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

"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...

Holden: You're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of the sudden-
Leon: Is this the test now?
Holden: Yes. You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down-
Leon: What one?
Holden: What?
Leon: What desert?
Holden: It doesn't make any difference what desert, it's completely hypothetical.
Leon: But how come I'd be there?
Holden: Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be by yourself, who knows? You look down and you see Donald Fagan crawling toward you-
Leon: Donald Fagan, who's that?
Holden: Know who Walter Becker is?
Leon: Um, yeah.
Holden: His partner.
Leon: I've never seen Walter Becker. (pause) But I understand who you mean.
Holden: You reach down, you kick Donald Fagan over on his back, Leon.
Leon: Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden, or do they write them down for you?
Holden: Donald Fagan lays on its back, his belly baking in the hot sun beating its legs trying to turn himself over but he can't, not without your help, but you're not helping.
Leon: What do you mean I'm not helping?
Holden: I mean, you're not helping. Why is that Leon? (pause) They're just questions, Leon. In answer to your query, they're written down for me. It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response. (pause) Shall we continue? Describe in single words, only the good things that come in to your mind about... robotic, steam-powered stainless steel dildos.
Leon: robotic, steam-powered stainless steel dildos?
Holden: Yeah.
Leon: Let me tell you about dildos... (BANG!)

Mary is strapping on a rubber penis: "Steely Dan III from Yokohama," she says, caressing the shaft. Milk spurts across the room.

"Be sure that milk is pasteurized. Don't go giving me some kinda awful cow disease like anthrax or glanders or aftosa..."

"When I was a transvestite Liz in Chi used to work as an exterminator. Make advances to pretty boys for the thrill of being beaten as a man. Later I catch this one kid, overpower him with supersonic judo I learned from an old Lesbian Zen monk. I tie him up, strip off his clothes with a razor and fuck him with Steely Dan I. He is so relieved I don't castrate him literal he come all over my bedbug spray."

"What happened to Steely Dan I?"

"He was torn in two by a bull dyke. Most terrific vaginal grip I ever experienced. She could cave in a lead pipe. It was one of her parlor tricks."

"And Steely Dan II?"

"Chewed to bits by a famished candiru in the Upper Baboonsasshole. And don't say 'Wheeeeeeee!' this time."

"Why not? It's real boyish."

"Barefoot boy, check thy bullheads with the madame."

ame: Razor Boy
joebj@compmore.net
Location: Kanata, Ont Canada
Date: Wednesday, March 25, 1998 at 21:27:00
Comments:

The talk about the Oscars show tweaked my memory to that most gruesome of Steely Dan moments, when Donnie Osmond sang the first two verses of "Peg" during some Miss Teenage America Pageant in the late '70's. It made me a touch numb, and my mother asked me what the fuss was all about, after I lost my sense of decorum and uttered the most graphic of expletives. I told her that she wouldn't understand, and sucked it up and listened to Donny butcher the song.

http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2003/costumes/osmonddonny.jpg

My God, what I wouldn't give for that tape. Incidentally, all of that message board seems about this tightly wound.

I'm serious -- half the time all I want to listen to is "glossy bop-pop."

I was gonna write a review for this on the Rock Discipline thread. Maybe I still will...

At work we have this really crappy radio station that plays nonstop; New York's "chill"-- whatever that's supposed to mean; but they play Deacon's Blues every once in a while and it's hugely refreshing.

That is all.