Shimmering guitars, breezy horns, smooth keyboards, and crisp vocals on well-crafted songs with catchy choruses: all of those qualities might have once described "soft rock" or "adult-oriented rock," but more recently the genre has experienced a resurgence as "yacht rock." Though the term was originally intended in a pejorative way, it's come to be accepted by many of the progenitors of the genre including Michael McDonald and John Oates. There's an entire book on the yacht rock phenomenon, a
Though the Climax Chicago Blues Band formed in Stafford, England, the band would likely have made any of the howling bluesmen from that storied Illinois city proud. Part of the vanguard of the British blues boom that also included the original Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and even Led Zeppelin, Cream and the Rolling Stones, the Climax Chicago Blues Band made its rip-roaring debut for Parlophone in 1969 and began a legacy which continues to this very day, albeit with a wholly