Drivin' Over Kanan

I like Chuck Eddy's Essentials columns in Spin. But the January 2009 one on Yacht Rock really spoke to me. Eight records, 7 album titles and 1 compilation. An era I'm familiar with because the late 70's was when I began my decades long affair with music. It's good Eddy didn't take the easy way out and include just Greatest Hits albums in his piece. The 7 names listed all bring back memories of bearded men playing pianos or strumming guitars: Christopher Cross, Rupert Holmes, Steely Dan, Boz Scaggs, Gerry Rafferty, Doobie Brothers and John Stewart. Of the 7 the one I'd replace would be Holmes, whose album doesn't hold up with the other 6. It does seem that Eddy missed one Yacht Rock legend: Kenny Loggins. This guy was inventing the genre with Messina, and he cowrote "What A Fool Believes" with Michael McDonald (who in return co-wrote "This Is It" with Loggins). Picking one non-Hits album by him I'd say go with Keep The Fire which has "This Is It" and the title track with its strange vocoder intro or Nightwatch which has the Stevie Nicks duet. Space limitations might have kept Eddy from going over 8 titles, which is why other legends of the genre are missing like Toto or even a band I always thought represented the genre, Little River Band. Still, call it what you want: Soft Rock, Yacht Rock, Guilty Pleasures its always fun to see an entry like this in an Alternative based magazine.