Steely Dan is an American rock band founded in 1971 in New York by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Initially the band had a stable lineup but in 1974 Becker and Fagen retired from live performances to become a studio-only band, opting to record with a revolving cast of session musicians. Rolling Stone has called them "the perfect musical antiheroes for the seventies".
The Doobie Brothers are an American rock band formed in 1970 in San Jose, California, known for their flexibility in performing across numerous genres and their vocal harmonies. Active for five decades, with their greatest success during the 1970s, the group's current lineup consists of founding members Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons, alongside Michael McDonald and John McFee, and touring musicians including John Cowan, Marc Russo (saxophones), Ed Toth (drums), and Marc Quiñones (percussion). Other long-serving members of the band include guitarist Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (1974–1979), bassist Tiran Porter and drummers John Hartman, Michael Hossack, and Keith Knudsen.
Kenneth Clark Loggins is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter. His early songs were recorded with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1970, which led to seven albums recorded with Jim Messina as Loggins and Messina from 1972 to 1977. His early soundtrack contributions date back to A Star Is Born in 1976, and he is known as the King of the Movie Soundtrack. As a solo artist, Loggins experienced a string of soundtrack successes, including an Academy Award nomination for "Footloose" in 1985. Finally Home was released in 2013, shortly after Loggins formed the group Blue Sky Riders with Gary Burr and Georgia Middleman. He won a Daytime Emmy Award, two Grammy Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award, a Tony Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. Soft rock was prevalent on the radio throughout the 1970s and eventually metamorphosed into a form of the synthesized music of adult contemporary in the 1980s.
Aja is the sixth studio album by the American jazz rock band Steely Dan, released by ABC Records on September 23, 1977. On the album, band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker pushed Steely Dan further into experimenting with different combinations of session players, enlisting the services of nearly 40 musicians, while pursuing longer, more sophisticated compositions and arrangements.
Channel 101 is a non-profit monthly short film festival in Los Angeles, which has a sister festival in New York City, Channel 101 NY. Channel 101 is a creation of Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab in which participants submit a short film in the format of a pilot under five minutes in length. The event is structured such that a panel of previously successful submitters choose what pilots are shown, and a live audience at The Downtown Independent decides which pilots continue as a series for the next screening in much the same way TV programs are rated and managed. According to the Channel 101 website, "Channel 101 is a chance to sit in the worn-out chair of the fat network exec, drunk on the blood of lowly artists whose right to exist is given in exchange for their ability to nourish... You run the network. You pick the programming."
Michael H. McDonald is an American singer, keyboardist and songwriter known for his distinctive, soulful voice and as a member of the bands the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan (1973–1974). McDonald wrote and sang several hit singles with the Doobie Brothers, including "What a Fool Believes", "Minute by Minute", and "Takin' It to the Streets." McDonald has also performed as a prominent backing vocalist on numerous recordings by artists including Steely Dan, Christopher Cross, and Kenny Loggins.
Edward John "Ted" Templeman is an American record producer. Among the acts he has a long relationship with are the rock bands Van Halen and the Doobie Brothers and the singer Van Morrison; he produced multiple critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums by each of them.
Michael Timothy Curry is an American drummer. He has collaborated with singer-songwriter Bryan Adams since the early 1980s, but has also worked with Hall & Oates, Cher, Tina Turner, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Sam Phillips, Tom Waits, Survivor, The Cult and Steve Jones.
D-TV is an old series of music videos created by The Walt Disney Company and produced by Charles Braverman and edited by Ted Herrmann. The series premiered on May 5, 1984, by taking hit songs of the past and putting them together with various footage of vintage Disney animation, created out of the trend of music videos on cable channel MTV, which inspired the name of this series.
"What a Fool Believes" is a song written by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins. The best-known version was recorded by the Doobie Brothers for their 1978 album Minute by Minute. Debuting at number 73 on January 20, 1979, the single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on April 14, 1979, for one week. The song received Grammy Awards in 1980 for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year.
Outside: From the Redwoods is the second live album released by American singer-songwriter Kenny Loggins. Released in August 1993, it is the recording of his June 1993 concert held "outside" at a venue located within a stand of giant redwood trees. The album features reworked versions of many of Loggins's songs, both from his solo work and his earlier work in Loggins and Messina. Michael McDonald gives a guest performance on a reworked version of their classic co-written, "What a Fool Believes", and R&B singer Shanice gives guest performances on "I Would Do Anything" and "Love Will Follow".
Yacht rock is a broad music style and aesthetic commonly associated with soft rock, one of the most commercially successful genres from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Drawing on sources such as smooth soul, smooth jazz, R&B, and disco, common stylistic traits include high-quality production, clean vocals, and a focus on light, catchy melodies. The term yacht rock was coined in 2005 by the makers of the online video series Yacht Rock, who connected the music with the popular Southern Californian leisure activity of boating. Considered a pejorative term, prominent artists that have been labeled "yacht rock" include Christopher Cross, the Doobie Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Rupert Holmes, Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Toto and Supertramp.
Hugh Carmine McCracken was an American rock guitarist and session musician based in New York City, primarily known for his performance on guitar and also as a harmonica player. McCracken was additionally an arranger and record producer.
"Bad Sneakers" is a song by jazz rock band Steely Dan. It was released as the second single and track on their 1975 album Katy Lied. Producer Gary Katz later regretted not releasing the song as the first single.
"Ready" Freddie Washington is an American session bassist who has played with artists such as Herbie Hancock, Michael Jackson, Al Jarreau, Aaron Neville, Lionel Richie, Anita Baker, B.B. King, Elton John, Patrice Rushen, Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, Donald Fagen, The Crusaders, George Benson, Deniece Williams, Johnny Mathis, Burt Bacharach, Kenny Loggins and Steely Dan.
Michael Christopher Landau is an American musician, audio engineer, and record producer. He is a session musician and guitarist who has played on many albums since the early 1980s with Boz Scaggs, Minoru Niihara, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart, Seal, Michael Jackson, James Taylor, Helen Watson, Luis Miguel, Richard Marx, Steve Perry, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins on "Two Hearts" and "Loco in Acapulco", Roger Daltrey, Stevie Nicks, Glenn Frey, Eros Ramazzotti, Whitney Houston, and Miles Davis. Landau, along with fellow session guitarists Dean Parks, Steve Lukather, Michael Thompson and Dann Huff, played on many of the major label releases recorded in Los Angeles from the 1980s–1990s. He has released music with several record labels, including Ulftone Music and Tone Center Records, a member of Shrapnel Label Group.
Yacht Rock Revue is an American rock band formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 2007. The band was formed by members of the now defunct indie rock band Y-O-U after an ironic performance of soft rock hits at a local club gig took off into a weekly residence. Performing primarily covers, the band's set list is centered around a genre called "yacht rock", coined by the early 2000s web series of the same name, consisting primarily of soft rock from the 1970s and 1980s, but at times including songs as recent as the early 1990s.
Late Night Tales: Music for Pleasure is a DJ mix album by Groove Armada's Tom Findlay for Late Night Tales series, released by Night Time Stories on 11 June 2012. The album features tracks by yacht rock artists such as Toto, Hall & Oates, and Kenny Loggins, among many others.
