Whatever happened to sax?

[packhowitzer]

Thanks man, I really needed that There's nothing like watching cats who love performing and got the chops

The one that started it all:

 

[chea-pass]

I feel that a phat analog mono or FM poly synth are sonically superior to a saxophone in the rock/pop genre.
I'm biased toward woodwinds but many sax players just don't have good tone. There, I said it.

Don't go embedding youtube vids of Clarence, Brecker, Ravenscroft and Curtis - we all know who the good players are.

 

[Shizzean]

This guy ruined it...

Whatever.
That guy made it cool!

 

[Gustopher]

When the change was made uptown
And the Big Man joined the band...

 

[W_R]

God I hope it doesn’t come back...

now is the time of the key-tar.....

View attachment 4177188

Actually this is pretty cool...

 

[thewildest]

Back in the day everyone had sax all the time, but since social media came along sax was one of its first casualties.

 

[CurtHagenlocher]

I've always thought that the "80s sax" was decisively killed by Bill Clinton and Arsenio Hall.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

Geez, I couldn’t wait for it to fade away in the 80’s, it was everywhere. There was all this worry then that the synthesizer was going to replace the guitar, but instead there were sax solos all over the place. The most annoying one was on Glen Frey’s “You Belong To The City”, but then again anything having to with The Eagles was annoying(yes, I’m on Team Dude). It was a holdover from the 70’s, when there was a lot of 50’s vibe coming back, I assume because that was the childhood of many players then.
Andy Mackay with Roxy Music was perfect for them, and even though Bowie wasn’t a great player, what he did added some flavor, whereas David Sanborn on “Young Americans” didn’t do much for me, a perfect example of that 70’s cliche stuff. With the Kenny G thing, yes the sax became the signature sound of all that tepid smooth jazz.
Sax certainly got a boost when that ‘swing’ revival came and went in the 90’s, but it’s slipped off to the realm of esoterica since fewer people want to use real instruments. I don’t hate sax at all, in fact I love rowdy honking stuff from Little Richard to King Curtis to The Sonics, and all the out, shrieking psychotic jazz from Coltrane to Brotzman and beyond, but that ain’t pop. It was always huge in the ska revival. Matt Morrish with the current English Beat lineup is a monster, and I saw jazzer Kamasi Washington a couple of years ago, he was great.

 

[dbsfgyd1]

My thoughts on sax is there are saxes, and there are saxs. IMO the only good soprano and alto saxes are ones melted down and made into ingots. Tenors and bari’s in the right hands are timeless.

 

[Astronaut]

This should be less jazzy.

 

[Max Bogosity]

This is some of the rockingest sax playing I’ve heard in decades.
I want whatever the drummer is on.

 

[Rabidhamster]

 

[2F/2F]

 

[Altitude]

In this thread people will dig up completely obscure music that happens to have been recorded lately and with a saxophone and claim “sax didn’t go anywhere!” Nowhere except the darkest shadowed recesses of YouTube apparently.

Here’s the test - look at the Billboard top 50 from 1985 and consider how much sax was in that music. Then look at the same list now. Essentially none.

Sax is no longer present in popular music other than as a novelty, and not much at all that way. It’s gone.

Is electric bass next?

 

[dkelley]

All I gotta say is these guys have made a comeback here in Canada, and I'm one of their biggest fans from the 80s and again now!

 

[the_sauce]

 

[Pauly 4001]

I guess if Brian Jones chooses to show up at the studio with a sax you gotta go along.
Otherwise, no:

 

[Marc DLarosa]

Bagpipes took over... Bigger sacks.

 

[design]

I bought Bowie’s Blackstar album as soon as I could. Played it that night and was so excited by the playing. Donny McCaslin on Tenor Sax is all over that record, with bass player Tim Lefebvre. The next day I heard Bowie had died.

So sad, and I still love that album.

 

[W_R]

... Is it time for the sax to come back yet? Or has it happened already and I just don't know about it?

PS, a Google search has not yet revealed a “talksax.com”
This is close but not quite... [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]