366 days of yacht rock

Fellow internetarian, recording artist and friend of mine, Patrick Felsenthal, aka Apoc, set up a blog dedicated to one of his passions, yacht rock (the music).

What exactly is yacht rock? Apparently, the term took off thanks to an online video series from 2006. I did not know that. As the term itself has somewhat of a pejorative tinge, you can probably imagine what the show is like. Mallrat's star Jason Lee makes a guest appearance, if that gives you any idea. Chris Rea isn't mentioned, and Giorgio Moroder... well, let's just say that when I read the description of the episode in which he appears on Wikipedia, I shot my best from-not-getting-it-to-being-so-offended-it-that-it-just-got-reeeeally-awkward-in-0.006-milliseconds expression at the monitor. That's a move I learned from Simon, this German exchange student I was friends with in high school... 18 years in the US has forever etched an appreciation for irony in my DNA, so I can't do it right and I'd never actually use it on another human being, but in the hands of a master like Simon it's perhaps the most potent weapon in the fight to keep the Continent irony free.
Although Pat's an American, he's knows the handshake. He's met countless "whoah, are you fucking serious!?!?!"s head on preaching the Gospel of George Michael in that heathen nation. He's so post-irony that if he were a Mortal Kombat character, he'd finish you off with production values. It wouldn't be one of those cutesy friendship finishes either; it'd be bloody as hell and there wouldn't be anything funny or cute or unexpected about it: unslinging the studio reel of "Everything She Wants" from the back of his skull-plated armor, he'd cut your head off with the bass line of the 12" extended mix and you'd be like fuuuuuck, that shit's bad ass. Without even the slightest hint of irony.
The term "yacht rock" started as an internet meme, and it looks like they just kind of ran with it. But now that it's out there, there's a lot of questions that need answering. Judging by the posts to date, Pat looks ready to get down and dirty and tackle the question of what yacht rock and its adjacent genres are. And I can't wait to read it... Drop Aztek is, after all, about pointlessly minute categorization. And if ever there were a musical genre begging to be broken down and classified, it's yacht rock.
According to the Wikipedia article for the abovementioned show, "'yacht rock' is a name used to retrospectively describe the soft rock format that peaked in popularity between the years of 1975 and 1984. In part, the term relates to the stereotype of the yuppie yacht owner, enjoying smooth music while out for a sail." Examples include [it would be pointless for me to list names because you'll be like "I never heard of that song." No, you have, and you probably know large parts of it by heart, you just don't know who sang it or what it's called, so check out the 366 days of yacht rock, where you'll find plenty of videos]. Audiophiles and record collectors in Europe (Germany's Michael Ruetten and Jazzanova, for example) and comments on relevant videos on YouTube refer to something that seems to overlap with yacht rock to a large degree by the acronym AOR, which can either mean Album Oriented Rock or Adult Oriented Rock. Now the first links to the English wikipedia article for Album oriented rock, and the second to the Swedish article of the same name. The definitions differ enormously, with the Swedish entry (which I ran through Google translate, obviously) treating the two AORs as identical and providing a definition of the genre that is almost identical to the definition of yacht rock, except that it allots AOR a slightly broader spectrum that includes hard rock. The English article, on the other hand, defines AOR (here meaning only Album Oriented Rock) as what anyone my age would instinctively call "classic rock", an aspect that plays only a minor part in the Swedish definition (even though the two articles link to each other and are supposed to be about the same thing). Fans on YouTube also refer to AOR as "west coast" (used as a noun), a feature which the Swedish article mentions but which the yacht rock article ignores. Then there's also "marina rock", a cheeky extension of the the term "yacht rock" which would seem to indicate a more working-class version of yacht rock, and would therefore at least partially bridge the gap between the English Wikipedia's definition of AOR and yacht rock. Are yacht rock, the two AORs and "west coast" one and the same thing, or is it like one of those overlapping circle diagrams, the name of which I can't remember right now, with a certain degree of overlap between yacht rock, AOR and "west coast"? If so, how much and which artists get left out of the mix?
I'll definitely follow the 366 days with the aim of being able to answer some of these questions. Oh, and for the music... which is AWESOME!!!!! Frat boy high five!!!! Toto fucking rulez!!!!! [certain content has been removed from this post. Please consult Drop Aztek's irony guidelines for additional information]

Pioneer LaserDisc Turtle wishes you a Happy 2012!!!!!

LaserDisc Turtle, a Pioneer exclusive. Awwww, he's so obscure !!!!!

Pioneer LaserDisc Turtle wishes Drop Aztek readers a Happy 2012!!!!!

He would also like to remind you, in a cute, non-intrusive way, that "that's not how LaserDiscs work". (Note that LaserDisc Turtle was exclusive to Pioneer LaserVision players, as was the brand name "LaserDisc". If you owned a non-Pioneer player, you were watching "LaserVideo discs" and would only get a bland text warning.) You put it in upside down, so it's about as helpless as a turtle (or Bender) on its back. If you're seeing this it's 1980 and the CD has yet to be invented, so it's all good, you're not expected to know that a laser can't read the other side.
In life as well, sometimes the program material is on the other side of the disc. May the warning that you need to get up and change things around be kindly and benign like LaserDisc Turtle (who, considering that LaserDiscs were about as big as 33s, would actually be quite freakish, but that's besides the point), not harsh and condemning like the loud, bucking noise a CD-ROM makes when you put two CDs in at the same time. Which actually happened to a friend. I was there. It was hilarious.

But anyways, Happy 2012!!!!

Awesome like an Aztek ...

Welcome to Drop Aztek.
My name is Mike and I like stuff: I like buying stuff, I like window shopping for stuff when I'm broke, I like looking for stuff on the internet, I love hunting down hard to find stuff that I really, really want...
But I really love analyzing stuff: I love the history of stuff, I love the history of the companies that make stuff, I love the "anthropological" aspects of stuff... Actually, it'll soon become clear that I love overanalyzing stuff.
And if you've arrived here, chances are you're fine with that. As anyone who has a not-too-busy 9 to 5 knows, well written content about stuff is - surprisingly - hard to come by. I've been there. Waiting days at a time for work to land in my inbox, I've scoured the internet in search of good articles about stuff. You know the kind I'm talking about. Well written articles that make me more knowledgeable about the stuff I love... or that link the stuff I love to other pieces of stuff which, though I've never heard of them, I probably will love. Articles filled with fun data I can use to bore my friends, none of whom share my deep interest in stuff.

Now just what kind of stuff are we talking about? Well, stuff that I grew up with will probably figure heavily on this blog, because I have a lot to say about it. So electronics, shoes, clothing from the 1980s and particularly from the 1990s (although I'm technically an 80s baby, my specialty is the 1990s). Also, obscure stuff will get the nod over non-obscure stuff, because obscure stuff, that is products that didn't make the cut, isn't timeless. Unlike successful products, which undergo countless reiterations to keep their image up-to-date, the also-rans of the consumer world remain stuck in the period of time in which they were conceived and in which they disappeared. Like Azteks. I love Azteks. Ten years later, I'm still upset that my sister rejected the advice of her older, wiser brother, passing up the Aztek to buy one of those new (at the time) VW Beetles... Well guess who threw her lumbar region out on a European compact car seat that is essentially a towel wrapped around a clothes hanger... not the guy driving the Aztek, that's for sure.

Ok, I seem to have wandered off topic. To continue, Drop Aztek will also offer critiques of the current situation, which doesn't seem to be very favorable to stuff. Nowadays, whenever (non-Apple) stuff is mentioned in the news, it's in reference to the how the world of stuff is supposedly an endangered habitat. It's all in the cloud, man (I don't know why I added the "man" at the end of that, the kind of people who tell you it's all in the cloud usually don't end their sentences with vocative nouns). Not so fast, I say. The annoyingly democratic internet will always have a counterpart in the strictly hierarchical world of stuff. Check back regularly to find out why.

So without further ado, welcome to our world of stuff!