As a kid, when summer started here in San Diego I knew good times were ahead. Sure we had to deal with a little June gloom at times but once July hit it was nothing but blue skies before school started again in September. No school all summer meant a lot of free time for my brother and I but that didn’t mean a lot of time just sitting in front of the TV. My dad made sure we were always active. When our Little League baseball seasons and all-star tournaments concluded, we usually just kept playing different sports together out in front of our house to keep busy. We could juggle the soccer ball on the front lawn, shoot some hoops in our driveway and then practice fielding grounders on baseballs thrown against the cement wall by our garage. But our favorite game was the tennis ball game which was basically baseball with a tennis ball with OTL type rules to determine which hits were singles, doubles, triples and home runs. We pitched from the windup and from the stretch depending on how many imaginary runners were on base. Balls were fair or foul based on a tall light pole and a small electrical box both across the street. We would play full 9 inning games and emulate our favorite big leaguers’ batting stances. If you were friends with me or my brother in the 80’s and 90’s, you definitely played the tennis ball game with us out in front of our house.
My Brother and I Getting Ready for Baseball Camp
When it was hot on those summer days and we needed a breather, mom always made sure to have the Otter Pops and Gatorade ready to cool us down. But these games out in front of our house didn’t take up our whole summer. At least one day per week my dad would get us out of the house early in the morning so that we could load up our car full of beach essentials and take a quick drive to the La Jolla Shores. My dad has always been routine oriented and very prompt so if he said we had to leave at 9am that meant we were leaving right at 9am. My dad’s reasoning for leaving so early was because that’s when all of the surfers who had been at the beach that morning would be leaving to head to their 9-5 jobs. This then opened up some prime parking spots for us in an always hectic La Jolla Shores’ parking lot. That 7 minute drive from our house to and from La Jolla Shores was one of my favorite parts of our summer beach days. We had 2 different cars that we would take and that was all dependent on who would be coming with us. There was the 1974 Chevy Vega Hatchback that my dad won on a game show in the 70’s and the 1985 Woodgrain Chevy Caprice Classic Station Wagon with whitewall tires and a clean light beige leather interior. The FM dial on both cars was usually set to play Soft Rock on KYXY 96.5 and conversation often took a backseat to the music being played on the radio. I was the youngest of the fam so I would sit in the backseat and just stare out of the window and look at the greenery of the surrounding canyons while listening to the music my dad played. While the Morey Boogie Board sessions and the Smashball rallies in the sand help remind me of our summer days at the beach, it is actually the tunes on the radio that my dad played back then that truly helps me remember those great times.
Our family’s 1985 Caprice Classic Station Wagon out in front of our house
While Michael Jackson’s Thriller album got plenty of spin on our record player in the early 80’s, it was the smooth Soft Rock songs on FM 96.5 that really resonate from my childhood. The lush production of those tunes with a wide variety of different instrumentation like congas and steel drums just sounded good to my ears and put me at ease. The vocals on those tracks seemed to just melt on top of the wavy beats and helped give the songs great positive vibes. And they all had a California feel which made me think of sunshine, skateboards and sunsets and that is likely a big reason why the genre was also known as the West Coast Sound. These songs I heard on the radio as a child just remind me of my dad. I’ve always admired how he kept an even keel no matter the situation at hand. As I grow older, I’m noticing that I’m just trying to follow in his footsteps and be more like him. Be mindful and enjoy life’s ups and downs while taking things one day at a time.
Dad in the early 1980’s
To help jog my memory of the Soft Rock music that my dad used to play on KYXY 96.5 back in the day, I needed to do some research so I could find out more about the key players and top hits of this era. Right off the bat I knew some of the Soft Rock songs from my deep love of Hip Hop where beatmakers often pull samples from different genres of music by taking short loops of the original songs to recreate their own beats. Take Michael McDonald and his classic “I Keep Forgetting” for example. That’s an all-time Soft Rock banger but when it was sampled by Warren G and Nate Dogg for 1994’s Rap classic, “Regulate”, it gave the song new life and exposed a much newer audience to its brilliance. Then there was one of my favorite rappers MF Doom who sampled Steely Dan’s “Black Cow” for his 1997 cut “Gas Drawls” off of the classic rap album, Operation Doomsday. It marked another hip hop beat that I loved with its origins being from Soft Rock. Hip Hop has always showed love to other musical genres by sampling so hearing snippets of old Soft Rock songs I used to hear on the radio was really cool to me. Now, when doing my Soft Rock homework for this blog, I went in knowing some of the big names like Steely Dan, The Doobie Brothers and Michael McDonald but to find out that Michael McDonald was a member of both Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers before his solo career?!?! MIND BLOWN! This is probably common knowledge to a lot of people but for me it was brand new. Dope!
The musical genre name of Soft Rock might have held back this era of music from around 1975 - 1984 because let’s be real, who in their right mind wants to listen to music that’s called “soft”. Close to 15 years ago, the genre of this music got a new sub-genre name of “Yacht Rock” from a series of YouTube videos that were written, directed and produced by JD Ryznar. To give you a little taste, I’ve included episode 1 below. If you haven’t seen any of these 12 videos in the series, please give one or two a whirl. And before you hit play on the video(s), just realize the magnitude of what happened because of these YouTube videos right here. A once popular sub-genre called Soft Rock that middle aged dads listened to in the 70’s and 80’s started to evolve into a new genre called Yacht Rock that younger generations today are really getting behind.
Now, before we get way deep into some actual Yacht Rock songs, I need you to mentally set yourself adrift during the warm summer months and imagine yourself on a yacht or sailboat just sailing through the Pacific Ocean without a worry on your mind. Your mustache is on point, your short shorts are exposing just the right amount of thigh, your pastel colored Izod button up shirt is trying to keep that unruly chest hair at bay, your boat shoes are soaking up all of the sweat from your bare feet and your model girlfriend in a fluorescent one piece bathing suit just handed you a pre-rolled doobie of that good good that was freshly sparked. As the afternoon breeze blows through your feathered hair you turn the knob on that radio and welcome Yacht Rock’s Top 10 Songs into your eardrums….
Top 10 Yacht Rock Songs
Ronnie Dupree “Steal Away”
2. The Doobie Brothers “What a Fool Believes”
3. Christopher Cross “Sailing”
4. Boz Scaggs “Lowdown”
5. Steely Dan “Hey Nineteen”
6. Hall & Oates “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)”
7. Ambrosia “How Much I Feel”
8. Michael McDonald “I Keep Forgetting”
9. Seals & Croft “Summer Breeze”
10. Rupert Holmes “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”
Now, I’m sure people will see this list and quickly mention what I’ve missed but I had to stop this at 10 songs and I wanted to find the right visuals with each song to try to paint the picture of what Yacht Rock means to me. And just listening to songs from the Yacht Rock genre doesn’t do it justice. Below are some of my favorite Yacht Rock album covers which are just amazing.
Best Yacht Rock Album Covers
To close this blog, I’ll leave you with my comprehensive Spotify playlist of all of my favorite Yacht Rock songs. As with all of my playlists, I’ll forever be tinkering with the mix by adding new songs and rearranging the order of their inclusion. With each shuffle play it takes me back to those rides to the beach as a kid. Hope you all enjoy!
