Saxophone?
Do do do, just whistling past the american graveyard again… still… do do do…
I’ve been listening to King Crimson’s Red album quite a bit over the last few days. Crimson, in their original incarnation, had a sax player. First it was Ian McDonald, then it was Mel Collins. When band leader Robert Fripp shook things up and hired a whole new band with a drastically new sound in 1972 the saxophones went away. For a while, at least. By 1974, when they were recording the Red album, they were down to three band members, Fripp (guitar/mellotron), John Wetton (bass/vocals), and Bill Bruford (drums/percussion). Fripp was the only soloist in the lineup… sort of… the other two guys could have cranked out leads with the best of them (because they pretty much were the best of them) but instead they brought in a bunch of session musicians to help fill in the gaps. Among those session musicians were two sax players; Ian McDonald (alto) and Mel Collins (soprano).
Collins plays on the album’s centerpiece, “Starless” and his playing is wonderful (as always). McDonald also plays on “Starless” as well as “One More Red Nightmare”. His playing is out of the fucking world amazing. He wails, especially on “Starless”.
Listening to this record quite a bit lately has me thinking… is the sax playing inspiring me a little? The RPM Challenge is less than two weeks away and it’s coming up on time for me to start recording some new music. Do I suddenly find myself wanting to play the saxophone again? I haven’t taken my alto sax out of its case since I finished the 2020 RPM Challenge. Five years. Is it time to break it out again? I think it might be. I know I can still play even if I am only about 1% of the sax player I was when I was a music major from 1989-1991 and sax was my primary instrument in school. Guitar was a hobby I played on the side, even though I spent nearly infinitely more time playing guitar than sax… which contributed to me leaving school before I graduated.
So I guess what I am trying to say is, if throughout the month of February you start hearing about me writing songs in the key of E flat or B flat instead of E and A, and you start hearing me complain about severe pain in my lips and jaw (due to not having practiced at all in the last five years), then we can probably go ahead and blame Mel Collins and the late Ian McDonald. Just saying.
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