Steely Dan: "Steely Dan's name has been popping up as a hip musical crush. Remember, this glossy bop-pop was the indifferent aristocracy to punk rock's stone-throwing in the late 70's. People fought

this thread needs Jody to put it back on the rails.

I like Steely Dan because they're virtuosos (same goes for the Dave Matthews Band, though lotsa folks around here would disagree with me on that one). Amateur guitar music is not in itself a bad thing, it's just that there's SO GODDAMN MUCH OF IT.

Dammit, somebody out there's gotta make music nobody else can play, right? Music that you just listen to with your mouth open and think, "Jesus! How the FUCK can ANYBODY play that fast?!"

Does "Do It Again" or "Ricki Don't Lose That Number" do this for you?

Well, no, but those are exceptions. Those are both from their first album, and they hadn't really developed their chops yet. Still rule, though! Steely Dan rules!!

Charlie Freak had but one thing to call his own
Three weight ounce pure golden ring no precious stone
Five nights without a bite
No place to lay his head
And if nobody takes him in
He'll soon be dead
On the street he spied my face I heard him hail
In a plot of frozen space he told his tale
Poor man, he showed his hand
So righteous was his need
And me so wise I bought his prize
For chicken feed

Newfound cash soon begs to smash a state of mind
Close inspection fast revealed his favorite kind
Poor kid, he overdid it
Embraced a spreading haze
And while he sighed his body died
In fifteen ways

When I heard I grabbed a cab to where he lay
'Round his arm the plastic tag read D.O.A.
Yes Jack, I gave it back
The ring I could not own
Now come my friend I'll take your hand
And lead you home

Used to play a pogo-ized cover of that.

I listened to 'Gaucho' tonight while doing dishes; it's my favourite, along with 'Countdown to Ecstasy' and 'Everything Must Go'. 'Katy Lied' is close.

I still haven't gotten over 'Pixeleen'. The bass line moving into the chorus.. i used 'luxury sedan' to describe this one before; so sleek and powerful, 'symmetrical and clean', but maybe limousine is better? and in the best, most evil, sense, not the bullshit up thread. I still can't get at what level of exploitation this song is about, and whether any laws are being broken. maybe that's not the point.. i'm swooning, regardless. No kidding; I've just listened to the damn song 4 times over while writing this. Everything about me is different/Symmetrical and clean

oh, hey, construction of the feminine in 'Green Book' paired with 'Pixeleen' Now where'd we sample those legs/I'm thinking Marilyn 4.0 in the Green Book // She's kinda cute but a little younger/She got the mood and the moves segue into my three times perfect ultrateen // my sleek and soulful cyberqueen, and always, ever Everything about me is different/Symmetrical and clean

"Rikki" is from the second album, and the "chops" issue is irrelevant because most of the flashy playing in the early years was done by Dias/Baxter/various session guys.

Oh yeah. My bad. I got that confused with "Reelin' in the Years."

what's up with the snide comments after the song titles, though? some make sense ("Only A Fool Would Say That" - A message cha-cha), but some i can't figure out ("Fire In The Hole" - How's my little girl?).

"Steely Dan: band/source of good vocabulary words"

Been listening to "Everything Must Go" a lot recently. Pixeleen is one of the best things they've ever done, surely?

http://www.numbertwopencil.net/graphics/withdonaldfixed.jpg

http://www.berklee.edu/commencement/2001/images/Fagen_podium2.jpg

"...spilled their seed on baren ground." indeed. I love all from the first to Aja, but thought Gaucho was pretty hollow. I should get back to it because a lot of people like it. Haven't got either of the new ones, because they seem more Gaucho than pre-Gaucho.

Here's another way to read this contrast between Fagen's vocals and the music: A Steely Dan album is a trip through the warped mind of our unreliable narrator (as played by Fagen), and the ultra-polished instrumentals reflect the idealized soundtrack that he hears in his head as the stories and fantasies unspool. (Don't we all, at certain times, to some degree, amble through life with a soundtrack playing in our heads, lending rhythmic drama to the random humdrum?)

As evidence for this interpretation, I direct you to The Nightfly, Fagen's 1982 solo album, not just one of the great pop albums but one of the great pop album covers. The front cover shows Fagen as a disc jockey at 4:09 a.m., chain-smoking Chesterfields, a Sonny Rollins LP on the turntable. The back cover shows a suburban house, one of a row of identical houses, except in this one, a light glistens through an upstairs window. The sky shows the hint of dawn. By inference, it's 4:09 a.m., and the kid upstairs—the only person awake in the neighborhood—is listening to the disc jockey. Fagen's liner notes suggest that The Nightfly is autobiographical. It's about the adolescent Fagen listening in the wee hours to cool jazz on the radio—while also imagining that he's the DJ, "Lester the Nightfly" of "WJAZ," as the album's title song calls him, spinning "sweet music/ … till the sun comes through the skylight." Or maybe it's about Lester, spinning records while reminiscing about the all-night listening sessions of his youth. Either way, the covers (both in gleaming black-and-white) present an image of music as the perpetual soundtrack and the creative fount of an imaginative life.

I would also cite the technical credits (clearly written by Fagen, Becker, or both) on Steely Dan's 1975 album, Katy Lied: "Steely Dan uses a specially constructed 24-channel tape recorder, a 'State-of-the-Art' 36-input computerized-mixdown console … some very expensive German microphones … a Neumann VMS 70 computerized lathe equipped with a variable pitch, variable depth helium cooled head." There's a deliberate stratagem to these gushings. They convey the clear impression (even to a reader who doesn't know what they're talking about) that the boys of Steely Dan get to play with dream-fantasy gear in a dream-fantasy studio: the hi-fi geek's equivalent of driving an Audi TT, lounging in a comfy Eames chair, or dating a girl like Tuesday Weld—to name a few dream-fantasies mentioned by the narrator in some Steely Dan songs. It all reinforces the sense, if only subconsciously, that this record you're listening to is a dream-fantasy, the inner soundtrack to an ordinary guy's secret story, for else how could a voice like Donald Fagen's—in other words, like yours or mine—get backup from a band that sounds so damned impeccable? 

http://patstjohn.com/Graphics/Gallery/Donald_Fagen.jpg

this was me from the moment I became infatuated with Becker-Fagen until about 3 months ago. I *still* think it's my least favorite of the original seven (I only wish Darn1elle were around to give me hell for it) but the title track has slowly become one of my favorite tunes ever. Great lyrics, if oblique (but, hey, that's one of SD's primary charms, right?). Is it a gay love triangle? What the hell is a Custerdome? Whatever, it rules.

To the Editor:

In his review of Hendrik Hertzberg's ''Politics'' (July 4), Richard Brookhiser reveals what seems to be multiple personality disorder. Brookhiser the writer can't help praising Hertzberg's skill (Hertzberg is ''amusing, insightful''; he delights the reader), but then Brookhiser the right-wing hit man pops up with the condemnations (''bland'' and ''boring to read''). Brookhiser's giddy oscillations make him sound like the Nutty Professor and deny your readers a serious review of Hertzberg's book

Donald Fagen
New York

http://www.numbertwopencil.net/graphics/fangen.jpg

Nothing wrong with liking either approach to making records. Or both. I certainly do.

That's basically how I see them, though I have heard a few of their songs (because my dad likes them). It really just doesn't sound like something I could get into. Maybe someday...