That’s why I’m EAAAASAYYYY
Welcome to the 90s
- It’s 1990-something.
- I’m at a Red Lobster at the local mall.
- I work here.
It’s like 11:30 at night. I’ve been bussing tables all night. Some nights I work the dishwasher. Other times I work food prep (early or mid-shift) or bake those biscuits everyone likes. I was one of the first people to make those at our store when they came out.
Tonight I’m bussing tables. We didn’t have earbuds then and we sure as shit weren’t allowed to wear headphones during our shift. Regardless I probably didn’t own a pair anyway.
It has been all night long and the most unoffensive music that Darden Restaurants 1 was willing to shell out is playing2 and the most unoffensive music to the paying customer base of Red Lobster was the smooth rock sounds of the late 70s and early 80s mixed with some more popular folk-ish hits.
Think Horse with No Name mixed with a shit load of James Taylor. Basically The Bridge with a lot of what constitutes Yacht Rock these days.
Basically this was what was playing at almost every dine-in place in America during the 90s that wasn’t a theme joint (i.e. “Mexican” or “Chinese” š).
And I worked at almost all of those places - Shoney’s 3, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and chains that no longer exist.
And they all played the same shit.
Let’s talk conditioning.
To this day, when I have to do chores? When I need to fucking get shit done?
Alexa, play yacht rock 311 on siriusxm
The best fucking minds on the planet could not have conditioned a population better than the string of low paying jobs I had in high school.
It’s not all dystopian though.
Yacht rock is something else to me. Yacht rock is my wife. Yacht rock is good memories.
Easy (like sunday morning)
- It’s 2000-something.
- I’m at sitting at a table
- I live here.
the song is a slow ballad expressing a man’s relief as a relationship ends. Rather than being depressed about the break-up, he states that he is instead “easy like Sunday morning”
Not the most romantic now that I think about it.
But it wasn’t the lyrics exactly. I mean sure we have a history of using some songs incorrectly.
It was a vibe4 as the kids say.
I don’t know what “technology” we used but I remember we set it up (whatever that meant) and it played “easy like sunday morning radio” on Pandora5. This was easily 15 years ago if not more.
So here’s me and my lovely bride. We’re sitting at the kitchen table on a Sunday morning. We have coffee and we’re playing cribbage and listening to music.
We occasionally sing along. It’s a good6 time.
It’s 1990-something. I’m working at a Red Lobster bussing tables. It’s 2000-something I’m playing cribbage at my kitchen table with my wife. I am listening to yacht rock music.
In a minute, I’m going to go downstairs and I’m going to hug my wife and I’m going to do the dishes.
When I do, I’ll be listening to yacht rock.
Darden Restaurants was the company that started Red Lobster. They later sold it to a hedge fund or something. They owned SO many of the chains in my neck of the woods during my youth and still do. They owned the Olive Garden I worked at as well at the same mall. ↩︎
In my mind, the big-ass weird tape player thing they used for commercial music was in the bar area but it was probably in the manager’s office. ↩︎
During my junior year of high school on almost every wednesday night I stood in the median of Busbee Parkway in a bear costume for kid’s night at Shoney’s. In Georgia. In the heat. ↩︎
finally some fucking slang I understand ↩︎
The funniest part is it never actually played “Easy”. Probably something to do with copyright and licensing. We always just ended up getting a not-that-bad instrumental version. ↩︎
Times are still good! This was one of those special kinds of “good” ↩︎