I object to the absurd categorization of anything, with,
of course, the genre names attached to music the heart of this tirade. I've
long hated the term "Classic Rock." Rather than simply categorizing the music produced
from 1966 to 1975, the term places a stigma that suggests that this
is "your parents' music" rather than its timelessness. It's interesting that
for young people there is this idea of "parents' music" until there’s an
artist they embrace, someone like Neil Young, Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. The
reality is, popular music today, along the lines of Taylor Swift and her
mediocre disciples, suggest instead that young people are already listening to parents' music, and they're not parents yet. I am ashamed of 16 and 17-year-old
boys whose favorite artist is Taylor Swift; the musical equivalent of a guy
having The Notebook as his favorite movie (yeah, yeah, I know I’ll hear
about that one).
Of the genre-specific terms, my least favorite is "Yacht
Rock." The moniker is pretentious, inaccurate, and derogatory and it makes far
more sense, if categorization is a necessity, to refer to the musical type as The
California Sound, which in itself is a misnomer but at least suggests an accurate
musical category. The term Yacht Rock intimates the type of music that the
yuppie-set of the 70s listened to, supposedly on their yachts, essentially
inspired by the Beach Boys' "Sloop John B." or the most famous Yacht Rock song
of all, "Sailing" by Christopher Cross.
The California Sound was a direct result of FM picking up
where AM left off, essentially FM's top 40. The Wrecking Crew, those studio
musicians in L.A. who are responsible for the incredible musicianship of those
60s AM Hits found their talents less necessary as AOR (Album Oriented Rock)
took over the FM airwaves, and started creating their own bands, like Toto, or working
on a full-time basis with the artists of the day. The California Sound
represented those musicians who still work primarily in the studio or were
borrowed from bands of other genres. The perfect example being Steely Dan.
Steely Dan, with the exception of its first three LPs, Can't
Buy a Thrill, Countdown to Ecstacy and Pretzel Logic, wasn't really a band but
an ideology, a coming together of musical artists, not unlike The Alan Parsons
Project with a jazz sensibility. Here the term Yacht Rock is at its most
offensive. Like Alan Parsons, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker recruited members for the band and into the studio. Bringing along with them, more often
than not, jazz fusion musicians like Wayne Shorter, Larry Carlton, and Jaco
Pastorius. The high production values certainly fit that Yacht Rock mold, but
the terminology cheapens what could be described as the most sophisticated
music of the 70s.
My point is to put an end to foolhardy categorization. Should
we need to put everything into neat little cubbies, The California Sound is far
more broadly appropriate term without the derogatory implication. The California
sound held a distinctly popular sound, a recognizable musical motif that fit
into that FM top 40 mold. And while it encompasses, on a popular level, artists
like Ambrosia, Boz Scaggs, Kenny Loggins, Gerry Rafferty, Andrew Gold, Seals and
Crofts and the Little River Band. As an extension of The Wrecking Crew ideology,
many musicians, particularly jazz musicians, ventured out of the commercial
realm to work with artists like Steely Dan, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, Jackson
Browne, and Joni Mitchell. Not one pejorative thing can be said about any of
those artists; enough with the corny monikers.
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