The Case for Yacht Rock by Gretchen Jackson

On a beautiful Friday night in Atlantic City – Christopher Cross, Men at Work, and Toto performed at the Hard Rock Hotel auditorium to a packed and enthusiastic audience.

I was there, and it was awesome.

At 52, I’m past the mosh-pit stage of my concert-going experience. I’ve drifted to a more mood-appreciative and atmosphere-soaking approach as I enjoy music events. I don’t need to get up and dance in the aisles. (I never really did that anyway.) And I don’t need the performers telling me to stand up and rock out. If I’m not doing that already, there’s probably a good reason I’m not doing that already.

I’ve now learned to acquiesce, sit back, and let the music wash over me. And this concert was perfect for that.

In the Yacht Rock Dockumentary – now streaming on HBO MAX – QuestLove describes Yacht Rock as (in so many words) chair-dancing music. I agree completely, and that’s exactly what I did at this easy-going, triple-header concert.

Some might question the need to go out to see a concert live and in-person if it doesn’t move you to get out of your seat and dance. Well, I have a theory on that. Much like the feeling you get when you go to a movie theater (instead of streaming movies at home), seeing a concert live immerses you and creates a communal experience – something which is of utmost importance socially to us humans. And we’re definitely not getting enough of those experiences lately. Streaming services, iPhones, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, Amazon Prime Video’s option to watch films that are currently out in theaters for a higher-than-ticket price.

We’re all going to end up like those fat people at the end of Wall-E!

Listening to Christopher Cross sing in a clear and largely unaltered-from-the-eighties voice, surrounded by people who are digging what he’s doing, was a very soulful experience. I got goosebumps. Watching his backup singers undulate in a synchronized sway, pulled me into the groove. As his piano player, Jerry Leonide, mouthed a scat to the notes he was playing, I scatted silently along with him. The feeling of pure energy that poured off the stage while Men at Work sang and played and danced was like a hive-mind experience. Cecilia Noel, Colin Hay’s wife and sometime percussionist and back-up vocalist, had an electrifying stage presence that delivered pure joy with her youthful exuberance.

There’s something about being emotionally-inspired by live performers when you’re nestled in a group of like-minded people who are emotionally tuned-in beside you, behind you, all around you. There’s a bliss, a light-ness. You feel like you could float up to the ceiling. It’s a shared experience of the performer’s personal expression, and you connect to it. It’s wonderful. It’s satisfying in an evolutionary-ily unchanged, primal way. And now, more than ever, it’s oh-so necessary.

Now, I’m not going to judge you if yacht rock isn’t your thing, but you can’t argue that it’s not fun. For me, it’s also nostalgic. These are the bands my parents played on the stereo in the living room. They were on the adult contemporary stations I listened to in the car as a teenager. They played in retail stores and restaurants and on cruise ships … perhaps igniting the name Yacht Rock itself. (Having never been on a yacht myself, I have to assume it’s a vague rather than literal title.)

Simply put, yacht rock connects me to the innocent pleasures of youth. This is the music I listened to when I didn’t have bills to pay or the opposite sex to impress. No fights break out at a yacht rock concert. It’s easy. No expectations. Just sit back and let the cruise director do his thing.

If you’re wondering why there’s no mention of Toto’s performance, it’s because my husband and I, after rising at 6:30am to take care of the dogs, go over while-we’re-gone instructions to our teen-aged sons (and the dog-sitter), and drive the two and a half hours to Atlantic City (battling shore traffic all the way), we headed up to our room at the Hard Rock Hotel by 10pm, exhausted but exhilarated. Toto’s roadies were still setting up.