Let's play sax in a non-sax band

 Revenge of the Band Nerd

Let’s say you’re a tween being forced to join the school band, and the director decides they need another saxophone. Your only experience with the instrument is in the context of finger-snappin cocktail jazz, a genre that is generally not aimed at the discriminating 21st century child. So how do you get a kid into jazz when their only context is the boring academic jazz espoused by corny dudes like Branford Marsalis? Here’s a few that tickled my fancy before appreciating the perfection of Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, and Pharoah Sanders.

I’m aware that one person’s noise is another person’s jazz, but I’m trying to reach across the aisle, to build bridges, to let the younger generations know that saxophone is a cool instrument worthy of your respect.

Murder in the Red Barn - Get In Before the Rain

I was completely unaware of this band before seeing them open one of the last Lovesick shows at a Greek restaurant in Detroit. 404 Records was a force to be reckoned with in the harsher end of 90s midwest post-hardcore, but fitting a band named after a Tom Waits song, Murder in the Red Barn were closer to the creepy backwoods post-rock of Slint. In person, despite playing on a low stage in a well-lit second-floor bar, they were incredibly creepy. Two acoustic guitar players, an electric bass player, a drummer, and a sax player, the latter of which I and other audience members agreed looked like he was possessed.

Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges

The man gets around (Bon Iver, Arcade Fire, Laurie Anderson), but
his solo albums are an uncompromising aural assault, almost exclusively made with his arsenal of giant saxophones. Wired up with an array of contact mics, he conjures brutal soundscapes without the aid of looping pedals or overdubs. Live, he hunches over his instrument, lunging to the floor with the beat, channeling a carefully controlled fury. You see the guy and think “he kicks ass” then hear it and think “his music also kicks ass”.

Sweep the Leg Johnny - Tomorrow We Will Run Faster

The thing that unites a lot of the entries on this list is an intense physicality with an instrument not usually associated with it, after all you see more guitar players performing acrobatics with their instruments than saxophonists. Sweep the Leg, despite their sound being based more on noise, jazz and post-rock, were an integral part of the 90s emo scene, showing up on an Emo Diaries comp, and sharing members with bands like Swing Kids and Haymarket Riot. Part of this is due to their band connections, but it’s mostly due to their chaotic live shows, which could result in injury, damaged instruments, and in one legendary instance, an entire ceiling collapse. Kids can get into jazz-influenced weirdo rock as long as they can mosh to it.

Dickie Landry - Fifteen Saxophones

The most jazz-adjacent act on this list, Dickie Landry was part of the New York loft scene in the 70s and 80s, mingling with visual artists as well as performing with the Philip Glass Ensemble. Using a primitive looping system similar to Frippertronics, he folds layers of saxophones over each other, creating dense textures that don’t sound much like any traditional instrument. The three pieces here exist as a sort of musical cloud, melodically static but slowly morphing across the extended running times. While no one was going to mosh to this, it’s brutal in its own way, using the timbres inherent to a sax to create something new and surprising.