Seafaring Strangers: Private Yacht

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Liner Note Author: Jon Kirby. It's a well-known rule of the music biz that for every artist who breaks through, there are about a thousand others who are doing roughly the same thing who will never make it. It's true for just about every style of music, and while some styles -- like garage rock and Northern soul -- have proven ripe for listeners to discover those unlucky artists who never achieved success, the smooth and shimmering surface of soft rock has rarely been broken by deep dives into the treasures below. The Numero Group made an early excursion with their compilation of album cuts and demos by the unheralded, but really good, soft rocker Ned Doheny. With Seafaring Strangers: Private Yacht, the label straps on scuba gear and goes far below the surface where bands like Steely Dan cruised their way to chart gold and Exile dipped their harmonies in slow-motion disco grooves. The 20 songs they found were by artists who existed at the fringes of the major-label scene, some close enough that they were a solid demo away from getting a deal, some far enough in the distance that their self-made records ended up in the cutout bins, if they even made it to a record store's shelves. The majority of the songs are rough approximations of the slick sounds heard on radios during the mid-'70s, aping artists like Christopher Cross and the Doobie Brothers, but getting it just a little wrong in a totally endearing way. They feature unique arrangements that sound born of necessity; access to a state-of-the-art studio wasn't within most people's budget at the time and computer recording was still off in the future. So you get a lot of people striving for something just out of their reach, and that disconnect gives the songs some real emotional impact as the artists struggle to make music that will be heard. That this emotional punch is wrapped in pillowy clouds of vocal harmonies, glistening guitar solos, warm and squishy electric keyboards, and soulfully delivered choruses makes it more interesting. Plus, the collection has a bunch of flat-out great songs. Michael Miglio's "Never Gonna Let You Go" is a slick bit of late-night soft disco romance, Johnny Gamboa's cello-led mellow Latin funk groover "That Good Old Feeling Back Again" is a dreamy delight, Salty Miller's woozy ballad "One More Time" is like a trip to a dentist's office where they forgot to turn off the nitrous oxide when they were finished, and Breathers' "Don't It Make You Feel" sounds like Elton John and the Beach Boys hanging out and scarfing down a big bowl of downers. These are just randomly selected tracks; anything could be plucked from the disc and it would sound like a lost '70s gem. Not a hit, because everything here is just a little too weird, amateurish, or needy to hit the charts, much less top them. Numero did a fantastic job of retrieving these tarnished treasures, and Private Yacht is a must for anyone who wants to look behind the wood-paneled, laid-back facade of soft rock and discover its desperate, beating heart. ~ Tim Sendra