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

^otm

beatlemania was girlpower 1.0 but much bigger than the 90s it was an extremely powerful collective phenomenon and source of freedom and solidarity and social power that teenage girls weren't getting elsewhere in the 60s

stan culture seems to be chasing something similar but things are way more fractured now. it's like a bunch of intense trotskyist or maoist cults that attack each other more than they attack the establishment. the objects of standom aren't irrelevant but they're only part of something much bigger - a faction of swifties could conceivably detach from TS at some point and keep going as their own thing as long as they have something/someone else to bind them

idk where dancing fits except its another thing that binds people and the popularity of dance music probably vaguely tracks the strength of social movements - 70s rock is often very reactionary and (pseudo-) individualistic in this regard

as for steely dan haters being clotheared, maybe - I can tell they're "good" in some sense but they're such a bummer vibe and I want my bummer music to be harsh and grating instead of groovy

going back a bit

or almost any footage during the time when bands frequently were shot for tv or concert films, it is remarkable how the behavior of the crowds is as sedate and passive as it is (the two guys losing their shit when Sabbath did Kirschners show, or the chicks dancing to Uriah Heep's "the Wizard" on whichever english show it is notwithstanding)…

the drug disappeared so I don't always think of it, but we shouldn't underestimate the role of Quaaludes

Just saw a Steely Dan cover band at a local park here, they were pretty damn good. Started off w/Green Earrings, real legit. No Deacon Blues, but yes to Cousin Dupree. Always love a cover band that does deep cuts.

Cousin Dupree probably a bit easier to play.

My local Steely Dan cover band playing at a local park didn't do any reunion era songs, quashing my hopes to hear "Lunch with Gina".|

They were the real deal though, seems like that could handle any Dan song thrown their way. They closed w/a mean version of Bodhisattva.

Bob Dylan being a huge factor that instantly comes to mind (did people dance to Blonde On Blonde?). But really I'd suspect critics and execs had more to do with it than actual musicians ever did

^that's what i assume

People already did go to clubs to hear Jazz and coffee houses or wherever to hear Folk. I suppose it was inevitable when Rock started getting serious.

i think of folk fans as the indie kids of their day, and it makes sense that critical support for revivalists, and Dylan and folk-rock would have influenced attitudes about rock but this is an unstudied assumption

Bob Dylan: "I think of myself more as a song and dance man".

Bob Dylan, on the Byrds: "Wow,you can dance to this!"

Bob Dylan: "Let the beat drop!"

Green earrings is a staple of every SD cover band ever

Oh cool well I didn't know that

Bob Dylan: "Rewind, selecta!"

Oh cool well I didn't know that

I was personally hoping for Haitian divorce but no dice. Probably shouldn't get my hopes up over what Steely Dan songs a cover band will play though.

Agree - It’s all good

I'd be waiting for them to play "Still the One".

play "here at the western world" you cowards!!!

My son was not a fan of their arrangement of Black Cow, but he's really a fan of the album one and how it was specifically done. See, all those takes paid off.

Probably shouldn't get my hopes up over what Steely Dan songs a cover band will play though.

^^New Borad Description?

Lol

bring on the lude/mandrax revival

Like bodhisttava theres a sense that’s it’s more of an instrumental workout than say, “king of the world”

― calstars, Tuesday, June 27, 2023 12:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

have you tried playing "king of the world" on guitar??

Bob Dylan: "I think of myself more as a song and dance man"

it's pretty clearly not the musicians drawing the line, as well as all the r&b covers of Beatles songs there's Janis Joplin's very public Bessie Smith worship, the Grateful Dead playing Dancing in the Street at like every show etc etc

i'm sure this has been discussed on more relevant threads here and elsewhere, but these comments of Dylan's- when i was like 9 years old i had some video with interview clips of Dylan and he'd say shit like "i'm just a guitar player" and at that age it struck me as totally disingenuous. and i def think he's deliberately confounding and messing with square journalists, cultivating his aloof persona etc. but i'm much more inclined to think he's ultimately being honest about how he sees himself and what he does, who he has most in common with... never got too deeply into Dylan myself, maybe someone else can clarify.

Remembering Geezer Butler in a Black Sabbath documentary moaning about how, in the 60s, every club you went to in Birmingham was playing Motown and Soul and there was nowhere for them to play.

Well really if we're gonna overanalyse a Dylan quip "song and dance man" within that context would refer back to vaudeville, not so much Motown.

did i imply he's referring to Motown?
he's just asserting that he's a performer first and an author second, basically.

my question is whether he's unhelpfully casting the former in a diminutive light, tbc.

I think the questioner was undoubtedly doing that by focusing on words/poetry - I think Bob is being genuine (or as genuine as Bob ever gets).

Well the discussion was centred around when the division between "dancing music" and "listening music" began, I think the quote was originally thrown in this thread, prob jokingly, in reference to that. It'd be disingenious for me to suggest the performer vs songwriter dichotomy doesn't overlap with this, but I don't think they're interchangeable...so yeah, I think that quote is 99% messing with the reporter, but in as far as I could imagine it as sincere, it's about refering back to old timey showbiz and I think that's just a differebt divide?

xp

gotcha. i think "dancing music"/"listening music" and "entertainer"/"artiste" are VERY closely related, actually.

Met a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you

Met a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you

― Alito Bit of Soap (President Keyes), Tuesday, June 27, 2023 4:06 PM (twenty-one seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i think this gets at it - i think he wanted to align himself with an older type of folk archetype (not either the Serious Rock Poet or Protest Folk Singer) but like the rascally side of the folk/blues traditions, the music that was entertainment for people sung by traveling singers

also like someone said he probably just said it because it sounded cool and would confound ppl

so if they're not i am probably guilty of conflating those two things xxp

ok, that is a helpful explanation ty

it seems to me that the story is much more complicated than "once upon a time all music was dance music, then white critics in the '60s..."

for starters, i think as with so many things in anglo-american culture, white hipsters were parroting a development that had already happened 15 years earlier in black art, namely bebop and the social architecture of standing around and listening because enthusiasm was perceived to be square.

heroin would've been part of that, i'm guessing, long before the rise of quaaludes.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

I think the working theory itt isn't that "all music was dance music", but rather that all Rock & Roll (which back then would have included Soul/R&B as well as Rock music) was.

gotcha. i think "dancing music"/"listening music" and "entertainer"/"artiste" are VERY closely related, actually.

I think UMS is probably otm about the Dylan quote, but on a wider level, I think these categories changed throughout history and so while to our modern times I'd mostly agree, at the time of that interview I think things were murkier. The initial wave of Rock & Roll was despised by establishment musicians who would probably have thought of themselves as entertainers more than artists, viewed the new music as a disgrace to Quality Entertainment, and while the music of those establishment types was also to some extent danceable, the kind of wild dancing that Rock & Roll featured was def in the mix for why your Sinatra and Dean Martin types would've been hostile. Just a lot of racket you know, not something you can sit down and listen to like Peggy Lee singing something from the Great American Songbook.

In a way the mid-60's move to Rock as art/music to listen to was also somewhat paradoxically I think a generational reaction to this: damn straight Rock & Roll ain't quality entertainment, it is something way more important than your stupid crooners, it is ART. This I think does break down mostly along racial lines: ppl like Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, James Brown saw Sinatra at the Sands as aspirational, a model to some extent aesthetically and certainly commercially (all those showtunes on Motown albums!). John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Roger McGuinn, etc. I think had zero interest in ever becoming Sinatra, that was their parent's music. So I kinda viewed the Dylan quote as trolling the interviewer by suggesting he is entirely that model, "I'm not an artist man I'm just a nightclub entertainer" type thing. I think I probably missed the mark on that, the ums reference to the rascally travelling singer is probably closer to what he meant. But then he did end up doing Sinatra cover albums.

Assuming that Dylan is trolling is generally a safe assumption.

The interesting question is, when is he NOT trolling?

it seems to me that the story is much more complicated than "once upon a time all music was dance music, then white critics in the '60s..."

for starters, i think as with so many things in anglo-american culture, white hipsters were parroting a development that had already happened 15 years earlier in black art, namely bebop and the social architecture of standing around and listening because enthusiasm was perceived to be square.

heroin would've been part of that, i'm guessing, long before the rise of quaaludes.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

booming post

yep

Really don't think "all music used to be dance music" is sonething anyone said or believes, guys.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

― budo jeru, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 06:03 (five hours ago) link

I think the working theory itt isn't that "all music was dance music", but rather that all Rock & Roll (which back then would have included Soul/R&B as well as Rock music) was.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 09:42 (one hour ago) link

Having read the excellent Elijah Wald book (it was required in a History of American Pop Music class I took) I recall his basic argument being: Rockism colors the way we talk about pre-rock music, and it leads us to overstate the importance of novel developments like bebop. We do this at our own peril, lopping off the wider context ('pop music' == social dancing music) in which even the musicians who played bebop had to make rent (and/or pay the dope man) by playing Glenn Miller waltzes in dance venues for the countless terminally unhip members of the terminally American public who were flocking to see The Glenn Miller Story in theaters in 1954.

Second terminally there was a mistake, but a funny one

Daniel otm

i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it

A large portion of music (or at least Western, professionalized music) was at least nominally religious for quite a while. Lots of Renaissance and Baroque and classical works were church-sponsored and not meant for dancing per se. There are, of course, many traditions of religious dancing. But
the ecclesiastical works of, e.g., Bach and Handel were not, I suspect, destined to get sick acid-house club remixes.

Folk music, otoh, has probably been associated with dancing forever.

for starters, i think as with so many things in anglo-american culture, white hipsters were parroting a development that had already happened 15 years earlier in black art, namely bebop and the social architecture of standing around and listening because enthusiasm was perceived to be square.

This true as far as the white parroting is concerned, but the main reason dancing wasn't allowed at bebop performances initially (e.g., "No Lindy Hopping" signs at venues) was because the clubs were too small for dancing. It wasn't that bebop fundamentally couldn't or shouldn't be danced to -- or, as dancers at the time said, "Well, maybe YOU can't dance to it..."

the wider context ('pop music' == social dancing music) in which even the musicians who played bebop had to make rent

totally! my point was less that beboppers were the first to outlaw dancing and more that there's always been a process through which dance music becomes folk music becomes art music. the boundaries are porous and context-dependent. so i wasn't trying to introduce a new rockist narrative about the supremacy of bebop, but just introducing it as one among many examples to counter a larger annoying narrative about white rock in the '60s emerging itt