This Is This

The posts this week have had a common theme of dropping the attitude, something I should do a lot more of, and I’ve learned that perceptions aren’t always the better part of character.

So in that frame, the weekend song’s going fusion. No, not Cajun ice-cream in a raspberry coulis, I mean jazz rock.

Speaking of coulis, it just sounds unappetizing. Like jus. Who would eat something in a jus. It’s festooned again. Festooned in jus.

I mean fusion as in jazz-rock. Yeah, baby. Pompous raw talent and joy, but then so is Bach. And if fusion was good enough for Miles Davis, it’s good enough for all of us.

So we’ve got the aptly-named little Steps Ahead with a saxophone sweeter than molasses and four times as fast. Michael Brecker was a brilliant jazz sax player, better known for his session work. You’ll have heard him on Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight by James Taylor and Still Crazy After All These Years by Paul Simon. And Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, John Lennon, Carole King, Elton John, Billy Joel, Steely Dan, Parliament, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, Chic, and Frank Zappa, not to mention such jazz legends as Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Herbie Mann, Chet Baker, Don Cherry, Dave Brubeck, McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Chick Corea, and Jaco Pastorius.

But here he is with his own band with a beautiful sax solo, which he plays after a stint on the EWI. The EWI is an Electronic Wind Instrument which is a wind operated thing that looks like a Tupperware clarinet and with the same fingering as a saxophone.

It goes through a MIDI interface, and even though it is a synth, it responds to the player’s performance. I’ve played one; it’s amazing. If you blow harder, it plays louder, you can tongue notes, slur them, do pitch bends just like you can with a normal sax. They are also very fun to play because you can cover twelve octaves instead the normal two and a half you can with a regular horn.

Michael Brecker’s got that sweet East Coast rock tone that David Sandborn has. It sounds so New York - he was the house sax player in the Saturday Night Live band for years and he fucking wails. Laura by Scissor Sisters has the same sound at the end, and they always fade that bit out on the radio, but it sounds great.

He owned a bunch of saxophones, and on this he plays an aged Selmer Mark 6, an instrument with which he became so familiar he once said: “It’s as if I own every molecule of the instrument.”

You’d know the Selmer sound, too. It sounds dense and less tinny. You’d notice it if you knew what to listen for. Even if you don’t have a great ear, you’d hear it, as sure as you’d recognise the sound of your own car door closing.

His ownership of the horn really shows on here and I love the solo in this because it carries the song around. A lot of sax solos are breaks, showcases – this is part of the song and it totally makes it. If you don’t like the cheesy keyboards at the beginning, stick it out for a couple of minutes to get to that bit. You can always use the time to pretend you’re the opening credits of a 1980’s TV cop show.

A bit of jazz/rock for you, anyway. I don’t always give you what you want, but at least it’s always what you get.

Listen: Trains

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Related pages
Weekend Song archive

Also on This Is This
Herbie Goes Sideways
The Love Bug takes time away from a mundane and unfulfilling life to embark on a well-scripted tour of the Californian vineyards. Don Knotts stars.
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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 7:00 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or you can skip to the end and leave a comment yourself.