blazin sax

Needless to say, I mostly dislike hearing saxophones in pop music. Mr. Oily Muscled Sax Guy or not.

I definitely agree with the comments on the use of sax in glam - I like the Glitter Band sound when the sound of the sax and the guitars approach each other, becoming a single drone.

I would like to see every saxophone in the world melted down and used to encase Steve 'Plonker' Norman, erstwhile sax-offender with Spandau Ballet, in a cube of SOLID BRASS – like Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.

--Some might say Pink Floyd 'Money'. I don't think I would.

(and no, not the Auteurs song.)

BTW, Tracer, horn players actually practice long and hard to get that tone. It's called growling, and it can be tricky to do.

Too tricky for most is my feeling.

It's a pet theory of mine (still in refinement) that the harmonica is to the nineties as the sax is to the eighties - think Alanis, Counting Crows, etc. , seems to be the same sort of trend anyway. And then I get to wondering just how these trends insinuate themselves into style so heavily, seeing as their presence is so rarely commented upon specifically. I mean, I don't remember 1984/5/6 being this time where everyone was raving on about the awesome sax solos in such and such a song, but there they all are anyway, like baby bunnies - then *poof*.

I guess I missed the transition somehow (had a long string of years where music took the backseat to shit jobs and other distractions). Any interesting ideas?

It all started for me with the "Lou Grant" theme (c1979). I remember liking it so much I taped it by holding a microphone in front of my mother's tv.

Seriously Grover Washington, Wilton Felder and other jazz-funk artists of the 70's started the fetishisation of the sax that reached its peak in the 80's. Then there were things like that horrible Hazel O'Connor single ("You drink your coffee..") with the extended sax solo on the end; and of course Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" (1978?). So the whole thing was under way in the late 70's, and like anything it was good to start with but quickly became overdone and debased. The nadir was probably that 'st-st-st-studioline' series of ads for hair gel with the coiffed models bursting through sheets pretending to play the sax.

There's also and always the equally humble kazoo and Jew's harp. But neither has the prerequisite "hip signifiers" (for lack of a better term). Harmonicas signify DIY and Bob Dylan; Jew's harps and kazoos signify square-dances and hoedowns.

I think the saxophone somehow got associated with *external* yuppie lifestyle nuances of the period - sophistication, pseudo-jazz etc.

I don't think it's anything to do with artists wanting to show off how big their budgets were because *anyone* could obtain the services of an excellent sax player for whatever the MU session rate was at the time (less than 100.00 GBP). However your argument is a lot more effective if applied to other (relatively expensive) things like the Fairlight/Synclavier, synths with a buzz at particular times eg Prophet V and Jupiter 8, plus AMS/Lexicon reverbs.

I mean that it was ubiquitous in the MOR-pop hits of the day, and there's a very specific sound, a particular timbre, that is very closely linked to the time. It's as evident in the soundtrack music to the 1969 British Transport Film "Seaspeed Story", as it is on "This Guy's In Love With You", which would probably be the finest and most expressive trumpet solo ever (admittedly, it's Herb Alpert, but that sound was imitated by a lot of people).

Which gets me wondering whether the all-pervasive sax sound of the 80s was imitated in the corporate music of the time. David?

Yes, ad nauseam.

The use of trumpet on the soundtrack of "Seaspeed Story" gets quite surreal when, in imitation of the sound of "This Guy's In Love With You" (as filtered through the mainstream UK testcard music of the period) the trumpet suddenly bursts into "A Life On The Ocean Wave". While bizarrely moving, it still tickles me whenever I hear it, and makes Mike Oldfield's take on hornpipes sound as orthodox as the Sidney Torch Orchestra.

Clarence Carter = Blind guy who sang "Patches" and "Slip Away". Not a saxophonist as far as I know.

(Before anyone starts a thread on the merits of Two-Tone and how I shouldn't be narrow-minded, and bloody hell, even Blur used a horn section now and then, I would like to point out the curiously American oddity of the METAL-SKA band which is the only thing I can think of.)

Erm... yes, Sax-a-mo-phones. The 80s sax solo was very, very funny in that it did ultimately produce the skronk-goth stylings that were the DANIEL ASH saxophone solo in Mask-era BAUHAUS. The discordant *noise* on something like the sax solo on Kick In The Eye seemed to be a wonderful parody of the sax solo that was *everywhere* in early 80s pop.

Yes, I am bringing up Bauhaus, and fuck you, I am not a goth. They were bizarre, silly art school rock. In white fact paint. Sigh.

I mean, even Duran Duran had their token sax player, floating on a raft through "Rio" - though IIRC, he was dressed up in a pastel designer suit and one of those silly hats...

I always thought they were a sincere and heart-felt hommage to the Saxman School of Mr D. Bowie.

Brass would be acceptable in the charts provided NO OTHER INSTRUMENTS WERE INVOLVED.

I'll tell you a stinker of an album for sax and that's Black Tie White Noise by David Bowie.

I thought of a lot of Bauhaus (especially on the early records) was *very* funny. Although it was a black sense of humour, I always seemed to catch onto it as a dark art school satire of glam, rather than the straight homage they were criticised as being.

It's not the only reason I liked them, but to me, it seemed to save them from being tarred with the brush of what "Goth" became.

Ah well, perhaps it's my misunderstanding. They did get very humourless towards the end.

I like Bauhaus, BTW. ESPECIALLY the later stuff.

x0x0

Oh god, I am *NOT* going to start defending Bauhaus/L&R in public. I'm just not. I am so ashamed and will stop hijacking this thread for the purposes of praising Danny Ash's sax work right NOW.

Oh go on.....

'ow come yer band isn't playing newcastle, BTW? I'd go!

x0x0

When I was very young and very cool and in a crap band with Matt Black of Coldcut, we all used to hang out at Scamps, which is where all the happening bands played in Oxford — Birthday Party, 23 Skidoo, Huang Chung etc — and where we sometimes supported em (Rip Rig and Panic, who HATED our band, and made no bones about saying so!!: they were toss that evening, haha, tho we were toss always). Duncan the not-bad DJ played post-punky "stuff", and we liked it, esp. when he played "Country Club" by the Associates.

But Oxford had another scene, which overlapped with our NeuroPop Elite: the scene checked Play Dead (yes! THE Play Dead) and Dum Dum Dum (one of my favourite ever great unrecorded local bands) rather than us. And Duncan the not-bad- DJ had to spin discs for them too. And here is what would happen.

WHENEVER 'Wardance' or 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' were played, the dancefloor area was invaded, EXACTLY like the day The Gathering came to ILM. And these people — dressed in dark red and black — would hurl themselves into celebration of their songs. The dance was very physical, exciting, a bit scary: like a cross between the Indian Wardance in Hollywood movies, and emergency-landing a stricken light aircraft on a frozen ploughed field (a lot of arms were stuck out religiously sideways).

Now what was strange was that while anything not of this ilk was on the deck, these people could not be seen. It was if they lurked just beyond a Lovecraftian dimensional portal, to be CALLED INTO EXISTENCE (or at least Called Into "Our Reality") by the playing of their songs, the invocation of their rites. I thought this was very exciting and very sexy: in fact, I loved it. I have never seen its like.

Honour the fire, obviously. But honour the Flat Field also, esp. as Pete Murphy's notion of flatness differed from that of a dancing Bauhaus fan.

However, GOTH, the entity, is something I just can't defend. It can't even acknowledge its own silliness. What it is, is inherantly silly, yet it cannot laugh at that silliness. Bauhaus knew that what they did was silly, yet in their own German cabaret laughing-at- themselves, they managed to attain heights which were above that silliness. They transcended silliness by not being afraid to laugh at it.

Unfortunately, Goth didn't get the joke. I think maybe Bauhaus invented Goth by mistake- the whole Bauhaus make-up dead-look was a deliberate *pisstake* of the post-Glam New Romantic thing. New Romantic and glam and all that was about trying to make yourself look pretty- even Steve Strange and the like. Bauhaus used makeup to make themselves deliberately ugly, misshapen and strange- going way beyond the trashy ugliess of punk to something very theatrical and horror movie. I can never forget the "Mask" video where their faces are smeared out of recognition. That screamed to me of parody of the beauty-worship that was going on at the same time all around them. And so many of the early lyrics, on Flat Field, and especially Crowds, were total satire and scenester-baiting. (Hence why I hear the sax solos as parody, and not Bowie-worship.) Yet the parody was lost on the goths that adopted the look.

A pity that they shall be remembered forever for that total bit of frippery, "Bela Lugosi". Although I love the batsqueak feedback, it's a novelty song. Oh god, I can't even remember the *name* of my favourite Bauhaus song, it's on Mask, an UNHOLY disco bassline bounces along while the band engage in an odd little Burroughsian tale on top. And I liked their cut-ups and their exquisite corpses, letting the band members go well beyond remixes, to actually making their own versions of each song.

Anyway... sorry no Newcastle. We really *wanted* to play there, but our "Northern" week filled up quick. We might still play there instead of Cambridge, but it's a hell of a drive to have to get down to Brighton the next day. Sorry!

Dan, with Mr. Bungle it seems almost weird to single out the exceptionally good use of just *one* particular instrument, if you know what I mean.

Damn this thread! Kinda like that old Peanuts cartoon where Linus "becomes aware of his tongue" and makes Lucy follow suit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBUNzvAQyLI

A worthy revive