Big Picture Big Sound

Editor's note: Did we think we would ever coax veteran BPBS reviewer Mark Grady out of retirement? We did not! But then along came "Yacht Rock," the groovy new documentary (or "dockumentary," if you will) that's the latest entry in HBO's Music Box series and, well there may not be a man on this planet who's more passionate about those smooth and jazzy west coast sounds, so Mark agreed to dust off his keyboard and give us his thoughts. Oh, and per Mark, "Who said I retired? I just take a long time between projects." Fair enough.

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It's safe to say that ‘Yacht Rock', isn't, by most people, a term that is used in a loving and respectful way. It certainly isn't used with the intention of paying homage to the gifted artists who wrote, performed, and produced the music that the phrase references; and it definitely isn't meant as a tip of the hat to the millions of people out there who still pump it up to full volume (or listen secretly in their closets) at any opportunity.

With "Music Box: Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary," HBO does its best to try and change that.

As this new release explains, the term ‘Yacht Rock' was coined in 2005 by writers JD Ryznar and Hunter Stair in a web series of the same name that went viral before "viral" was even a thing. The series constituted several seven-to-ten minute vignettes depicting a fictionized reenactment of some of the most famous songs of the genre, and poking loving fun at the artists involved. As Ryznar and Stair astutely realized, the connective tissue of the Yacht Rock genre was the loosely-affiliated group of extremely talented session musicians who hopped from studio to studio, providing the backing tracks to some of the biggest hits of the late 70's and 80's. Ask an industry outsider or anyone who isn't a die-hard music fan who Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is and you'll get a blank look. Yet, people sure are familiar with his scorching guitar work on Steely Dan's "Reelin' In The Years," The Doobie Brother's "Long Train Running," and Deniece Williams' "Let's Hear It for the Boy," to name but a small few.

The same can be said for Steve Lukather, whose most famous works include the relentlessly catchy guitar riff on Michael Jackson's "Beat It." Google the man: by his own account he has appeared on no fewer that 2,000 records in his career. On the other hand, there's also Michael McDonald, who pretty much everyone knows, if for no other reason than the fact that he has added backup vocals to what feels like roughly 50% of the songs in the Yacht Rock oeuvre.

It is the contention of "Yacht Rock" that these artists brought the particular flavor that defines the genre: superb performances, slick production, and complex writing and arranging, all masterfully delivered by a fairly small group of people in the Los Angeles music scene who were bringing their jazz sensibilities to the pop world.

With "Yacht Rock," director Garret Price helms his second episode of HBO's "Music Box" series, having previously tackled Woodstock 99 in a first season release about the notorious 1999 music festival that fundamentally spelled the end of the 1990s. Here, Price does an artful job of following the history of the development of what would later be known as Yacht Rock, pinpointing its beginning with Steely Dan, a band that was notorious for churning through, and making on impact on, the best studio talent in Los Angeles at the time. But instead of just being a dry retrospective look at the scene, the documentary keeps things fresh using clips of interviews both current and contemporaneous with some of the genre's biggest contributors. The star-studded ‘gets' for this movie are led principally by Michael McDonald (of Doobie Brothers fame), and also include Kenny Loggins, Christoper Cross, Gary Katz, Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro...the list goes on and on.

Whether "Yacht Rock" changes the minds of anyone who already has deep-rooted feeling in favor or against the style of music remains to be seen, but the documentary succeeds in expressing its love of the genre and does so in a way that is every bit as sleek, catchy, and smooth as the music itself. "Yacht Rock" may not be a hard-hitting look at the seedy underbelly of the LA music scene of the period - but then again, neither was the music it celebrates, and maybe that's the point.