Netflix trailer: https://t.ly/UVdmN

Now this is a series to watch. Even though it’s the opposite of the yacht rock doc. The yacht rock doc is about stars, this is about nobodies. And in truth, we’re almost all nobodies.

I read about dating coach Logan Ury in the “New York Times” and did a podcast with her.

But then…

I hooked my buddy up with her, I told him to take her boot camp. Because his kid was gonna leave home and I wanted him to be hooked up before he felt the loss.

He followed my advice, which surprised me to begin with. And I didn’t want to bug him, I didn’t want to be that person. But I called him one day, with something minorly important, and I couldn’t get ahold of him, and it was the middle of the afternoon and he was retired. He got back to me hours later and said I WAS ON A DATE!

Wow!

And now he’s got a steady girlfriend. He had to kiss a number of frogs before he found her, but…

If I saw his profile, I would have dated him too.

That’s what Logan taught him. Don’t say you love dogs and long walks on the beach. Say something unique, that will stimulate conversation with a potential date. She tells you how to create the correct pictures, and if you want a taste, read her best-selling book, it’s excellent:

“How to Not Die Alone”: https://t.ly/KJrCr

It’s a breeze. There are people you date and people you marry and so much more and…

My friend told me Logan had an upcoming Netflix series. And this is crucial, despite my interest, I was unaware of this production. Nothing spreads without word of mouth anymore. How do you create something so special that people will talk about it, that has more than train-wreck value.

So…

These are people over 50 who are looking for significant others.

And it’s hilarious, because they’ve got so little self-knowledge, they’re so wrapped up in their own little lives that they can’t see how others perceive them. And they’ve got a list an arm’s length long of requirements. Nobody gets everything they want, ever!

So one thing Logan says is to be VULNERABLE!

This is the essence of connection, this is why music is in such a bad space. If you can’t reveal your faults, your flaws, present yourself as less than perfect…no one can connect with you. It’s your flaws that make you lovable.

And she says another woman is operating with a 40 year old playbook, being coy. She won’t commit to a second date, she’s playing hard to get, she’s delusional.

And another, who was married to Steve Marriott, I saw his picture and screamed, is so wrapped up in the past. Ever go on a date with someone who can’t stop talking about their ex?

And at this age you’re not looking for the love of your life, but companionship.

But there’s the guy with OCD who won’t admit it. So many people with OCD won’t. They say they like order, they don’t realize they leave no room for others.

And another who says inappropriate things… He asks a woman if she’s had any work done.

And this same woman has a doctorate… Logan says to lay it all out there, don’t hold back, don’t play dumb, it never works. Although she shouldn’t brag.

It’s just hysterical watching all these people. They’ve all got money, they all have houses, some quite spectacular, but they’re not rich. And they’re not famous. And they’re not going anywhere. They think they’ve got it together, the one thing they’re missing is love and they can’t figure out why they don’t have it, they can’t see inside themselves.

And then there’s the woman who doesn’t ask her date a single question.

This is 101, but so many people are uneducated and oblivious.

We’re only two episodes in, but I can’t stop thinking about this series, because it evidences humanity when we’re surrounded by fakery. Celebrities who are bulletproof and influencers who are selling us 24/7. How about the rest of us?

The rest of us are on “The Later Daters,” I highly recommend it.

HBO Trailer: https://t.ly/8aLxv

This is pretty terrible. And to think I was looking forward to it. All you’ve got to know is they spelled Mo Ostin’s name Mo “Astin,” what’s next, TOETO?

What we’ve got here is the guys who created the web series saying that really they respect this music, which I don’t believe for a second, otherwise why make fun of it, and a bunch of irrelevant talking heads and a few of the players from the era. It’s a big fat “Behind the Music” episode, only it’s twenty five years later, and what did Bob Dylan sing, “things have changed”?

Forget that everybody streams and MAX is a lame service. If you’re not on Netflix, it’s almost like you don’t exist. No, that’s not exactly true, but I bet your inbox is not overflowing with hosannas for the new Beatles documentary, because that’s on Disney+, and unless you’re a kid or a “Star Wars” fan, there’s no need to have a subscription.

So what is yacht rock?

We can debate that.

But once we decide which acts are included and which are not…we want to go deep. Into the personalities, into the making of the records, we want complete stories telling us stuff we don’t know.

Instead this doc is a bad version of a college 101 course. A survey. About as deep as Olivia Newton-John.

Fealty is paid to Steely Dan. But then…

You can’t lionize Kenny Loggins, who did his best work with Jim Messina. What came thereafter is flavor of the moment, evanescent stuff that was made for its day and is a curio now. Whereas those Steely Dan songs…THEY’RE FOREVER!

What inspired them… They’ve got Gary Katz, they’ve got Jay Graydon testifying as to playing the solo on “Peg”… But we want to go much deeper.

The members of Toto played on so many records, wrote so many songs, but all we’ve got here is “Rosanna” and “Africa” and “Thriller,” with a little Boz Scaggs thrown in.

Yes, there is information here, but unless you’re brain dead, if you lived through the era you’ll learn almost nothing.

This doc is made for those too young to have experienced it firsthand. But it’s too lame to create word of mouth. It’s not the Motley Crüe movie and it’s certainly not the “We Are the World” movie, which was fantastic, despite the song being so lame. “The Greatest Night in Pop” set the scene and painted beyond the numbers. Huey Lewis’s fear, the endless session so deep into the night that it became morning. The genius of Quincy Jones.

But here…

Do I really give a f*ck what Bethany Cosentino has to say about yacht rock? Of course not, this is a paint-by-numbers production that needed a young female musician, and she fit the bill. Couldn’t they at least get a woman famous for her playing?

And I must admit Questlove ultimately says some good things, but he’s so damn overexposed. He’s become a joke just like Michael McDonald back in the day. McDonald’s on EVERY record? Questlove’s in EVERY documentary?

And then we’ve got the rock critics who finally get to be on camera, before they retreat to their parents’ basement, where they truly live.

I mean what is this documentary supposed to be about?

The web series? That would be interesting, and the creator Huey’s got some good words here, but that’s just the framework. We know nothing about the personalities, what did they expect, did they make any money, what are they doing today?

And rock critics philosophizing… That’s like asking your kid about quantum mechanics. Way out of their league.

And then you’ve got the music and those who made it. Michael McDonald is pretty good. As is Christopher Cross. But so many of the players are absent.

And then there’s the endless drivel about the sound being embraced by the Black community. They’ve got multiple Black people saying this, but not one white. The producers are bending over backwards here, it’s all about surface, it’s all about the scorecard as opposed to the je ne sais quoi of how this music came to be and what it represents.

Yacht rock evolved from…

In the early seventies being able to play was a badge of honor. We had Rick Wakeman and other classically trained musicians. And recording went to 24 tracks. And records threw off so much money you could spend eons in the studio getting it right. And the boomers had licked their wounds after the Vietnam war and were looking to have fun, had become hedonists.

But this music was not made on a lark. Rather those who created it were talented and serious. But this documentary is not serious.

Then again, it was made under the aegis of Bill Simmons, who made an overall deal with HBO, flopped on camera and is ultimately responsible for this POS. It’d be like having Steve Lukather executive produce a documentary on the 1988 World Series.

Today you’re narrow and deep, not broad and surface. You could get away with this when there were so few channels. Now if it’s a trifle, no one is interested. You’ve got to go deep. A multi-part documentary on the acts of yacht rock… That would have people talking. Or the arc of web series, those who created the initial ones and how it did or did not pay off for them.

I want to dig down deep.

And I want respect for the era I lived through.

That does not mean you have to only say good things about the past, but at least involve those who lived through it. Other than the musicians, everybody involved here is a youngster. Which bugs me about rock history, it’s being written by those who weren’t there.

You won’t hate this documentary, but you’ll want your hour and a half back. You might learn a couple of things, glean a few nuggets, but…

This is AM in a world that is no longer even FM.

These acts, like Steely Dan, occasionally they were embraced by AM radio, but if you look at what else was on the chart at the time, a lot of it was drivel. There was exploration involved in these tunes And there’s only passing mention of disco. Not how the music got so slick, became so common denominator that punk came along and then the whole industry cratered before MTV resuscitated it.

I wanted more. I was looking forward to this.

But there’s nothing here to see.

Don’t bother.

Tune in Saturday November 30th to Faction Talk, channel 103, at 4 PM East, 1 PM West.

Phone #: 844-686-5863

X/Twitter: @lefsetz

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app. Search: Lefsetz

I missed this one.

The funny thing is to look back at Blues Image and realize not only did the band contain Pinera, but Joe Lala. How in the hell did Joe end up going from Blues Image to working with Stephen Stills? Was it a Florida connection? Something to do with Criteria? “Stephen Stills 2” was the first album cut at Criteria. So many of the major connections in rock and roll have been delineated ad infinitum, like Neil Young being spotted in his hearse on Sunset Boulevard by Stills, Richie Furay and Barry Friedman and as a result Buffalo Springfield being born.

Joe’s dead too. I kinda remember that. But now they’re dropping like flies.

Wikipedia tells us that Blues Image opened for Iron Butterfly on the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” tour, and that’s probably how Mike Pinera ended up in that band, and maybe that’s how I know his name, even though the Iron Butterfly album “Metamorphosis” that Pinera played on was a complete stiff, the public had moved on.

And then Pinera ended up in Ramatam, whose music was overshadowed by the sexual orientation of the band’s female lead guitarist April Lawton, who turned out to be born a man. This was long before everybody knew a trans person, never mind have one in your family.

But Pinera’s most famous moment, not that we had any idea who he was, Blues Image was a faceless band, was as the co-writer, guitarist and lead singer of “Ride Captain Ride.”

I never heard that song on FM radio, but when it was a hit, in 1970, not every automobile had FM, as a matter of fact that was rare, and “Ride Captain Ride” was a smash on AM. I just figured Blues Image was a lightweight pop band a la Looking Glass, which had a hit two years later with “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).” That’s another track I never heard on FM. And I’ve been stunned to hear it on yacht rock playlists. Doesn’t fit in my playbook. Too early, too outside, no credibility. Just because it’s soft, that does not make it yacht rock. Yacht rock is soft rock by credible acts. It’s a pejorative, but a lot of that music was not only popular, but stands the test of time. Being able to play and sing, what’s the problem? Somewhere along the line the rock press made it that if you weren’t punk, if you weren’t wearing leather, you were no good, and that is patently untrue.

But “Ride Captain Ride”… It was that noodling piano intro that put the track in the Top Forty camp. Can’t say I’ve ever heard an intro like this in credible rock. It sounded like your piano teacher demonstrating something completely out of touch and time.

But then there was a downbeat and Pinera started to sing:

“Seventy three men sailed up

From the San Francisco Bay”

Now this was the era of the Tallahatchie Bridge. Songs set in locations based on history or fiction or…

So had seventy three men really sailed up from the San Francisco Bay or was this made up, and if so, why did this lightweight pop group set this number in the epicenter of America’s credible rock and roll?

“Rolled off their ship and here’s what they had to say

‘We’re callin’ everyone to ride along to another shore

We can laugh our lives away and be free once more'”

We had “Groovin’,” we had “Get Together,” this was a constant theme at the end of the sixties, all of us coming together on a mission…to make a statement, to have fun.

“But no one heard them callin’

No one came at all

‘Cause they were too busy watchin’ those old raindrops fall

As a storm was blowin’ out on the peaceful sea

Seventy three men sailing off to history”

Raindrops? Like in the Cowsills’ “The Rain, the Park & Other Things”? This was obviously fantasy, and kinda stupid to boot.

But that damn chorus, boy was it hooky.

“Ride captain ride upon your mystery ship

Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip

Ride captain ride upon your mystery ship

On your way to a world that others might have missed”

Bogus lyrics, as if written by middle-aged men in New York City, trying to glom on to youth culture. Just one step beyond bubble gum. Then again, can I admit I loved “Yummy Yummy Yummy”? Which I bought along with my Cream and Hendrix albums?

And there’s a kind of simple, almost weak, guitar solo…then again, the solo in the extended version of “Light My Fire” was not so special. And at the end of the number, the guitar wails.

But really it was about the verses. The way the melody went up and down. But even more the rich vocal. Little did we know it was Mike Pinera. It’s not like Pinera had the absolute best voice, it wouldn’t win on a TV competition show, but it was perfect for this story song. You almost believed the story was true purely on Pinera’s delivery, before you realized it absolutely was not.

And “Ride Captain Ride” was a hit and then disappeared. You’d hear it occasionally on oldies radio, but by that time we were all deep into FM rock. And then came classic rock and it fell through the cracks. But with the internet and satellite radio I now hear “Ride Captain Ride” on a regular basis, AND I LOVE IT!

It’s not nostalgia, it’s not a museum piece. It’s just that on some level it feels so right.

I hope Pinera kept his publishing.

But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

He’s dead.

Spotify: https://t.ly/JRoaM

YouTube: https://t.ly/-_1xu