What Rock?

I'm a huge music geek; although my tastes largely run to 70s and 80s music; in various rock forms, stuff many people might consider cheesy.   And so when the question is posed, "Name some songs about sailing", several obvious ones come to mind, and I've been mentally working on such a list for a while.

Now, at CSC we've come to name this broadly "Yacht Rock"; it may have been Ben Lee who first mentioned this term to me. 

Now, if we ask the Internet what the meaning is, we might come across  A list like this.

Which suggest the original meaning was soft rock of various kinds (And also an online video series).  For my list, the song had to actually be about sailing, and so the question was put to the CSC mailing list with a rather deliberate attempt to stir things up, along with my original list.  The additional suggests were pretty mixed, and mostly songs I hadn't heard of (which means they were either very obscure, or submitted by old farts).

The List

To preserve any shred of credibility I have left in good taste towards music, and to make it accessible to those of you born after 1980, I mostly limited it to chart songs, or by artists you've probably heard of.  Lon did however, collect the entire list of suggests and put them on his MP3 player.  I take all credit, and no responsibility for those who listen to Lon's collection.

Here's my edited list:

• Cool Change - Little River Band
• Christopher Cross - Sailing
• Split Enz - Six Months in A Leaky Boat
• Crosby, Stills & Nash - Southern Cross
• Rod Stewart - Sailing
• The Beach Boys - Sloop John B
• Looking Glass - Brandi You're a Fine Girl
• Lyle Lovett - If I Had A Boat
• Styx - Come Sail Away
• David Gray - Sail Away
• Chris De Burgh - Sailing Away
• Commodores - Sail On
• Enya - Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)
• Mark Knopfler & James Taylor - Sailing To Philadelphia
• John Denver - Calypso

And the whole lot as a YouTube playlist

Critiques on a postcard.

No Windsurfing, Second Vice?

If you can find the original video for Cool Change (not the one in my playlist), there's a couple of guys on an original Windsurfer.

Oh, yeah, and there's this favorite of PK's:

On the other hand, you might be better off not watching this.  Just sayin'.

What Else?

There were a ton of extra suggestions, most of which I handily ignored, but maybe Lon will play for you.  But I think every music list needs a Muppets mention:

Finally...

All together now... "Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelujah"