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Yacht Rock?! Who has experience.

#181
"Yacht rock" is a BS name. Aside from, perhaps, "Sailing" and maybe a Jimmy Buffett tune or two, it never had a thing to do with big boats, and less than you'd think about massive wealth. As with most genres, the tunes conventionally dumped in that rather suspect bucket inevitably include some schlocky ones, but they also include some excellent ones, many of which, as has been noted in several posts above, can be relatively challenging to play.
 
#182
Pocket Dave said:
I've done some Steely Dan in my own bands. Often we had to fake the vocals into 2-part harmonies in clubs where the pay limited hiring more hands.

I've even done "Kid Charlemagne" as a 3 piece on guitar and vocals, which is kind of a work out.

And I've played Michael Mcdonald and Doobies tunes as a sideman.

It always seems to go over well, and I always enjoy hearing others cover it when sang on key and played with the right groove (and where no one overplays their part).
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One of my bands plays a few SD tunes; a recent video of us doing Reelin' in the Years has over 1500 hits on YouTube due to some weird and random algorithm stuff. Sadly it was the first time we ever played it and it's not what I'd consider our best effort, but apparently the world really needed to see that.

I am brushing off "Josie" for a different band that wants to play it next year. I learned it a few years back as an exercise but never have played it with a band, so I'm excited to do that. It's not the challenge for me today that it was a few years ago, which is nice because it shows me that I've made some progress as a player.
 
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#184
turf3 said:
Yeah, I prefer my own neologism "Qiana Rock" which captures the clingy shirts open to the navel, the gold medallions, the Brut, all of it.
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I remember Qiana shirts quite well; I actually sold them in the men's furnishings area of a department store for about a year back in the '70s. I used to laugh to myself when someone would come in asking for "one of those Chianti shirts." Never bought one myself, though.
 
#186
turf3 said:
I hated the second half of the 1970s and I was so glad when that period ended. Now people are trying to recreate it. Ick!
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I probably like that period a bit better than you do. Any period that gave birth to great albums by Steely Dan, Little Feat, Weather Report, Stevie Wonder, and Milton Nascimento gets a few gold stars in my book. And I do like some of the songs from that period individually.

But there was certainly a lot of dreck too, and in any case I have no interest in recreating that or really any other period. Qiana was kind of creepy.
 
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#187
Richard Lindsey said:
I probably like that period a bit better than you do. Any period that gave birth to great albums by Steely Dan, Little Feat, Weather Report, Stevie Wonder, and Milton Nascimento gets a few gold stars in my book. And I do like some of the songs from that period individually.

But there was certainly a lot of dreck too, and in any case I have no interest in recreating that or really any other period. Qiana was kind of creepy.
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A lot of love for late 70's music here too. its also my favorite period for recording quality before MIDI and the sheen of the 80's all digital recording took over.
 
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#188
Of course in any period there is some good popular music, but things like the Captain and Tennille, later Fleetwood Mac, Doobie Brothers, late Eagles, and disco just overwhelmed everything else.
 
#189
Richard Lindsey said:
I probably like that period a bit better than you do. Any period that gave birth to great albums by Steely Dan, Little Feat, Weather Report, Stevie Wonder, and Milton Nascimento gets a few gold stars in my book. And I do like some of the songs from that period individually.

But there was certainly a lot of dreck too, and in any case I have no interest in recreating that or really any other period. Qiana was kind of creepy.
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The creepy stuff is what I associate with the disco of the era, not the kind of stuff we've later filed under the dreadful name of yacht rock. To me, that stuff grew out of the amalgam of folk and rock and southern music that started with people like Loggins and Messina and POCO, CSN and the early Doobie Brothers, and that was all miles away from any of the disco fashion or Saturday Night Fever stuff. These things were about as oppositional as you could get in that era.
 
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#190
LBS-bass said:
The creepy stuff is what I associate with the disco of the era, not the kind of stuff we've later filed under the dreadful name of yacht rock. To me, that stuff grew out of the amalgam of folk and rock and southern music that started with people like Loggins and Messina and POCO, CSN and the early Doobie Brothers, and that was all miles away from any of the disco fashion or Saturday Night Fever stuff. These things were about as oppositional as you could get in that era.
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I really think disco itself got a bad name from all the bad disco, the Saturday Night Fever stuff was some high quality and crafted music in my opinion.
 
#191
jerry said:
I really think disco itself got a bad name from all the bad disco, the Saturday Night Fever stuff was some high quality and crafted music in my opinion.
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In retrospect, I agree with you in terms of quality. But it was such a kneejerk reaction to so much of the other quality stuff that was happening that many people who loved the earlier stuff really never got past that.
 
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#193
Pocket Dave said:
Ironically, the term "yacht rock" was coined by the 2005-2010 parody web series of the same name. It was not flattering of the genre.

I was issued a temporary suspension from the Yacht Rock Facebook group for posting a link to it, BTW.

Though I like a lot of Yacht Rock, I was kinda proud of that.
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Yeah, it's a BS name that unfortunately stuck because too many people weren't around to experience what was actually happening in music back then. Oh, well.
 
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#195
Well, the term fits, though. Imagine an overweight old guy on a Chris-Craft, wearing white shoes a silk shirt with a medallion and smoking a cigar, and a couple younger women in bikinis, attracted by money, in 1978. He's not gonna be blasting the Who, the Clash, or King Crimson; he's gonna be playing the Doobie Brothers and thinking he's really hip and cool because his hair's touching his collar and he's got "rock and roll on the hi-fi, just like those kids do". That's what "Yacht Rock" means to me.
 
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#196
Well, I dunno, I don't think the term really fits that well for many of us who were alive and playing then. It certainly didn't fit any of the Steely Dan fans I knew, for example, or even Doobies fans. Sure, you could find people who fit that stereotype you cite, but IME the great majority who listened to that music actually didn't.
 
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#197
turf3 said:
Well, the term fits, though. Imagine an overweight old guy on a Chris-Craft, wearing white shoes a silk shirt with a medallion and smoking a cigar, and a couple younger women in bikinis, attracted by money, in 1978. He's not gonna be blasting the Who, the Clash, or King Crimson; he's gonna be playing the Doobie Brothers and thinking he's really hip and cool because his hair's touching his collar and he's got "rock and roll on the hi-fi, just like those kids do". That's what "Yacht Rock" means to me.
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Except that there are large swaths of fans who are nothing like the description there, who enjoy the melodies, harmonies, grooves, the sometimes musically sophisticated arrangements, the songs ...

I love the Who, and other bands in that lane. But it's a Big World (I love Joe Jackson, too :) ), and there are many flowers in the garden. Yacht Rock is too dismissive a term, as seen in the description given above. We may be stuck with it, for now anyway. I used to just think of it as pop rock, back when that music was being made.
 
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#198
turf3 said:
Well, the term fits, though. Imagine an overweight old guy on a Chris-Craft, wearing white shoes a silk shirt with a medallion and smoking a cigar, and a couple younger women in bikinis, attracted by money, in 1978. He's not gonna be blasting the Who, the Clash, or King Crimson; he's gonna be playing the Doobie Brothers and thinking he's really hip and cool because his hair's touching his collar and he's got "rock and roll on the hi-fi, just like those kids do". That's what "Yacht Rock" means to me.
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It's a stereotype that has little basis in reality. That guy was probably into disco and top 40, which would have been all over the map in terms of genre. For real boat people it was more about Jimmy Buffett and other, assorted acoustic-leaning bands, TBH. I used to play ocean resorts back in the day and lived in Annapolis on a boat for a while. I have no memory of any "yacht rock" era.
 
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#199
TyBo said:
Except that there are large swaths of fans who are nothing like the description there, who enjoy the melodies, harmonies, grooves, the sometimes musically sophisticated arrangements, the songs ...

I love the Who, and other bands in that lane. But it's a Big World (I love Joe Jackson, too :) ), and there are many flowers in the garden. Yacht Rock is too dismissive a term, as seen in the description given above. We may be stuck with it, for now anyway. I used to just think of it as pop rock, back when that music was being made.
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The silly thing is people dressing up in boat garb, as though that was ever a thing associated with a particular form of music. It wasn't.
 
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