Post #407677 by tikibars on Sat, Sep 13, 2008 9:37 AM

Interestingly, I wrote an anti-Kenny G rant myself, way back in 2000. Reposted here for your pleasure... and please keep in mind that this is eight years old, for whatever that is worth.

"The Balance of the Cosmos

November, 2000

On a recent Friday, during November of 2000, I had to spend sixteen hours working with none other than Kenny G. Telling my friends about this assignment uniformly resulted in rolling eyes and groans of pity. Even my parents - who one might peg as members of G.’s target market - gagged at the thought of having to spend any amount of time listening to his music. In fact, no matter whom I told about this gig, the result was more or less an expression of sympathy.

The fated day came, and it wasn’t as bad as all of that; I did my job and largely managed to avoid paying too much attention to the music itself, focusing instead on technical matters and just getting the gig done. But I did have some time to reflect on my situation, and the following is what I came up with (bear in mind that I had 16 hours!).

More than anything else, Kenny G’s brand of so-called jazz resembles the sort of music one might hear in the background of an info-mercial or in a corporate training film. His music is of the sort that normally gets created to be packaged up for sale to video post-production houses for use in any given film or video project that might need some completely transparent and inoffensive music in the background. The difference is that most of this music is sold without the artist’s name on it; it is simply a truly ‘generic’ music meant to be used as the video producers see fit, and is sold with a license to incorporate it into their productions. Many people make a living creating this canned music without ever gaining an ounce of notoriety. Kenny G. and a few others like him have managed to take this same type of hopelessly bland and soulless music, and sell it directly to consumers as entertainment.

These thousands of people who make a living in the ‘needle drop’ industry (that’s what they call music made specifically for sale to audio/video production houses), are not passing themselves off as artists; they are simply ‘content providers’ (to use the corporate terminology). We hear this music every day of our lives as background music for television, radio, and shopping mall muzak systems. When Kenny and his ilk decided that this music is no longer for the background, and is something that needs to be sold as art, someone out there decided that they were right, these artists are selling a tremendous number of records.

What is even worse is that they are winning Grammys and other similar awards, which is an accolade supposedly reserved for the most successful of contemporary artists. When I mention the words ‘artists’ and ‘successful’ in the same sentence, remember that in the arts (idealistically), money and success are absolutely not mutually exclusive terms. However, it seems that the Grammy committee has forgotten that because these awards routinely go to artists who sell insane numbers of records, rather than to those who have made some important contribution to their art. Where is the passion or artistry in recycling the style of music used in radio jingles and are selling it as entertainment?

Consider this. Our generation, and probably the one before it, has grown up watching so much television, and so much advertising, that a large percentage of us have decided that the background music for the training film we had to watch at our job is equally as valid as entertainment as any of the great recording artists of our century. Whether your taste is classical, rock, jazz, country, rap, or Left Orbit Temple, there are people out there who would rather listen to the background music from the public address system at the mall than Beethoven, Bauhaus, Brubeck, Billy Bob, or Bomb Master B (how’s that for alliteration?). So Kenny G. - genius or mooncalf? - has risen to the challenge, making muzak for the masses. Commercial soundtrack music to keep you sedated when your television is off.

His is comfortable, safe, unchallenging music to continue the numbing of your brain, a process begun by the governmental agencies and mega corporations that run our daily lives for us, whether we know it or not. One step at a time, so slowly we didn’t even notice it happening, our capitalist society has become a corporate-feudal state where men in tall glass towers lord over the serfs working below them. Five percent of the people control ninety five percent of the wealth, and in our world, knowledge is wealth. If you control what the people are reading and hearing, you control what the people are thinking, and you then control the people. When AOL and Time/Warner (who used to be Time and Warner, two separate companies) merged this year, one of the world’s biggest proponents of unapologetic censorship merged with the world’s biggest source of media dissemination.

What does that mean to you and I? It means that we are already reading, viewing, posting, and absorbing what they want us to, and nothing else. The products we buy are not the products of the highest quality or the greatest artistic merit, they are the products that have the most corporate advertising capital behind their marketing campaigns. With that level or control, those in power will only continue to consolidate their power, and to erode our so-called freedoms one at a time.

The people in charge must maintain control. The only way to control a society as big as ours is to keep the people fat, happy, and stupid. If people begin to think, they become dangerous. If three hundred million Americans all decided to start thinking for themselves, the result would be anarchy, or so the government believes. So as each year passes, we have radio, television, movies, web sites, and newspapers which have become more about a slick package than about any real content. Consider a paper like USA Today, full of colorful graphics, but little useful information. Any solid and useful material is considered dangerous, and anything challenging might make people react. Editorials are commonly watered down so as not to upset the advertisers who support and fund the media in which the editorials are printed. Keeping the ad dollars flowing in is a priority over expressing an opinion that might, in turn, make other people start using their noodles.

Opinions are dangerous. Can you tell your clients at your job what you really think? Are you sure?

As time goes by, our media is giving us less and less, and we are becoming more stupid, less interesting, and less willing to complain about things that aren’t quite right. We are being fed this tedious propaganda to such a staggering degree that we don’t realize there are alternatives. Those who do realize that there are alternatives have often become too complacent to seek them out; it is just too much trouble, or it might threaten their happily stagnant way of life.

So it is no wonder that people who sell you the music of a commercial are making more money than people who are pouring some real passion into their art. The consumers have been stripped of their passions and turned into corporate zombie serfs, plodding along through their lives without even stopping to consider how completely they are being manipulated. If they decide that the music of a commercial is good music, perhaps they will listen more carefully to a commercial, and then the corporate overlords have scored twice: they have sold you a Kenny G. record and a new Sport Utility Vehicle. Hey wait - you live in the middle of a big city - why on earth do you need a Sport Utility Vehicle?

You Don’t!

But they made you think you do, didn’t they?

So speaking of vehicles, let’s change gears for just a moment.

When I moved to Chicago in 1992, there were a multitude of little independent coffee shops all over the city. I don’t happen to be a big coffee drinker, but I patronized them anyway. I liked the atmosphere. I liked the exposed brick, the hardwood floors, and some local artist’s work up on the walls. I liked how I had a choice of which one to go to. They were all pretty different, each reflecting the individuality of the owner/operator. Some had food, others let you bring your own in. Some would feature a kid with an acoustic guitar singing his/her heart out in the corner. I’d see people playing games - everything from Chess to Candyland to Magic: The Gathering cards. I could stop in and see friends, meet new ones, or just stare off into space, trying to get inspired to record or write, or take a picture or do something with my brain when my own house became too claustrophobic to support my wanderlust. In some of these places I felt very comfortable, and in others I sort of got the willies and so I avoided them.

But one by one, over an astonishingly short period of years, they all vanished. For each independent coffee house that upped and died, two Starbucks took their place. Like some weird mutant self destructive hydra, the coffee shops of the world were spawning Starbucks by the handful wherever an indie shop was decapitated.

Like Hard Rock Cafes or Burger Kings, Starbucks all over the world are exactly the same. They are safe. We know exactly what we are going to get, and there is little or no variation between a Starbucks in New York or a Starbucks in San Diego or that Starbucks that will inevitably appear on Rapa Nui one sad day. Within these uniform walls, a mass produced product of dubious quality is sold at an outrageous price. And we have come to feel that this is acceptable. An onslaught of publicity from the media has us believing that Starbucks is a quality product, and that we need to pay three dollars for a cup of so-called gourmet coffee. Only a few years before this, we were content with what we got for under a buck at 7-11, and thrilled with what that indie coffee shop on the corner charged a dollar fifty for.

Try playing cards at Starbucks, show me one local artist who has his/her work on the walls, and don’t even think about bringing your guitar in - the Starbucks corporation has made sure that their pre-approved piped-in music is all that you will hear. All of their unavoidable stores look the same, smell the same, and sound the same. Some even have valet parking for your SUV. And try being friendly to that stranger slurping his Grande next to you. Freak.

The zombie serfs of America, dulled by television’s innocuous lack of a message, are happy to line up at a Starbucks - or Blockbuster - or McDonald’s - because it involves no brain power to make the decisions necessary to get what we think we want. Even the people who cognate these issues are apt to patronize these businesses anyway, because it is ‘convenient’. Why cross the street only to potentially discover something new and stimulating in some small way? The same old comfortable, safe, low-quality product awaits you on this side of the street without asking you to make any sort of effort. Never mind your integrity. Give me convenience or give me death.

The media, controlled by mega-conglomerates, has us walking around like automatons who are incapable of making decisions for ourselves. Thusly, we have stopped being inquisitive. We have been trained to not take advantage of our option to make choices. These choices are diminishing, as the big corporate feudal lords mercilessly put their neighboring small business man or independent artist out of business. They are making us a people who would rather listen to advertising as entertainment than seek out something truly made with passion or skill.

The environmental effects of these companies are another rant entirely, but let me mention that McDonald’s does more to hurt our world than General Motors and DuPont combined, and Blockbuster is owned, in part, by the same people who fund the abortion clinic bombers. More on that some other time.

So at the very end of my day of working with Kenny G., one of his sound crew told me something that was so apt, so fitting, so perfect - and yet terrifying and wretched - that it brought into focus all of the ideas, facts, and opinions I have expressed in this rant. It made more sense than anything I have heard in years. This little factoid made a big puzzle complete. This one little tidbit was so nauseating, and yet, learning it seemed to bring the cosmos into balance. All of a sudden, everything made perfect, sick, terrifying, sense.

Kenny G. owns exactly 50% of the shares in the Starbucks corporation.

Put that in your alto sax and drink some coffee through it, serf-boy. You’re fucked.

©2000 James Teitelbaum"