show openers and yacht rock
Oh my goodness! You opened another email from me. I thank you.
I ran into a couple of you in real life (how nice!) and you said kind things about the newsletter. I am validated. This could have stopped but you've encouraged me and now it will never end.
The Mix
This newsletter is brought to you by my live mix series, the Vinyl Score Music Show - the next time you have an hour to kill and you want to have me pick the music, that's how to do it! Get notified when I go live - "follow" the Twitch channel. Would you like it? I don't know. The last show had two different Japanese bands, some Janet Jackson, Depeche Mode, a little Price is Right music, Dazz Band, Gorillaz, Daft Punk, and New Order.
Yacht Rock Is Rock
My SiriusXM radio told me that the "Yacht Rock" channel is back, and I've been listening to it while I drive around. Important point: nobody called this "yacht rock" until 2005's "Yacht Rock" debuted. I have seen a couple of episodes of that - it's cute enough - but they apparently popularized the term, and streaming services started to piece together playlists to capitalize on the new attention.
That new attention was not necessarily positive! The show is even a little mild in its endorsement of 70's rock, making fun as much as it celebrates and contrasts soft-rock personalities. "Yacht rock" was initially meant as a pejorative - a dismissive term for wuss-music, not worth your time. To be fair, some percentage of it ("Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", "Margaritaville", most of what Bread recorded) is too ridiculous, too overstated, or too indulgent for my tastes. But there's a ton that rewards a deeper listen:
- 10cc - "I'm Not In Love"
- Ozark Mountain Daredevils - "Jackie Blue"
- Gerry Rafferty - "Right Down the Line"
- Paul Davis - "Cool Night"
- Jefferson Starship - "With Your Love" (that's the cover of an album you can buy)
That's five bangers with nary a mention of Loggins, Messina, Hall, Oates, Fagen, Becker, or Michael MacDonald. (We'll get to it in a future newsletter.)
Late 70's AOR is harmonically complex, frequently funny, technically unimpeachable, and enjoyable without any sort of ironic detachment. It was as popular as anything else in the early 80's - people didn't get on boats or dress up to enjoy it, it is just what music was.
So the term comes into usage - sort of playfully, but mostly mean-spirited - in 2005. It becomes a subgenre all its own with a small following. But then in 2015, as Steven Orlofksy notes in In Defense of Yacht Rock:
If negativity is the defining musical trademark of the Trump era, then yacht rock was a defiant, fingers-planted-firmly-within-ears disregard of any and all political unrest.
In summary, everybody was too cool for Steely Dan, and then they actually heard it, and they kind of liked it. At the same time, the actual world got awful enough that that this sort of nostalgia / retreat started to sound pretty good.
Biz Markie Dies
I don't have a ton to say about this - I was only a little aware of Biz Markie's breakout, and always found him amusing if not terribly compelling when he showed up with the Beastie Boys or the X-Ecutioners.
But Chris Hayes made a good point on his show after Biz Markie's death at 57. We just mourned MF DOOM at 49, DMX at 50, Prince Markie Dee of The Fat Boys at 52, and Shock G at 57. Black men in America have an average life span of 68 years old - for white men, it's 75.
Which I think is a concrete way in to understanding "systemic" racism - it's not that a mean white person shows up and kills African-American men seven years before they're supposed to die, it's that between the societal pressures, the barriers to health care, the toxins, the more limited financial opportunities, and the day-by-day violence in neighborhoods that are nearly impossible to escape, the sum effect is nearly a decade cut off of Black life spans.
Shows!
My first live show back from the pandemic was Electric Six at Turf Club. The opener was Volk, billed as a "thrash-and-twang duo" but also with terms such as "cowpunk", "poetry", and "cinematic" in there as well. They were eleven times better than that sounds. Check them out playing Ray Wylie Hubbard’s "Snake Farm" - a highlight of the show for me.
In August I have tickets to:
- Willie Wisely / Turf Club, Sat Aug 7
- A Twins game, but it's "First Avenue Night" so they're going to play Replacements songs over the sound system / Tue Aug 17
- Ween / Surly Field, Sat Aug 21
OK thanks everyone! Let me know what you think and share this with your friends if you think they would dig it.