What happened to the saxaphone

So there I am in the car on the way to work. Instead of being old and boring and listening to Radio National in the car (http://www.abc.net.au/rn) as I usually do - that is what happens when your first number of bombs, err, cars are so old and decrepit that their 'sound system' is lucky to pick up AM radio, - I flick it over to my CDs.

And you know what is in my CD-six-stacker don't you?

80's CDs. surprise surprise

5 of them, to be accurate, and one Linkin Park CD to placate the child in the back (did i really give birth to a metalhead? he even hated Simply Red in utero!)

So, anyways, it starts playing 'Urgent' by Foreigner, and I'm bopping laong, thinking its a really great song to start the day. Energetic, forceful. Emotional. Even cheery in its odd sort of way. its definitely *boppy* which is what I need when I'm my metabolism is so resistant to caffeine these days not even going around to Maccas and getting a tall cappuccino makes any difference. But turning it *way* up and bopping along does kinda sorta mostly wake me up.

"You say it's urgent, so URGEnt, so-oh-oh URGENT", belts out Lou Gramm, "...Just you wait and see, how URGEnt, my love can be, it's urgent..."

I'm happy (which is very unusual for me driving to work). The sun is shining, I am singing at the top of my lungs without having to hear how bad I am. I may look like a total freakazoid in the car, but otherwise everything is good with the world.

And then *That* sax solo hits, and although I've heard it a thousand times before, I am still struck by its raw deliciousness. The sax, you see, is my favourite musical instrument. Not that I can play it, of course (I can't play *any* musical instrument) but the sound that can can come out of it is so expressive that I think its perhaps the most versatile instrument there is.

I have a bit of an 80's nostalgia orgasm at the traffic lights.

As the song ends and Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it" starts, which is another good song to play LOUD and to get you going in the morning, I am left wondering what happened to the humble sax.

Did Grunge kill the saxophone?

Was it Lisa Simpson that made "saxamaphone" playing rather uncool for hard-arsed rockers?

Why don't we hear sax's any more?

The 80's: All about the sax.