I know yacht rock when I hear it. Same for butt rock and hair metal. Most people say I have a highly refined music genre detector!
Yeah, one allows for various levels of discernment.
When I hear Steve Gadd or Bernard Purdie creating a pocket, or a blistering, inventive Larry Carlton, or Richard Tee creating a groove ex nihilo, it doesn’t sound smoove to me at all.
But opinions vary.
IMHO, the term “yacht rock” says more about the people using the term than it serves as any sort of valid descriptor of the musicians being labeled as such. I won’t expand upon that for the purposes of civility.
And what of it offends you so? Is it the combination of words? If they called it “Elevator Soul” would it be OK? Because the genre definitely exists.
For instance, here’s a contemporary band that I feel has incorporated “Yacht Rock” into a newer sound very effectively. They self identify as “Aggressive Elevator Soul”, and I think it fits as well as YR would. If nothing else, it’s wayyy more accurate about where you’d be likely to hear that kind of pop. I think they’re brilliant, and are pretty much doing all of it out of love of the music and art.
Yes, but surely you know you’re not listening to Phill “Phithly Animal” Taylor, Dave Lombardo, or Dale Crover at the time, right? I mean, sure liqueurs are technically distillates and they burn a bit, but we both know whiskey (and even harder) stuff exists.
Nitpick. The original Yacht Rock clips were created for Channel 101. Only the twelfth episode, a sorta coda five years later, was made for YouTube.
I say Yacht Rock is as real a genre as Christmas Music. Both have multiple channels devoted to them, both were named as genres in retrospect, neither have real definitions, and both contain obvious outliers that people have arbitrarily decided belong (Steely Dan and Sleigh Bells, e.g.). Yacht Rock is actually better because channels exist all year long, not just for a few weeks.
I guarantee you that many of the butt rockers and hair metal musicians can and did escape their “genre”. And if they didn’t, who gives a fuck?!
Love all those “animals”, and no “smoove” there. But there is serious badass there (direct DC knowledge from over 30 years ago).
I’m not sure all that many people use the term much at all. I could be wrong, but far as I can tell it is primarily a programming term, used as a label for radio/cable music stations. People have a general idea of what it is, but I’m not sure all that many people go around boasting that their favorite genre is “yacht rock.” I mean I’m sure there are a few people that use that term. But many* of those are probably the kind of louche douchebags that ride around on yachts unironically wearing “Captain” Daryl Dragon hats.
- Disclaimer: Any Dopers claiming their favorite genre is “yacht rock” are of course almost certainly exempt from the accusation of being a louche douchebag
.
For what it’s worth, one of the few times I use the adjective “louche” is specifically in describing the music of Steely Dan. It just seems to fit them (or, at least, my image of them) perfectly.
Indeed.
There are first-call musicians who can read fly-shit off a page. First take, go, print.
But we are talking about rock and roll here, or what some people prefer to call “yacht rock.” That’s not so evident that first-call musicians for those jobs, that they have the reading abilities of, say, a jazz sideman who might be called upon to read specific voicings, or sight-transpose.
I find the term insulting, in that it diminishes the immense skill and knowledge required on the part of many musicians associated with this “genre.”
It’s also meaningless. WTH does Steely Dan have to do with some Kenny Loggins falsetto or anything else? Captain and Tenille. Whatever. Only an imbecile would lump such disparate artists together.
No, I don’t know that.
Any more than I know that Dee Dee Ramone or John Entwistle or Chuck Rainey or James Jamerson is playing.
Excellence has a quality of its own.
And there’s your problem.
Nobody listening to this stuff appreciatively knows or cares whit fucking one for the artists beyond maybe the lead vocalist. And that person mostly as the name, not the sound.
I do not see e.g. Steely Dan, as some consistent opus of work. It’s X dozen songs that each succeed or fail for me based entirely on that 3 minutes of sound. I don’t know, or care, who did most of the songs I can remember.
Case in counterpoint that supports my contention.
I’ve listened to that song countless times over the years. Other than the couple of months it first got played to death, I’ve always enjoyed it in a silly throwaway sense. I never noticed it had drums beyond the usual repetitive “thump thumpety thump” in the background just like every other song of the era.
I just listened to it a moment ago and it does contain a long-ish drum opening I recognized instantly but before that listen I did not consciously know or remember it was even there. The entire rest of the song has drums that are just “thump thumpety thump” in the background. A primitive 1970s drum machine would have done as well for that part at least.
IMO the drums were as ordinary as any other generic pop song of the era. The idea that that drummer somehow “made” the song into a hit is utterly ludicrous. …
To me. A decidedly unsophisticated consumer of pop music as the background track to my life. It’s on, I hear it, I remember some of it. That is all.
I will propose to both of you (and everyone else) that I am far closer to the typical listening audience for Top 40 back in the 1970s when this stuff was fresh, and for the oldies or YR channels today.
This entire discussion strikes me as foodies waxing eloquent over the subtle differences between Wendy’s and Burger King. I can sure be a foodie, but I’m also sure not going to wax eloquent over Wendy’s.
Yes.
And I suppose that’s why marketing people exist.
God bless them.
Doesn’t make it true or right, though.
Well, aside from Jack in the Box and Popeye’s, of course!
True. It was a collective wherein Don Fagen recorded dozens of tracks and assembled them more or less ad hoc, from album to album. Despite having played keys (including the Rhodes piano) for a few decades, and learned their tunes just from boredom or curiosity over the years, I never really “got” them until I started playing more guitar and bass.
De gustibus, you know.
For sure.
And I picked “Steely Dan” as my example solely because the name has been mentioned so many times in this thread. I certainly recognize the band name from that era. If you asked me to name a single Steely Dan tune I could not. Good bet I’d recognize many (most?) of their tunes if you played just a few measures for me. Me knowing they did that tune? Very unlikely.
My point entirely is that these sorts of category labels exist for plebs like me, not for cognoscenti like you. So it’s hardly surprising you find the categories lacking.
I’m particularly glad that these lovely children were here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed a courage little seen in this day and age.
Seriously, if you can’t tell the difference between these bass players by hearing them, I don’t know how I can help you.
I dunno, they all have more in common with each other than they do with say, the catalogues of John Zorn, Hank Williams and Gershon Kingsley. Like it or not, music is sold through marketing. You’d get all three of Loggins, Dan and the Captain on the same radio station because people who like one often like the others. When you switch between these artists, the listeners don’t head in droves to change the station. So the radio station programs them all together, and if you do that long enough they begin to all fit into this very loosely defined genre.
Are you serious? Those are wildly different bassists! I don’t have a career as a music critic, but it’s obviously a joke on my part.
Yeah, I grasped your argument, and I appreciate your civility. After all, it’s only rock and roll and we like it!
You make an excellent point, here and in your previous. Like, how the hell would I know what Tiffany and…can’t remember the other teen idols from then…Amy Grant?
Whatever it is, people approach music differently. And FTR I’m hardly a member of the illuminati cognoscenti…but I won’t turn down the offer of the cloak and gown.
No, you make a good point and bring this back down to planet earth, which is appreciated.
Yes. I knew it would come back to this.
Of course.
“Acid Jazz” is a perfect example. No. Nobody knows what that is!
Hehehe, ok. Makes far more sense now.
Exactly. Hilarity ensued and much merriment was had.
Debbie Gibson!
I remember at the university I was at in the late 1980s there was a Debbie Gibson fan club called Between the Lines. Maybe it was a local chapter. I went in for one meeting. It was mostly girls with big hair.
Their discussions seemed to involve mostly complaining about clueless critics of pop music conflating Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, even though it should be obvious that the first was a seriously talented singer songwriter while the latter was a talentless hack.
My curiosity about Debbie Gibson was fueled by an accident whereby I picked up a case of Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth Cologne at my part time job in a drug store and did not realize that all the bottles within were smashed and I was soaked in that sickly sweet smelling liquid. Being the only “key holder” on duty I had to work out my shift in those clothes. I can still smell the bloody thing.