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

i'm sure i'm in the minority here but i kind of love this!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DcFrUdzLwo

looks like they covered the whole album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO0O_sCxQAo&list=PLAE8BBCDBAC026884

I have mixed feelings about those. The arrangements are pretty cool, but I'm not liking the singing. It's too somnambulant, doesn't have the same emotional intensity that Fagan brings, which is a weird thing to realize since I don't necessarily consider Don to be a particularly demonstrative singer.

unabashed steely dan stan but it's hard to think of any analogue to becker and fagen

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson),

dan and ned?

all we need to do is hook them up with some hot shit session musicians

you couldn't really have a steely dan without the jazz chops/roots - one thing the 33.3 book is really good at demonstrating is that to have a couple of young dudes who were immersed in jazz but interested enough by rock to see what happened when you expressed the latter in terms more common to the former was partly attributable to a moment in history. that moment's gone. if there were going to be any new Becker and Fagan, I think it would at this point rise from hip-hop and intersect with some newer form/genre. but I also think that that's where jazz sort of helped there be such a thing as a Becker and Fagan - lyricists working with songwriters (rogers/hammerstein, rogers/hart, lerner & lowe though not jazz there) in a really collaborative way, songwriters whose chops were just ridiculous. you have relationships like that between producers and rappers maybe?? or you could?? so I can imagine there being a Becker/Fagan rap team but I don't really think there is one at the moment

When I think of someone young with jazz chops, who writes snarky pop songs, has a voice that is a bit of an acquired taste, and records with studio musician hired guns, the only person I can think of is Nellie McKay, but it's hard to imagine her in the same category as Becker/Fagen, since she lacks a certain cool reserve.

She's more like a contemporary Randy Newman perhaps.

you have relationships like that between producers and rappers maybe??

as noted on the rolling rap thread, unfortunately this practice is pretty much dead now in hip hop

ie rappers just getting data dump of beats from flavor-of-the-month producer, rapping over anything and everything provided, then on to the next one

Destroyer, clearly.

No. Being smart and canny and literate isn't the same as being Steely Dan. Bejar's whole journey-of-self-reference is a whole different (genre-bound, imo) exercise, imo

I am down w/that exercise for the most part but I don't think it compares

I've always thought of Malkmus as the unwilling heir to Fagen--the aloofness and detachment, cynicism, irony (right word?), snottiness in the early years, the love of collegiate/post-collegiate insider-y lingo and banter--though I'm sure Malkmus hates the Dan

I wouldn't be so sure about that

you couldn't come up with a more non-jazz-chops player than him tho. w/o going to, like, johnny ramone

altho I think lyrically/vocally yeah there's some connective lineage there, Malkmus has never had a decent writing partner nor surrounded himself with virtuoso musicians (it's pretty clear he wouldn't tolerate the former, and has no use for the latter, or at least didn't for a long time I haven't listened to anything he's done lately)

what makes you think Malkmus would hate the Dan

Malkmus' guitar chops are underrated! I dunno if I'd call them jazz chops, they're more like prog chops. but he did a lot to obscure how creative he is as a guitarist with his perpetual "I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHY AM I EVEN HERE" live performances

xp

for a while outkast were the new steely dan

every generation gets the Steely Dan it deserves

it is totally NOT daft punk

It blows my mind that people think this Daft Punk album is at all Dan-y. Just because it is smooth and played with instruments?

bears and long hair, hoss

DP's mantra:

Throw out the software, let's do it right.

I think I've read quotes from SM dissin' the Dan but maybe he was just kidding around. The connection to Fagen I mentioned is all lyric/voice based but there's a teeny bit of jazz in the weird time signatures and sometimes off-kilter-ness (cf. Brighten the Corners name checking Monk's Brilliant Corners)

it's all in the artwork for mirror traffic.

Brighten the Corners name checking Monk's Brilliant Corners

I thought Brighten the Corners was a direct quote from some poet Malkmus was into (name escapes me at the moment)

this thread and its revives really make me think all of ILM should go into therapy for constantly and willfully subjecting themselves to horrible music writing

or horrible post writing

was that an insult? i can never tell around here

Brighten the Corners name checking Monk's Brilliant Corners
I thought Brighten the Corners was a direct quote from some poet Malkmus was into (name escapes me at the moment)
― four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens (Shakey Mo Collier)

From Wikipedia, fwiw:

Brighten the Corners is the fourth studio album released by Pavement. All songs were written by lead singer Stephen Malkmus, apart from "Date with Ikea" and "Passat Dream". The title is likely a reference to Ella Fitzgerald's Brighten the Corner, or to the 1957 Thelonious Monk album, Brilliant Corners.

yeah Malkmus is actually a decent call except for that whole "avoid the appearance of trying" thing that he spearheaded. but lyrically he's the right combo of craft and pisstake, like some of his most tender-sounding post-Pavement tunes are the most vicious ("Post-Paint Boy" - I don't have any idea who he's talking about but jeez), there's a Dan-y sensibility there

also, maybe you are thinking of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain which is from a poem by Silver Jews bandmate David Berman (Slanted & Enchanted is from Keats, no joke)

"brighten the corner where you are" is like a old gospel/religious phrase that is picked up in the ella fitzgerald song. so i'm not sure it points to any specific influence.

here's a song with that title from 1913

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/b/r/brighten.htm

this thread has taken a few left turns hasn't it?

i'm still bitter about how the rolling stones thread was hijacked by a tom petty discussion

It was free fallin'

People fought

Field Music? xpost

✌ we never polled the steely dan album art ✌

Daft Punk's 'Fragments Of Time' track references The Nightfly as much as it does Steely Dan IMO.

I don't really get the passion that SD inspires on both sides. Their hits are great, and I like all of their songs that went into the top 20. The rest of their album tracks are pretty forgettable though. I get why they have a cult following but I think the intensity of the debates over them is way out of proportion.

so says you

that's true, I did just say that

so you're trying to end the conversation by offering your own opinion on their music as definitive?

good luck w/ that

The rest of their album tracks are pretty forgettable though.

lay off the weed then

anyone who says that every track on Aja isn't A+ is fronting

^^^

perhaps you're forgetting "I Got the News" ??

I got the news is great