Tag Archives: Yacht Rock

Snoozing…

My husband sets my alarm for 6:31 AM every morning. I then proceed to systematically hit the snooze button every 6 minutes until roughly 7:01 AM. That means that the alarm goes off 6 times every morning (not counting the one time it goes off for my husband). It is set to a radio station. Here is how I woke up this morning:

6:31 AM – “If You Could Only See” by Tonic. Gag.
6:37 AM – “Vacation” by the Go-Gos. So aggressively cheerful that I should have woken up for good at that point.
6:43 AM – “Jesus is Just Alright” – The Doobie Brothers (henceforth referred to as “The Doobies”)
6:49 AM – “Back in Black” – ACDC
6:55 AM – I have no memory of this one, because my hand was lightning-quick in hitting the button. In fact, I think my half-slumbering self might have had my hand poised above the clock radio, ready to strike.
7:01 AM – “China Grove” – The Doobies

So this, obviously, got me thinking about The Doobies. They are playing at Innsbrook After Hours (a seasonal concert series here in the West End of Richmond, if you are not from around here) this Wednesday, April 22 at 7-ish. So of course local radio stations are playing their songs. They always do that when a band is getting ready to play here. Here’s the thing. A while ago I blogged about the Yacht Rock phenomenon that was sweeping my household. Like it or lump it, The Doobies were an important cog in the finite machine of Yacht Rock. Just watch the first YouTube video (linked to in the blog linked to above – can’t get to YouTube right now) and you’ll see how important they were to the whole smooth movement (yeah, I know, cheap shot).

My point is, how do you reconcile a song like “Jesus is Just Alright” or “China Grove” against a song like “Takin’ It To The Streets” or “What a Fool Believes”?

Of course I turned to Wikipedia for the answer. And my suspicions were confirmed. It’s Michael McDonald. He drastically changed the sound of The Doobie Brothers. Now that Yacht Rock video makes a lot more sense to me.

I think he might be the devil. I also think my husband might divorce me for this blog post.

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Emma Time!

Emma and Jeff came over last night so that Jeff could burn himself a couple CDs from our amazing Yacht Rock collection. By the way, I’ve been meaning to blog a little about that, because it has taken my husbad and all his friends by storm and now they all quote the videos (click here to view the first one on YouTube) and actually listen to Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald all day long. Anyway..

Emma was in rare form. She wanted her Daddy to “kickle” her and ran around laughing hysterically when he did. The picture at the very top was snapped when she tumbled onto the floor and Jeff asks her, “Did you get a boo-boo or something?” and she responded, “Or something…kickle me!!!” Here we see her as she appeared right after we told her to hike up her pants (droopy drawers). You can tell she’s all, “Is my wardrobe acceptable to you people now? Is it time to get back to the kickling and the playing?”

At one point she sought refuge with D, but she was ready to go kickle Daddy after only a second.


This was all before the concert in the den, wherein Emma sang to us every song she knew (in some cases several times each) Here is the setlist:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Jesus Loves the Little Children
ABC’s
Jesus Loves Me
Daddy Loves You (to the tune of Frere Jacques, and honestly a tearjerker every time – Jeff is a softie big time even though he puts up that convincing sardonic exterior)
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Happy Birthday

and then she freestyled with a song of her own composition. It included words from each of the songs listed above, but was sung to the tune of Canon in D. A musical genius, that kid.


Another fun time with the coolest almost-three-year-old kid I know. Another moment of the night? If you think about Michael McDonald and you’ve ever seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin, the first song that should pop into your mind should be “Yah Mo B There”. If it’s not, watch The 40-Year-Old Virgin again and pay special attention to every Paul Rudd speech to see if you catch it. Anyway. There is an epsiode of Yacht Rock that makes fun of “Yah Mo B There” wherein they use “Yah Mo” before ordinary statements. “Yah mo OK to drive”, etc. Jeff taught Emma, so we got a round of “Yah mo want some juice”. Smooth.