Yacht Rock

Smooth? Oh, my ... (The Bus 1.10)

Welcome aboard The Bus!

The Stop

A sub-genre of 1970s soft rock, Yacht Rock was one of the most successful musical styles from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The term did not exist when the music it describes was popular, as it was coined pejoratively years later by a comedy web series¹ that both mocked and celebrated its soft sounds.

Originally referred to as the ‘West Coast Sound,’ Yacht Rock is now recognised as a legitimate sub-set of the 1970s music scene. The AllMusic website² hosts an informative discussion about Yacht Rock and what the label does and doesn’t include. A quick dive into the relevant literature shows there are many opinions on what makes a song ‘Yacht Rock’, but - according to the MasterClass website³ - there are three typical characteristics: (1) a crystalline production bringing ‘intense precision,’ (2) harmonic sophistication resulting from the musicians’ often ‘classical … training’ and (3) that the song’s story - or theme - is centred in or around Los Angeles and/or the California coast.

Identifying a song as ‘Yacht Rock’ is difficult - there are numerous opinions on the subject and, as the criteria above show, the taxonomy is vague. Thankfully, the website yachtornyacht.com provides a list of songs, each ranked according to how ‘yacht’ or ‘nyacht’ they are. Bands and musicians including Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers,⁴ Pablo Cruise, Steely Dan and Christopher Cross are life members of the Yacht Rock club. It is a website - and a sub-genre - worth checking out, if only to remind or educate yourself about what was once cool … or nyacht. 

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to an article about the breakthrough which enabled the translation of cuneiform in the 19th Century. It’s a thriller: to crack the code the translator clung to a rock cliff hundreds of feet above the ground while attempting to decipher the inscription chiselled into the cliff. Definitely worth a read.

The Riddle of the Mountain

The Book

Due to the mid-70s nature of the Stop, today’s book is from the same period. Alan Dean Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (1978) is a strange beast. Published almost immediately after the first Star Wars film,⁵ it was written as a possible low-budget sequel if the film failed. That didn’t happen and the novel is credited with starting the Star Wars Expanded Universe.⁶

But that’s not really important. What makes this novel special is that Foster - and no one else - had ANY IDEA of the storyline to come. Seriously, I cannot stress this any stronger. At this point in the story there is no hint that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, that Luke and Leia are actually siblings (which accounts for a (fortunately slow-burning and unconsummated) romance between the two in this book),⁷ that Boba Fett exists or that the Death Star will one day be rebuilt under the direct supervision of the Emperor as it orbits a planet populated by … violent teddybears.⁸  

Now, be warned: I appreciate adjectives and metaphors as much as anyone, but a line like ‘the darkness closed to a stygian blackness around them and the night sounds turned to sepulchral moans and hootings,’ doesn’t exactly put the book in my Top 10.⁹ But it’s certainly of its time. It just needs to be read in the correct environment: reclining with a cocktail on the deck of your yacht, a stack of albums lazily playing on the hi-fi, various pungent scents in the air …. 

Remember: You can buy Splinter of the Mind’s Eye at Amazon, but you can also get it from your local - or used - bookstore. And that choice is better for everyone.

The Sounds

Soundtracking today’s Stop, this playlist is composed of Yacht Rock - or Yacht Rock inspired - tracks.¹⁰ I test the playlists while driving to the grocery, picking the kids up from school, meandering through my local village, etc. On Friday, while testing this one, I stopped my car at a crosswalk. The windows were down, the volume was up, and I realised the people crossing could hear the music. And I also realised that - despite not having long hair or a moustache, despite not wearing a gold chain with a medallion and not reeking of Paco Rabanne … the music said I did. And that’s when I knew the mix was right.

The Question/Quotation

Today’s quotation is the opening paragraph of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. Despite itself, it’s rather thought-provoking …

“How beautiful was the universe, Luke thought. How beautifully flowing, glorious and aglow like the robe of a queen. Ice-black clean in its emptiness and solitude, so unlike the motley collage of spinning dust motes men called their worlds, where the human bacteria throve and multiplied and slaughtered one another. All so that one might say he stood a little higher than his fellows.”¹¹

If you have a thought on this Quotation - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed a brief diversion from your regular journey!

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If you haven’t climbed aboard, please do!

Until the next stop …

1. The mockumentary series is called (surprise!) Yacht Rock and its short episodes are worth checking out on YouTube.

2. AllMusic Loves Yacht Rock

3. A Brief History of Yacht Rock

4. The Doobie Brothers were fronted at this time by Michael McDonald, who appears as either lead or backing singer on a large number of Yacht Rock tracks - two on today’s playlist. One might say Michael McDonald is the captain of the yacht.

5. At the time the film was known as Star Wars. Not Chapter IV, not A New Hope, not anything else. Just Star Wars - because there was nothing else.

6. This is the name given to the inordinate amount of spin-off media (books, comics, films, video games, the execrable Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)), etc. that surround and complete the Star Wars storylines.

7. In the first film, there’s no question there’s some sort of romantic frisson between Luke and Leia. Foster was legitimately developing this; that they later turn out to be siblings was just one disappointment amongst many.

8. The Ewoks are ridiculous, but even less expected was the arrival of Jar Jar Binks. About whom no more shall be said.

9. Full disclosure: though I flicked through the novel before writing this issue, I’ve only really read this book once - when I was 8. But it isn’t the prose which I remember - that was par for the course in 1978. No, what sticks with me is a particularly violent scene involving a ruined eyeball that remains with me to this day - and is why I remember the novel in the first place.

10. As mentioned, there is controversy over what type of track passes the Yacht Rock test. Though I have no interest in the details, I’d say Yacht Rock is thematic … which is why Michael McDonald appears twice on this short list. Along with the lecherous Pablo Cruise, Exile and Rupert Holmes. Cocktails, coke and Canoe.

11. Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (5)