Former President Clinton soiled many a political fundraiser with his amateurish BSS technique.

Amongst the many horrible things to emerge from the cultural swamp of the 1980s (Reaganomics, crack, leg-warmers, the Coreys Haim and Feldman, Winger), there is nothing in the world of Rock music worse than the Bad Saxophone Solo. Unremittingly phony and invariably devoid of any shred of real emotion or creative expression, this sonic assault on all that is worthwhile is more destructive and more widespread than one could imagine in their most horrific nightmare.

Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the Bad Saxophone Solo (BSS) is its origins. By all accounts, no matter when it was first laid to wax, all BSS seem directly evolved from Kenny G.'s 1986 smooth-jazz hit "Songbird." So awful that it seems to exist outside of time, this incomprehensible morass of suck is ground zero for all Bad Saxophone Solos ever. Spreading the BSS from Smooth Jazz throughout the world of popular music, "Songbird"'s evil is so pervasive that not even the collective din of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roland Kirk, Eric Dolphy, Joe Henderson, and Lester Young all simultaneously spinning in their graves non-stop since its inception can drown out its malignant influence.

The BSS' powers are truly formidable: after but a few seconds of its aural assault, a cheesy-but-catchy pretentious prog-pop tune like Supertramp's "The Logical Song" is rendered so muzacky and faux-funky as to make the theme from Night Court seem like a vintage George Clinton production. The Bad Saxophone Solo has even been known to crop up within the confines of otherwise decent songs. In the middle of a relatively quality tune like the Pogues' "Summer in Siam," the schlocky BSS is like a fire hydrant at a dog-show - a piss-soaked novelty distracting all attention away from the true talent and refinement therein.

But, let's back up. What exactly is the BSS? The Bad Saxophone solo is an insidious but elusive blight. On the wings of some Joe Cool sunglasses-wearing, bandana-ed jackass's overly emotive stage gesticulations it alternately glides or skronks and wails it's way into your brain. Before long you're staring vacuously into space, tuning out not just it but the entire world around you, because the truly Bad Saxophone Solo is literally mind-numbing. Which song contained its gut-wrenching sound? And how exactly did its pseudo-bluesy/soulful melodic interpolation go? You don't know, because, like elevator music (even the worst of which is a preferable alternative), a Bad Saxophone Solo convinces the brain on an essentially primal level that sensory stimulus is a bad thing. In order to avoid the BSS (along with some of its multi-media counterparts like the Bad Hotel Painting and the Local Car Dealership Commercial) the brain attempts to ignore it and in the process closes itself off to the world around it.

Kenny G. - an "incomprehensible morass of suck."

Alas, the world, and unfortunately the BSS, is still there, and upon recovery blame must be placed in order for any true healing to begin. Some culprits are obvious. The music of Glenn Frey is a good place to start. Often, as one begins to surface out of the depths of a Bad Saxophone Solo-induced stupor, vague memories of the drab tones of this former Eagle's laughably idiotic music will linger. Was it "The Heat Is On" that so dulled your senses, or could it have been the pummel-your-forehead-repeatedly-against-a-spackled-concrete-wall tones of that soft-rock atrocity "You Belong To the City?" You don't know, and that's the point. Like an aural lobotomy, the very nature of the Bad Saxophone Solo prevents its victim from remembering its exact source. What's more, prior knowledge of the stopped-up commode that is Frey's musical canon may not be enough to help the victim sort out what just happened. Even an experienced BSS victim is subject to the confusion and chaos that follows a severe attack, often mistaking the music of Frey for other sources (such as serial-BSS conveyors like Huey Lewis and the News or Hall and Oates).

The experience can be excruciating. A typical Bad Saxophone Solo experience finds the victim awakening - like a sorority-girl the morning after a Rohypnol-enhanced date-rape - groggy and disoriented but acutely aware that they've been fucked and that it was a far from pleasurable experience. Drooling uncontrollably and just steps away from catatonia, the unlucky listener will, for example, catch the last few endlessly repeated chords of the George Thorogood blues-rock abortion that is "Bad to the Bone." Many victims are unable to believe that this song could actually get any worse, but indeed, its atrociously soulless and completely forgettable Bad Saxophone Solo makes it so.

The question remains: why would the Bad Saxophone Solo do this? What is it goal? The answer may be revealed deep within the lyrics of one particularly saccharine and nauseous BSS carrier. To the casual observer, Wham!'s "Careless Whisper" might be dismissed as the lonely musings of two men, one struggling with the desire to thwart anonymity and the other struggling to stop getting caught having anonymous homosexual sex in public bathrooms. But "Careless Whisper" is so much more than that. It is actually both a purveyor of the BSS and an unintentional post-modern treatise on the plight of the Bad Saxophone Solo victim. The "whisper" at issue here is not just, as would at first seem the case, the hushed words of a gossiping lover. The "whisper" is in fact the bleating, faux-soothing tones of a particularly bland Bad Saxophone Solo. "No, I'm never gonna dance again…" reveals "Careless Whisper"'s narrator, unveiling the ultimate harrowing result of the BSS. The BSS seeks to prevent (often with great success) its victim from any further enjoyment of music. Ever. Especially music that contains saxophones. The ugly truth is that, for the BSS victim, "guilty feet have got no rhythm."

There is no known cure for the Bad Saxophone Solo, and no band or musical style is safe from its cancerous grasp. Great bands like Pink Floyd, David Bowie, and, yes, even the Rolling Stones have bowed to its hokey will. It is inescapable. Even if one were to explicitly avoid elevators, dentist chairs and movie soundtracks, the BSS would still creep up unannounced on Classic Rock radio - perhaps even in an overblown "life on the road" Bob Seger ballad. Worse yet, though the frequency of the BSS has diminished since the onset of the 90s (3d Wave Ska Revival non-withstanding), it is quickly being replaced by an even more deadly variant: the dreaded Rock and Roll Scratch-DJ Turntable Solo (RRSDJTS). For the love of God, please, beware.