whaddya think?

[l_cahan <l_cahan...>]

Okay, guys,

Only real link to the list - Kenny Gorelik is Jewish.  I'm curious
as to what you
think of this interview that was forwarded to me by a sax player
friend of mine.  If
you don't care to read a long tirade or if you object to profanity,
just delete this now.

      Subject:  Controversy and Kenny G
       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 hebasically 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 fueled 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 improvisors 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 preexisting 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 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 insigificant
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  anwhere, 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 any time.) 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.


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