Song of the Day 11/11: The Blue Jean Committee, “Catalina Breeze”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Yacht rock has been sailing along for half a century and will apparently keep going till the end of time. But one of the best latter-day yacht rock songs was made by a band steering way off course.

In fact, it wasn’t even a real band. The Blue Jean Committee was a comedy act, a yacht rock parody. But at least one song, “Catalina Breeze,” can hold its own with almost any other polished soft-rock tune on the “best of yacht rock” lists.

Fred Armisen and Bill Hader started the act as cast members on “Saturday Night Live.” The band’s “history” was greatly expanded on the TV show “Documentary Now,” which is (of course) a parody of biography shows. Kenny Loggins, Daryl Hall, Michael McDonald and other yacht rock legends provide commentary. You can find it on Youtube.

The documentary explains that the Blue Jean Committee was basically two Chicago guys from meatpacking families who started a blues-rock band that flopped. A shift to soft-rock and a move to California made them stars.

Armisen’s character is the lead singer. Hader’s mostly sings backup and smiles. One key to their rise was his discovery that he could sing really high, later insisting that his sound was “very manly.” The same thing happened to the Bee Gees when they emerged from a career slump after Barry Gibb discovered his falsetto.

With a lot of groups, one member is more clever about business, and sometimes that person is a jerk. I’m thinking of Mike Love here. After the Blue Jean Committee’s inevitable rancorous break-up, the wily Hader character winds up in a Malibu mansion. Armisen’s character, the force behind the music, goes back to making sausage in Chicago.

But despite this sad demise, we’ll always have “Catalina Breeze.”

The real-life contemporary band Young Gun Silver Fox is a good example of how yacht rock endures. These guys have obviously heard the yacht rock pioneers, but it’s not hard to think they also picked up a lot from a fake band born on a comedy show.