You know for some reason (his looks and the last name “G”) I always thought Kenny G was Greek, but no, he is a nice (non-Greek) Jewish kid from Seattle, born Kenneth Bruce Gorelick. Oddly enough, wiki has absolutely no info about his parents and very little about his family life, so Ken, despite being one of the best-selling musicians of all time (let that sink in) is a very private person.
He got his start in 1973, when he was 17 and still in high school, as a “side man” (I don’t know what that is) in Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra. Oh to have been a fly on the wall when Ken and Barry had inter-session chats in 1973. He graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting. He played in a couple of bands and then in the early 80s decided to go solo and his smooth saxophone stylings have been delighting audiences (well, some audiences) ever since. According to wiki, the Chinese can’t get enough:
Since 1989, Kenny G’s recording “Going Home” from the Kenny G Live album has become an unconventional mega-hit throughout China: It has become the unofficial national closing song for businesses such as food courts, outdoor markets, health clubs, shopping malls and train stations throughout the country. Many businesses begin piping the music over their loudspeakers shortly before closing at night. Television stations also play the song before ending their evening broadcasts. Many Chinese, when asked, say they associate the song with the need to finish their activity or business and go home (although they may not even know the name of the song or its artist).
Let’s wrap up:
Kenny G now lives in Malibu, California. He is an avid golfer and has a handicap of +0.6.In the Golf Digest rankings of Top 100 in Music, according to golf handicap indexes of major musicians, he was first in 2006 and second in 2008. Kenny G is an aircraft pilot and has a De Havilland Beaver seaplane which he flies regularly. He was also an early investor in the Starbucks coffee house chain.
Maybe that is why you are so likely to hear Kenny G’s music playing at outlets of the Starbucks coffee house chain.
Ken is still loyal to Seattle and contributed this to Seattle-area icon Uwajimaya, an Asian grocery chain. There are other Kenny G recipes floating around, many with an Asian-healthy-Zen twist, but this one is one of the best.
Kenny G’s Salmon Scaloppine
Ingredients
8-ounce salmon filet (sliced into ¼-inch-thick pieces)
½ cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
1 medium shallot (minced)
¼ cup white wine (chardonnay works best)
1 small lemon (juice from half, no seeds)
¼ cup shelled edamame (soybeans) parboiled
Salt and pepper (to taste)
Small bunch fresh parsley
Preparation
Lightly dust salmon with flour, shaking off ay excess. Sauté salmon on medium high heat in grapeseed oil until one side is lightly browned. Flip filet and add shallot. Let shallot cook until transparent then add white wine and lemon juice.
Reduce sauce by half and add edamame. Serve topped with chopped parsley. Tastes great paired with sweet steamed rice and steamed asparagus or baby bok choy. Serves 2.
That reminds me of Closing Time by Semisonic which used to be played in all the Montreal (dive) bars at 3am.
I wonder how much money they got off of that song. I think over the course of my life I’ve heard that song more times than I’ve heard the National Anthem.
I dunno how much the band got, but Roger *should* have gotten a royalty off it, since it was his “Last Call” line, every night over at The Bowl😉💖
https://www.bryantlakebowl.com/about
Yep, that older gentleman in the bowling shirt *is* where they got the line!
I used to hear it regularly, on nights when I helped close shows out over at the BLB, back when I lived here the first time around.
Roger “officially” retired sometime in the early ’00’s… buuuut that lasted all of maaaaybe a month or two, before he decided he was bored and came back to “watch over this bunch of young hooligans”😉😂🤣💖
I would probably have a taste of Kenny G’s Salmon Scaloppine if it didn’t use grapeseed oil. That stuff is poison, as are all seed oils. The only oils to eat are olive or avocado. If you have to, some of the nut oils are OK. If you need shortening, lard is best.
Also,
I am jealous of Kenny G. He’s probably a perfectly nice person, but if you play his music around me, we’re gonna throw hands.
I know no fewer than three people who have pilot’s licenses. It was like a fashionable thing to do when we all turned 30. One of them still flies and together with a friend went in halfsies on a cheap, used Cessna 4-seater. He I’m really jealous of. He once told me that to communicate with airports along the way he doesn’t don a headset and dramatically say something like “Come in, BHX, do you read me me? This is Cessna 45D-as-in-dog99F-as-in-friend…” No. Because they fly so low he or a passenger with just call a small regional airport on a cellphone and say, “Hey, we’re in the Cessna just south of you. Which path do you want us to take?”
Did it used to easier to get a license or just more fashionable? Or maybe it’s a motorhead (vehicle enthusiast) thing. My grandfather has one and I know one car tuner my age who has his.
I don’t know if it was easier, it might have been because this was pre-9/11. I know it takes a lot of flight hours and those are expensive. My friend, the owner of the Cessna, says that maintaining the Cessna and storing/parking the Cessna is really no big deal, but fuel is very expensive, and that was when it probably cost half what it does now.
I always wonder whether these chats inevitably go toward things like support hose, eye drops, home remedies for tinnitus, allergic reactions to hair spray, and all of the mundane realities of coping with life on the road.
Like I wonder if Jaggar and Bowie got together for some MTV promos in 1984 and spent about 30 seconds ogling some young thing, and then hours complaining about how hard it was to find their brand of toothpaste and what was the best orthotic insert for their boots.
Well, if the rumors are true about Jagger and Bowie they might have been ogling—ahem, this is a family publication.
I was meh on Kenny G until I was 12 years old and we had a ballet recital dance to one of his songs.
4 fucking months of hearing a song over and over and over again.
After that, nope.
Oh my God.
A few years back I heard it when I was waiting somewhere and it was like bad flashbacks – echappe jete echappe jete assemble changement
Did you actually break into the routine, like some sort of Corps de Ballet latter-day Pavlov’s Dog? Or, actually more fittingly for Deadsplinter, like a Manchurian Candidate?
Thankfully, no.
Sometimes I get bored waiting for the microwave at work to finish heating my lunch and start tapping out time steps, waltz clogs, and 5 count riffs* though, depending on if the shoes I’m wearing can get a good percussive sound against the tile floor.
*I only remember 3 count riffs and 5 count riffs, and 3 count riffs are boring. Knowing how tap dancing is, there’s probably 347 varieties. For example, there’s 6 basic time steps. But you can do the first step as a stamp or flap or shuffle, so you’re up to 18. Then you can modify the cadence with “military style” or you can be all snazzy and do a hesitation variation, so now we’re up to 30 time steps. And that’s all I remember despite not having tap danced since college.
Edited to add: just remembered you can also do hesitation time steps starting in stomps, flaps, or shuffles, so that gets the count to 42 time steps that I know how to do.
Brighter, I was similarly “meh,” until–back when I worked at the dancewear/ skatewear/ cheerleading uniform place, we got a new cutter who i had to train in, on “how to use our cutting table.”
He was a really nice man, but a terrible employee,** and he loooooooved “Light Jazz.”
Since traditionally, we’d alwaysletthe cutter select the music we listened to in the back room, there was a TON of Kenny G on, during his “just over 90 days” as an employee…
Until it got to the point, where I was *trying* to do yardage-needed estimates in the back room, and ended up nearly falling asleep, FAR too many days in a row–as the speed of orders getting cut & out to the sewing floor dropped precipitously…
Because the local “Light Jazz Radio Station” was a bit too relaxing, and the music wasn’t just making *me* sleepy–i realized he was cutting to the tempo of the music–slowly!!!
After he broke the table for the third time–*insisting* he’d done *exactly* what I’d shown him to do, when setting up cutting orders (I’d previously trained three other cutters by that point, so I KNOW i showed him properly!🤨🤨🤨), we had to rush in a new cutting surface, AND I couldn’t get the cutting head to return to it’s original placement? My bosses fiiiiinally listened to what I’d been saying, and fired him.
But by THEN, it was past the 90-day “probationary period” MN allows, and they DID have to pay him some type of severance.
**Seriously!!!
I TRIED to tell my bosses how much & often he was screwing things up–it wasn’t until after he cut an order involving 3 layers of velvet wrong three times in a row(!!!), so that we had to overnight-ship in another 50#/50-yard roll of fabric to *re* cut that order, and THEN HE BROKE THE CUTTING TABLE, before they believed me!🙃
Salmon sounds edible. Kenny G, not so much…oops, not edible, I meant audible.