Marina Rock vs. Yacht Rock
Terry_Clubbup
833 Posts
1. Who here is registered on youtube.com as [color:blue]homechicago[/b][/color]?2. I am concerned about the Yacht Rock series of indie comedy films corruptingthe idea and essence of Marina Rock. Summertime kind of gets me thinkingabout such things.3. "Yacht" instantly connotes wealth and exclusion, whereas The Marina hasroom for everyone.4. The term Marina Rock came to the attention of Soulstrut via some guyin Detroit I think. RAJ or maybe DCastillo would know.5. The Yacht Rock videos are amusing, but they are really not very funnyto me. Funny clown, but not funny deep ha-ha. It's like a bunch of collegekids run wild with a couple cameras and a bag of thrifted clothes.I get the feeling the creators and actors are just young enough to nothave actually lived through the era they reference, the era when MichaelMcDonald and Hall&Oates were topping the charts. So to them it's a grabbag of styles and names to play with. It's a chance for some high-pitchvoiced white kids to sprout scraggly beards and act foolish in early 80sexercise clothes and sunglasses.6. Marina Rock is a very specific, often temporary lifestyle choice.Very few musicians are lifelong through-and-through Marina Rockers.Jimmy Buffet is one of those. Graham Nash is not.However, Graham Nash once posed for an album cover that lookedlike this:
For a variety of reasons, which noone has yet been able to tie togetherinto a reasonable thesis, in the mid 70s many rockers, folkies, jazzbosand pop singers suddenly started doing the following things:a) Writing songs about beach or bay settings, often vaguely about relaxing in modest, yet naturally beautiful water surroundings.b) Posing for album covers on boats, docks or beaches while wearingtank tops, cutoff jean shorts, swim trunks, hawaiian shirts, no shirts,or button-down shirts all the way unbuttoned.c) Having graphic designers overlay silhouettes of palm trees onthe album cover.d) Recording their albums in the Carribean.Just to emphasize my point, I feel sure in saying that the Climax Blues Bandcannot be labelled as a "Marina Rock Band":
...but this here is definitely[/b] a Marina Rock album:
7. So when you see me, don't ask me about Yacht Rock.8. Someone has made a Yacht Rock water-based graemlin, yet noone evermade a Step Into The Marina graemlin?Thanks for listening,
For a variety of reasons, which noone has yet been able to tie togetherinto a reasonable thesis, in the mid 70s many rockers, folkies, jazzbosand pop singers suddenly started doing the following things:a) Writing songs about beach or bay settings, often vaguely about relaxing in modest, yet naturally beautiful water surroundings.b) Posing for album covers on boats, docks or beaches while wearingtank tops, cutoff jean shorts, swim trunks, hawaiian shirts, no shirts,or button-down shirts all the way unbuttoned.c) Having graphic designers overlay silhouettes of palm trees onthe album cover.d) Recording their albums in the Carribean.Just to emphasize my point, I feel sure in saying that the Climax Blues Bandcannot be labelled as a "Marina Rock Band":...but this here is definitely[/b] a Marina Rock album:7. So when you see me, don't ask me about Yacht Rock.8. Someone has made a Yacht Rock water-based graemlin, yet noone evermade a Step Into The Marina graemlin?Thanks for listening,
Comments
I'm pretty sure someone did that graemlin. Or maybe it was just a regular .jpeg
But it was done!
what does that sound like? Is it anything like that Nolan & Crossley Marina Moder LP?
Thes[/b] time to drop some moustache soul on the heads
The people got a right to know
Yes. Can we get an NYC viewpernt on diluting the brand? Fucking kids, man.
More to come, re: The trillness of Margaritaville-ness, and/or Cat Stevens's Foreigner and its place in the "Dark Marina" subgenre.
Dudes ain't ready for the Nantucket Sleighride that can and should and will and is finna commence.
BABY
About 50% eazy n breezy... (the other 50% not so much so)
But nothing is like that Nolan and Crossley.
SG
Now Ross, you know you are jamming my frequencies with this.
Because in Chicago, fans of that album are just as likely to look
like this:
as they are like this:
Say word?
I am now not at all sure that I am ready for that type of duty.
B/W I heard things about your momma. As in "she don't dance." I won't even get into what your daddy won't do.
YOU ARE ALL ADRIFT IN SOME BLUE HAWAII OF THE MIND, LIKE SO MANY RUDDERLESS DINGHIES.
I WILL NOT HAVE WHAT HAPPENED TO COSMO'S "FAT GEORGE CLOONEY" HAPPEN TO THEEE MOTHERFUCKING MARINA-ROCK JUMP-OFF--IF THIS STARTS TO PETER OUT INTO HAND-WRINGING AND LITERALISM, I WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO TAKE THE DAISY OUT OF MY BARREL.
THIS THREAD IS LIKE A LOVE AFFAIR: BY THE TIME YOU REALIZE IT'S OVER, IT WILL HAVE BEEN OVER. LIKE THE LAST GOOD DAY OF THE YEAR, YOU WILL NOT RECOGNIZE IT UNTIL IT HAS PASSED. THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR NEEDLE-DROPPING AND PRICE-CHECKING AND IRONICALLY FINGERING SOME DOLLAR-BIN PUKA.
THIS IS NOT ADDRESSED TO ANY ONE PERSON, BUT PLEASE: GET OFF THE BULLSHIT. THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN SAVING YOUR BULLETS FOR, THOSE OF YOU THAT ARE IN POSSESSION OF THEM.
SUMMER IS ENDING. WE ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE OCTOBER COUNTRY. RECOGNIZE THE GIFT BEFORE YOU AND THE GIFT WITHIN YOU AND
STEP
IN
THE
FUCKING
MARINA.
Like that clean-shaven Climax Blues Band LP above, I don't know if they make shit you can feel.
PAYCHUNKS, IT ain't ABOUT WHAT YOU can FEEL, IT ABOUT
WHAT YOU can REEL.
I am pretty sure that things are getting real serious
right now, check out the front page of the Chicago Tribune,
RIGHT NOW : www.chicagotribune.com
The city bakes. (Tribune)
3 dead in heat wave
Autopsies Wednesday confirm that three men died from weather-related causes, while police find the bodies of four more possible heat victims.
??? 2 missing in heat wave
??? City turns into steam bath
??? East Coast is wilting
??? Vote: Hot or cold?
And Terry one of these days I want to sit down and discuss the way that both Yacht Rock and Marina Rock correlate with 2 subgenres that exist in Cosmo world:
White Heat
Dad Rock
It's too obvious for me - now if someone can pretty up the Grand Puba LP of the same name, replacing the sports car with a schooner, we'll have something.
FISH JUMP UP TO GET BAIT DOWN.
I'm going to reclaim that shit one day, bro. One of these days... I'm telling you.
??? City turns into steam bath
BBQ Beat
than anything else.
What about my failed attempt to intigrate the Marina Patina into the record grading lexicon?
I think I've said it here before, but I'll say it again, because I love the Clubbubbed One.
I got locked up years ago. And upon my release (all in the family biting their nails, wondering if he would, in Clifford Coulter's words, "do it, again"), my family took the advice of a social worker and tried to find something to "occupy" my "time."
The solution? Renting me a bass guitar (it was the '80s, Cliff "The Major Rager on the Four-Stringed Mother Fucker" Burton had just gotten smooshed by a bus, and I was in FULL HESH) from the local music shop for $15/month, which included lessons by some washed up Marinaite who wore flip flops and a button down shirt, as Mac Dre says, fully perked.
The class was five or six kids. All of 'em played guitar. I was the only bassist. Marina dude would spend most of the class showing the kids how to make a GMajor or FMinor chord, then, kinda casually (deck shoes-like), look at me and say, "Just pump the root note."
The first song we learned how to play, and it took weeks, was "Margaritaville." He'd play this weird psuedo-Karaoke-like version of the song--with a terrible singer and minimal instrumentation--that we followed along to on our computer printouts with chord notations written above the lyrics. Wasting away on some shaker of bullshit, I said. Man, I wanted to shred dude, do you hear me? S-H-R-E-D. But this deckhand was all about keeping me anchored to the root. Had he know this was my first taste of freedom, dude might have treated me with a little respect. Bass isn't just some backgroun shit, you know?
Finally, after about six lessons, he asked if anyone had any songs they wished to learn. The other guitar kiddies were content with whatever bullshit this dude offered, but my hand shot up. "Yea, I got something I wanna know howda play." I pulled a cassette copy of a cassette copy of a friend's older brother's Kill 'Em All LP out and said, "Whiplash!"
Instructor Marina put the cassette into his in-class portable boombox, pressed play, and made a grimace--as if he were trying to fart out of his eyes--when the song came on. This guy? What a dick. He listened for about thirty seconds, then shut it off, and played the song for the class, saying, "it's mostly just open E and a few power chords [with the most condescendingly bourgeoisie accent on power chord, as if it hurt to even think of one, much less have to play one] at the end... Anyone else?"
Dissed and dismissed before the song even finished! The fuckknob didn't even wait for the "life out here is raw" reference in the last (arguably the best) verse. I quit the class, but kept the bass (much to the worry of my family: "is this one of the red flags we read about - Disobeying Authority?") and my friend Paul Crabtree showed me all the death metal songs I could think of. Paul wasn't afraid of a fucking power chord, and that's truth.
It was years before I was able to, as Castle Floating Dock says, "step in the marina." But now that I'm in, you know, I'm in.
I'm even inclined to pump the root from time to time.
For those just outside the know:
p.s. I don't watch television, but I gather there is some cable show about Yacht Rock. I saw a billboard on the subway that I couldn't really figure out. Anyone, in the name of edification, care to enlighten me on this trivial mockery of Clubbubbington's cornerstone?
Now I'm on Jaco Pastorios. Fuck, don't get me started, Come on Come Over.
DROP A GEM ON 'EM.