Soft rock is the Ken doll of music: smooth, predictable, and
entirely without genitals. It’s pure romance with no sex—all
soft-focus euphemisms, wings, sunsets, and hearts. When we close our
eyes at night, and Michael McDonald soft-rockily croons us to sleep, we
see slow dancing and lace and, sometimes, triumphant fists punching the
sky. We do not, thankfully, see Michael McDonald’s penis.
The Mark Siano Super Soft Rock
Spectacular—postironic, hypersincere, gleefully
disorganized—is a rambling cabaret of karaoke, so-so comedy, and
dance numbers. Siano makes a charismatic frontman: handsome and
unafraid of short-shorts, with musical taste to rival your mom’s, and a
perfect whiff of ’80s sleaze. His commitment to the running man is
exhilarating. His heart pumps Rick Astley instead of blood.
Some of Super Soft Rock Spectacular’s comedy is limp—for
instance, I do not believe that “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” counts
as funny anymore. But Siano has a knack for segues (“I can see most of
you have at least two ears and a heart, so you’re gonna love some Phil
Collins”) and blistering love-song clichés (“Me and you, and you
and me, and that makes three, ’cause I’m twice as important to you as
you are to me”). A video from the Seattle Neutrino Society is simply
brilliant, as is the grand finale, which had all us children of the
’80s leaping to our feet and shrieking.
If someone tells you they don’t care for soft rock—the Patrick
Swayze solo project, Lionel Richie’s horrifying clay head, “On the
Wings of Luuuuuurve”—they are fucking lying to your face. Deep
down, we all love it. It’s pure sincerity. “I have no addictions
whatsoever,” brags Siano, breathless in polyester pastels, “Unless you
count soft rock. And Quaaludes. And Swayze.” 
