Sorry HBO, Dan Harmon and Channel 101 Already Did A Yacht Rock ‘Documentary’
On November 29th, HBO will release its documentary about the late 1970s to early 1980s soft rock wave that is now colloquially known as “yacht rock” as if the guys who invented the term didn’t already nail the untold story.
In Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, HBO will continue its Music Box Film series with an examination of an oft-mocked but still beloved era of music history, complete with profiles of yacht rock legends such as Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Christopher Cross and, of course, Steely Dan. Over the last few years, these artists have enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as a new generation of listeners continue to fall in love with the smooth, soulful, jazzy fusion of rock and roll and other predominantly Black genres played by white guys with flowing hair and bushy beards kissed by an ocean breeze.
Don't Miss
With Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, HBO hopes to examine the roots of the relatively short-lived genre and its extended second life in the 21st century, and it’s hard to imagine that J.D. Ryznar, Hunter D. Stair, Lane Farnham, Dan Harmon and the rest of the original Channel 101 crew won’t get a shout-out, seeing as they basically already did all that:
Ryznar, Stair and Farnham created the web series Yacht Rock for Harmon’s monthly short film festival Channel 101 in 2005, and they created 12 total episodes that told the highly fictionalized behind-the-scenes stories concerning the genre’s biggest names and the origins of their most enduring songs. Loggins, McDonald, Cross, Daryl Hall and John Oates are all represented in the series, often in highly exaggerated and shocking ways, as is the case with Oates’ portrayal as an abusive, overly competitive asshole who challenges Loggins and McDonald to a deadly songwriting competition.
Channel 101’s Yacht Rock is presented as a VH1 documentary-style series, with actual music critic “Hollywood” Steve Huey introducing the “real” music business story featured in each episode at the top of the show. As previously mentioned, Ryznar, Stair and Farnham coined the very term “yacht rock,” as the chimeric music movement had previously been called “West Coast sound” or “adult-oriented rock” before the Channel 101 team pointed out that the genre is a perfect soundtrack for casual boating, and that it would be so funny to put all of the key musicians in captain’s hats and have them hang out down by the docks all day.
Yacht Rock was a massive hit among younger Generation Xers and older Millennials who were still discovering what the web series medium was capable of in the mid-aughts, and the series sparked a sudden increase in interest in the music featured on the show. Despite his downright libelous portrayal in the series, Oates credited Yacht Rock with introducing Hall & Oates to the then-younger generation, and McDonald has gone on record as saying that he’s a huge fan of Ryznar, Stair and Farnham’s take on his life’s work.
“I thought Yacht Rock was hilarious,” McDonald said in a 2008 interview with Time Out. “And uncannily, you know, those things always have a little bit of truth to them. It’s kind of like when you get a letter from a stalker who’s never met you. They somehow hit on something, and you have to admit they’re pretty intuitive.”
Today, Ryznar, Stair, Huey and Yacht Rock actor/producer David Lyons are still yacht rocking, as they’ve hosted podcasts such as Beyond Yacht Rock and Yacht or Nyacht to continue examining the genre and to determine what is and is nyacht real yacht rock. Now, as HBO draws more mainstream attention to the genre that they first defined, it’s necessary to give the Channel 101 geniuses credit for being yacht rock’s greatest historians and custodians.
HBO’s documentary better be smooth. Real smooth.
