Pat also did an album of noise-skronk after encouragement from Thurston Moore, and a bunch of Ornette.

Song X? I have it. It has its moments, but it's never really grabbed me. Haven't listened to it that much, though. Metheny's no Kenny G; he's a serious player. And I have no problem with mellow stuff. His duet album with Charlie Haden, Beyond the Missouri Sky, couldn't be any mellower, but I enjoy it, especially "Spiritual," written by Charlie's son Josh. That said, Metheny, like George Benson & Wes Montgomery before him, made a bunch of very successful records by catering, if not to the mainstream exactly, to the same audience as Kenny G & Grover Washington, Jr, the "Light jazz" format. <shudder> Again, that's not the same as mellow jazz, or jazz with strings, or even light jazz without the quotation marks. And I'm glad he's making a nice living with it, but he's one of those guys that makes you sad that he mails it in so often. Who cares if KG mails it in because what difference would it make? But Metheny really has it, even if it's easy to forget, and then you hear something like A Turtle's Dream (he's fabulous on "Throw It Away"), and it's like... man, why's he spend his time on that other crap?

True enough, but Pat gets my respect for going back and doing projects like Song X after he'd made his name futzing about with dreary fusion.

"G.G. Allen wouldn't take a shit in there."

Bwahahahaha!!!

But it was Allin.

t /pedant

I saw Methany live with...I think Jack DeJohnette and Charlie Haden? The Paradise (in Boston) in the late 80s or early 90s. Anyway, it was a much more trad trio line up and they kicked ASS!

As for his fusion stuff, I have a weakness for fusion, so I adore AS FALLS WICHITA....

Metheny's no Kenny G; he's a serious player.

Metheny's comments on Kenny G.

ETA: If that link doesn't work, try this.

Heh. First a very fair assessment of Kenny G's actual music merits or defaults, a thoughtful outreach to be inclusive, and then he gets to Kenny G. overdubbing himself on a classic Louis Armstrong track. Go Pat!

but when kenny g decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have imagined possible. he, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that louis armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. by disrespecting louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, kenny g has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. we ignore this, “let it slide”, at our own peril.

G.G. Allin wouldn't take a shit in there.

But Dino would walk around naked. Fortunately it was Merle with whom my old housemate had a brief fling. The Murder Junkies were surprisingly polite. Not to ruin their rep or anything.

DeJohnette & Haden are the Song X rhythm section. Metheny & Haden are very close. The former was best man at Haden's last wedding.

You know, it is just fun to contemplate the classic Ornette quartet. They must've seeemed like the biggest Fuck You in the history of jazz to date when they came along. Ornette was playing on a white plastic saxophone! Cherry was playing a pocket trumpet! They've got a white guy (Haden) who grew up playing in country bands on bass!

It's kind of ironic that Ornette's first major supporter was John Lewis Modern Jazz Quartet leader. (The irony is in the disparity between the MJQ's conservative rep & Lewis's big ears, not that he was really conservative but dug the weirdos from L.A.) I think Lewis was the one who pitched Ornette to Nesuhi Ertegun & got him signed to Atlantic.

I'll don the asbestos suit and defend Kenny G's "Songbird" as a single. When it came out, it was something a little different for Top 40 radio and made a nice change of pace. If he were a one-hit wonder, I'd remember him rather fondly.

But he caught on. And his shtick got old fast. One new-agey song, rather nice. VH-1 staple, ick.

And I claim no jazz cred for anything created after about 1945.