I’d bet that most people right now would say “Welcome back” to all of you. But I’m not, because the false “Welcome back” is just a little pet peeve of mine. You didn’t really go anywhere — I did.

I’ve loudly stated my hatred for this phrase for many years now, like when I’m watching a live TV show and they come back from commercial and say “Welcome back.” You went somewhere, not me. I didn’t ask you to promote Always (with wings) or the 2009 Prius. I simply asked you to give me a live television show, but you had to go and interrupt it with commercials.

So, I can’t say “welcome back” in this case because it’s me that went dark for five weeks. I will, though, say “hi there,” or thank your office manager for letting your production slack off again as you spend time reading Bottom Feeders. So as I say thanks for letting me back into your brain once again, we start back up with the ass end of music in the ’80s.

For those of you joining me for the first time, each Wednesday we take a look at 20 or so “Bottom Feeders” – tracks from the Billboard Hot 100 chart that made it no higher than #41. And we’ll do it alphabetically by artist until we reach ZZ Top. We start 2009 off with the letter G.

Kenny G
“We’ve Saved the Best For Last” – 1989, #47 (download)

Well, we certainly didn’t “save the best” for the start of 2009, did we? Mr. Kenneth Gorelick (easy to see why he shortened this to “G” now, isn’t it?) starts us off with some jazzy R&B from his 1988 album Silhouette. The vocal stylings of Smokey Robinson actually save this song, which ends up being not exactly terrible. Sorry, “not exactly terrible” is the best compliment I can come up with for any Kenny G tune. Talk to me again when I’m 60 and we’ll see if I still say that. (more…)