s job. He has been more successful at this than Pat Metheny. That doesn’t make his music better or worse.
FTR, I agree that Kenny G. should not have overdubbed himself on to a Louis Armstrong track. Would have been that hard to just do a cover??
This is nothing but an appeal to mediocrity, since it simply advocates appealing to the lowest possible common denominator, cause fuck it, who needs a high personal standard when you can bullshit your way through it and have people think you’re awesome anyway?
No thanks.
And I don’t like Pat Metheny either. His stuff is unlistenable pap.
I was a saxophonist in high school. My band director was a jazz saxophonist. I preferred to play classical and pop because, although I was good at jazz (first chair since my sophomore year), I just never got that into it–it was like a sub-subculture of the band subculture, and jazz was more for elitist hipsters and elitist old people than me. I liked to have fun and play with the whole band. Jazz band was too small. Also, getting the “feel” for real jazz music (laying behind the drumbeat, sort of) is deceptively hard. It just wasn’t all that fun for me.
Anyway, my director shared her negative opinion of Kenny G on *multiple *occasions, because she was a total jazz snob (she liked bebop, which only jazz snobs enjoy–no normal person or even a normal musician likes bebop–it’s just noise designed to show off technique). I’m not a big fan of the Kenster in general (because woof, soft jazz) but I don’t hold anything against the guy.
Oddly enough, I really liked that mash-up. Whether he had the “right” to do it or not is ridiculous, that statement just buys into the elitist attitude that some people have more of a right to call themselves musicians than others. Being a famous musician is not about who has the most talent. It’s about a reasonable, minimum amount of talent and massive amounts of promotion. More often than not, they all got really, really lucky at some point. Getting noticed by the right producer or agent has *way *more of a correlation with musical fame than the amount of musical talent someone possesses. I can think of at least five artists off the top of my head who are indie and broke and will probably always be that way (even though they’re way more talented than a lot of famous artists), because they’re ugly or fat or don’t know how to promote themselves or just haven’t gotten lucky enough to be “discovered” by someone in the business.
This rambled a bit, sorry… but my point is that any musician who thinks they got famous just because they’re omgsotalented is a fool. Putting down a musician who is less talented than you is ridiculous, because talent is NOT the defining factor of all (or even most) famous musicians. Look at Britney Spears or Justin Bieber.
Rachellelogram I’m having difficulty making sense of your post except by ascribing to you the view that fame is the operative ideal among musicians in general. Is that what you think?
Exactly. When jazz turned the corner to bebop, it ceased to be popular music and jazzbos have been pissed off about that fact since then. They have only themselves to blame. Jazz these days is musicians playing to impress musician wanna-bees.
I’m not describing my views on the music industry, I’m describing what is happening in this specific situation. Metheny is telling Kenny G, “You’re not good enough to do this.” This, in essence, means Meth is calling Kenster’s fame and skills as a jazz saxophonist into question. It’s not that I view fame as the end-all, be-all of a successful musician (although many skilled, non-famous musicians DO wish they could be famous). Probably my favorite artist of all time is Sam Hart, the tiny Asian guy who composed and sang Mario Kart Love Song. I doubt he’ll ever be famous, but he’s got a youtube channel so I’m happy.
Anyway, when one famous jazz musician calls out another for not being “good enough” (or jazzy enough, same thing), it means jazz erudites like Metheny and my old band director associate skill with fame. They think musicians with better skills should be more famous and get more “cred.” But that’s not how the real world works. Overall, there’s an underlying bitterness and elitism in the hardcore jazz community that motivates censure like this, which I don’t think is relevant to Kenny G at all. Like I said, I’ve never been a big fan of his, but my mom bought me the cd with the Louis Armstrong mashup on it for Christmas when I was a teenager. It was *fantastic. *That’s the only song I even remember from the album.
Right. I just love how he writes:
“An angry critique of G by the guitarist Pat Metheny has recently been widely circulated on the internet. Metheny is correct but he wastes his time and energy. The music isn’t good enough to deserve an intelligent analysis. There’s nothing new about the success of dumb music. The fight against vulgar and dishonest music is long lost. Better to spend your time listening to Mozart.”
Then rambles on for 10 more paragraphs…sounding like a snooty cork-sniffer laughing down his sleeve at the hoi polloi. You don’t like Kenny G. We get it. Why do you care so much? He obviously brings plenty of people pleasure. I’m not particularly a fan, bus his success doesn’t harm me any. More power to him. Pissing off people like Mike Zwerin is just a bonus.
Yeah. Different strokes…
And for the record, I think anyone and everyone should feel free to add whatever they want to any Louis Armstrong song. The result may suck (to my ears), but people shouldn’t have to worry about whether they’re “worthy”. Maybe they’ll end up with genius (to my ears).
) would hate them. When I see what is popular and what people like it always amazes me but I have long ago come to terms with it relative to my own tastes and work.