Please Rock the Yacht

Shut the fuck up. All of you, shut the fuck up. [Daryl] Hall and I will not stand idly by as you California vagina sailors stab the American airwaves in the balls with your shit[pause] music.

-- John Oates, in protest of the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes," on the un-TV showYacht Rock

Just now, as I opened the site, which I have bookmarked, and saw that there was a new episode of Yacht Rock up, "Yacht Rock #3," I gasped. You know that jolt of elation that courses through you when your boy smacks a homer in the bottom of the ninth, or when your favorite band plays the first few notes of your favorite song for the encore? That's what happened to me -- just now -- when I discovered this new episode of Yacht Rock.

What is Yacht Rock? Well, a couple of things. Yacht Rockis a short, mockumentary-style un-TV show created by J.D. Ryznar, Hunter Stair, and Lane Farnham. (By the way, if no one's coined "un-TV show," then you heard it here first.) You can view it at www.channel101.com, which is the Web outlet for a short film series put on by L.A.-based comedian/writer dudes Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab.

"Yacht rock" is also the term for the particular genre of music that is so lovingly and mockingly embraced by the show. As Hollywood Steve, the show's "host," puts it in the first episode, "From 1976 to 1984, the radio airwaves were dominated by really smooth music, also known as 'yacht rock.' These yacht rockers docked a remarkable fleet of No. 1 hits. And every song has a story behind it. Lemme tell you one." Each episode is a new story, and the characters are a cast of really smooth guys: "music industry mogul" Koko Goldstein; Michael McDonald, keyboardist and vocalist for the Doobie Brothers; Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina (who, it just so happens, are playing a reunion gig this Saturday, Sept. 10, at Berkeley's Greek Theatre); Hall & Oates; Steely Dan; Jeff "Skunk" Baxter; Christopher Cross; Chicago's Peter Cetera; and, in this most recent episode, Steve Perry, formerly of Journey.

It's so beautiful, so smooth. I heard the same song in my childhood dreams, played by a man named Christopher Cross. You must take that name and sing to the world. I have to die now.

-- Koko Goldstein, remarking on Christopher Cross' "Sailing" while dying from being impaled by his lucky harpoon

Before these funny men gave it a name, yacht rock was introduced to me by my friend Erick, who collects the stuff. This was a few years ago, back when we were living in a warehouse in Oakland. There were always people over, and there was usually drinking. Sometimes Erick would disappear and we'd find him in his room downloading songs, which he'd excitedly throw on and turn up.

As described by Erick (who would like me to note here that he is single, handsome, and looking for love), these were the songs playing on the car stereo when your parents drove you to kindergarten, songs that are burned in your memory, even though you can't remember where you might have heard them; songs like Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen" or the Doobie Brothers' "What a Fool Believes" or England Dan & John Ford Coley's "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight" or Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch," which, as Erick was explaining just the other night, is a really sad song about a guy trying to be honest about his feelings. I mean, what self-respecting music hipster couldn't relate to these lines: "Romance and all its strategy/ Leaves me battling with my pride/ But through the insecurity/ Some tenderness survives"?

If you're in your 20s, these were, and probably still are, your parents' songs. I hereby give you permission to borrow them from Mom and Dad, like you would an old lamp sitting unused in the attic.

Once you get that taste, it's like you're a pilot, you're in trouble, you gotta fly, you gotta keep flying. Once you get that fever, you gotta rock! Are you gonna do it the way Michael McDonald wants you to do it? Or are you gonna make it[sings] anyway you want it ...?

-- Steve Perry, encouraging Kenny Loggins to abandon yacht rock

You see, there's something uniquely enjoyable about yacht rock that I think a lot of you are missing out on. As my new favorite un-TV show so hilariously plays up, the genre consists of quintessentially bad music made by musicians who took themselves and their sentimentality way too seriously. But that describes pretty much all of pop music. What makes yacht rock special is that these musicians took themselves that seriously, sold literally millions of records, and, in the end, made some of the most innocuous music ever. Yacht rock was never brash or reckless. It had no dark underbelly (although one of Yacht Rock's funniest tacks is to give it one by, for example, making Hall & Oates a couple of shit-talking bullies). It existed in a vacuum of sorts, right between the end of disco and the beginning of synth pop, college rock, and glam metal. It was neither stylish nor edgy. It stood for one thing and one thing only: itself. The goal of the musicians who made yacht rock was to engineer the most virtuosically smooth pop song possible. It was a noble, albeit paradoxical and extremely funny, goal.