The other night, I was sitting in the Providence Place food court, watching as the girl behind the counter at the Dale & Thomas popcorn stand slipped a small wad of bills from the till into her pocket. I found myself distracted from the scene by the piped-in muzak, which normally hides in the background of the shopping experience but had become surprisingly intrusive.
It was a mournful, wailing power-wank of a saxophone solo over lazy chords, a kind of disturbing howl that not only got my attention, but some of the other people who were eating their Taco Bell and Pizzeria Regina off teal-colored trays noticed too. "This is horrible," said one middle-aged woman to a presumed husband. "I wish they'd turn it down." Said a teenager in a Hollister sweatshirt to his two friends, "What's up with this music? This is so gay."
These are the dark ages for the saxophone, the proud golden instrument that once ruled the airwaves. Jazz is dead, and there are no saxophones in country. No sax breaks in hip-hop, no sax solos in indie rock. Lisa Simpson's sax is a symbol of her misunderstood world, and even Clarence Clemons doesn't get the bars he used to with the E Street Band.
You have to be pretty old to remember the glory days of the saxophone, or even want to try. Once upon a time, saxophonists walked on the wild side. The sax was super freaky, oww. You could learn to work the saxophone, and play just what you feel. Because if you didn't have a sax solo in your rock song, it was an urgent urgent emergency.
Pop in the 80's was one big saxophone solo. There was "Heart of Rock & Roll," and every other Huey Lewis song, come to think of it. "Fortress Around Your Heart" by Sting. The red-hot fire-spitting on INXS songs like "What You Need" and "New Sensation" and "Never Tear Us Apart." David Bowie's "Blue Jean," Hall & Oates' "Maneater," Duran Duran's "Rio," "If You Leave" by OMD, Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money", "Living In America" by James Brown, I could go on for hours.
Saxophones were the stars of stage and screen back then, too. Rob Lowe turned in a stunning performance as "Kirbo," the repressed horn blowing ladies' man, in the classic 1985 hit St. Elmo's Fire. And who can forget the scene in Better Off Dead where John Cusack brought the cute French foreign exchange student into the deserted Pig Burger for a private dinner, then topped it off with an awesome sax solo over the Rupert Hine song in the background. It was totally a keyboard set to the "saxophone" setting, but it didn't matter. The number one rule for bagging chicks in the 1980's was this: brass equals ass.
The sax was still cool and dangerous into the 1990's... anybody who owns a Morphine CD knows that. But nobody knows exactly when the saxophone stopped being cool... my guess was that it was around 1995, the year that John Tesh's "Sax On The Beach" came out. Or maybe it was the Dave Matthews Band's fault.
It's beyond debate that the saxophone is now, in fact, totally gay. And by gay, I mean God Awful Yucky. But let's take a moment and celebrate that shiny, gold horn of our memories and dreams. Blow on, saxophone, blow on.
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street
Quarterflash - Harden My Heart
Boy Meets Girl - Waiting For A Star To Fall
Glenn Frey - The Heat Is On
Huey Lewis & The News - Slammin'
Icehouse - Electric Blue
Men At Work - Who Can It Be Now?
