I watched Yacht Rock: A Documentary on Max this weekend, and I thought it would make for a good opportunity to reflect on this odd little subgenre that has become its own cottage industry over the last decade or so. The documentary focuses on a certain type of bouncy, smooth adult contemporary music popular in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.
How can one of the biggest media markets in the nation produce such ineffectual, booster-happy journalism? How can a city with limitless financial resources fail to build anything beautiful in brick-and-mortar? How can a place that hosts concerts daily fail to capture the national imagination with any consistency?
There’s not much chance to turn around until you reach Cedar Key, where everything is built out of that dark, weathered wood. You see kids with coolers selling various morsels like oysters and clams on the side of the road. This article first appeared on darrenwhitecreative.com on Feb. 11, 2013.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the title character addresses a convention of science fiction writers. He’s drunk. He thanks them for understanding that “… life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last billions of years.” This article first appeared on darrenwhitecreative.com, Aug. 10, 2012.
I don’t have any other marketable skills. I am unfit for manual labor (tried that), my math skills are remedial (that means bad) and I’m too honest for sales (didn’t get past the interview). Writing keeps the lights on, even if they aren’t burning brightly.
As I was eating two tacos and a bag of store-bought chips – which cost me, all told, about $22 – from a food truck with an absolutely horrible name, it occurred to me that I cannot remember the last time I had a good meal from a food truck.
Japandroids released their fourth and final record, Fate & Alcohol, last week and so it seems like a good time to write about this band, the emotions their music stirred in listeners and who at least one of those listeners was.
"I take ideas from things I like on older saddles. We started creasing the borders on the saddles really just because it was something I saw on older saddles and liked." This article appeared in the July 2007 issue of Parker County Today.
A year after their guitar player was shot to death, a Weatherford metal band perseveres. This article appeared in the October 2009 issue of Parker County Today.
