Pretzel Logic poll

man, check out this alternate tracklist from wikipedia! I might have to listen to the album in this order, I think I like it better than the original LP running order:

Cassette version
Side 1
"Rikki Don't Lose That Number"
"Through With Buzz"
"Monkey In Your Soul"
"Any Major Dude Will Tell You"
"Parker's Band"
"Charlie Freak"

Side 2
"Barrytown"
"East St. Louis Toodle-Oo"
"With A Gun"
"Night By Night"
"Pretzel Logic"

yeah, this sounds much better with some of the shorter songs right up front and a more dramatic closer. I wonder if SD came up with that cassette running order or it was some random decision the label made.

The album is so front-loaded with steely goodness that the alternate running order is not a bad idea.

"Rikki" won my vote, with "Night by Night" in second and "Major Dude," "Barrytown" and "Pretzel" close behind.

theres something in the relative simplicity of PL, that makes it a weaker album than Ecstasy,Aja. less sophisticated and rich, more straightforward, no wonder it's their bigeest selling album. it's their most radio friendly one for sure.

"Dude"

actually, Aja is their biggest seller.

You people are crazy. PL is so full of hooks. Up there with Gaucho as my fave. I wanna vote for "Through with Buzz" cuz I'm afraid no-one else will.

I am shocked, shocked by the Pretzel Logic detractors. This is the best Steely Dan record.

Any Major Dude

My favourite is "Aja", but I love "Pretzel Logic" too.

there are a couple of songs here that come off like they're trying on a genre for size and not attempting to imbue it with the "dan" thing, which makes me think of them as slightly less interesting than most of their work, but still they're all good tracks and i can't really say this is my favorite or least favorite. like i said somewhere else, whichever SD album i'm listening to at the moment is usually my favorite SD album.

Barrytown

This is my fave SD album after the debut and for the same reasons Zeno lays out here (although the value judgment obv. differs):

theres something in the relative simplicity of PL, that makes it a weaker album than Ecstasy,Aja. less sophisticated and rich, more straightforward...it's their most radio friendly one for sure.

For me, Steely Dan songs are ostensibly about the varying levels of attention we lend to actual, on-the-radio popular music. As such, they necessarily work best when they're relatively simple, less sophisticated, more straightforward, and most radio friendly, i.e. here, on their most coldly pop long player.

I went with "Barrytown" because I feel so admonished when I pay close attention to it (that "we recall" in "in the beginning we recall that the world was hurled" is the Dan at their nastiest) and so airborne when I don't, floating on that absolutely gorgeous middle eight as it vaporizes into...

Have to give it to Any Major Dude

One of the rare SDs too: vulnerable & optimistic

But the "major dude" and "funky one" are soooooooo snarkalicious.

That alternate tracklist is fascinating. But it's a bit to Great Albumy. It NEEDS to end on something with a tossed-off feel like "Monkey In Your Soul" or "Through With Buzz."

a bit TOO

I remember when he stole my girl
Drug her all around the world

I think this is my least fave, as well. "night by night" is great, tho. voted for that.

yeah I've been like blasting "Night By Night" nonstop lately, the instrumental sections fucking cook.

If anyone cares, here's the 8-Track tape sequence:

1. Rikki Don't Lose That Number / Night By Night
2. Any Major Dude / Charlie Freak / East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
3. Parker's Band / Through With Buzz / With a Gun / Monkey In Your Soul
4. Barrytown / Pretzel Logic

I guess a lot of old albums got shuffled up for the time constraints of different formats, but that's still so funky to me, especially since the sequencing has always been a weakness of this particularly album for me. I might have to listen to it in that order soon, too.

In some ways, this album seems the most atypical of Dan albums to me, except for maybe their debut. The pop-formalist experiments of the second side - with their short running times and relatively fast tempos - are pretty far from the usual Dan sound - though the lyrics are imbued with the typical Dan dark wit. There are some memorable musical touches though, such as the sleigh-bells on the wintry "Charlie Freak". I don't know if these odd songs were an attempt to be radio-friendly by shortening the running times or what, but I don't think they probably sounded much like what was playing on the radio in 1974.

8track sequence is really strong up top but burying "Barrytown" is a mistake

nah, it works for me as a penultimate track, at least in my head, haven't listened to it that way yet. but then I've always felt like second-to-last song is important album real estate, don't know if anyone else feels that way.

it's very important real estate I agree, but not for a groove like that, which IMO is best either in the 1 or 2 slot or opening the b-side.

I think way too much about this kinda thing.

see, I'm thinking about that tasty guitar lick at the end of the song and how it would sound going into the last song of the album.

yeah I feel you

PL is currently my favourite Steely Dan album, but that's probably because I'm a sucker for all that radio-friendly immediacy. I've only been actively listening to SD for about 3 years - who knows how my opinion will change in the future.

"Rikki" is unfuckwithable, "Parker's Band" has the hot licks (two drummers!) and "Charlie Freak" really is a nice sad little tale, but "Barrytown"'s star-bellied sneetches-reminiscent scenario is the most wryly irresistable. "Barrytown" for me.

"We will spend a Dizzy weekend/Smacked into a trance" is a line.

i've always felt like second-to-last song is important album real estate

i look at the 8-track sequencing more as having four side-opening tracks, and they basically put the four "hits" in those track-1 spots, "barrytown" included.

"Rikki..." is their highest Top 40 hit (#4).

i assumed "Hey Nineteen" would have been their biggest hit.

voted "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" but fell like i'm cheating on a different song.

*feel

"monkey in your soul" is a creeper...

I've never been able to see 'Barrytown' as anything else than a (very) good Dylan pastiche.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

but you could have a change of heart

I almost never say things like this in polls but "Through With Buzz" should've gotten more love. It's their Ramones song.

I'm sorry if I'm being dense, but how is Through With Buzz their Ramones song?

You're not being dense. But just as The Ramones retained the bare minimum for rock & roll, "Through With Buzz" is an attempt to determine the absolute bare essentials that would make a lush, relatively complex FM classic, e.g. verses and choruses of one line each. It's a fusion of AM and FM actually.

that's interesting. thanks

I missed out on this, would have voted Any Major Dude so that settles that

i assumed "Hey Nineteen" would have been their biggest hit.

so did i. because it was on the radio EVERY MOTHERFUCKING 12 MINUTES in 1981.

So figure that "Rikki" got played every 11 minutes back in '74. (I remember hearing it quite regularly.)

I want to rep for "Pretzel Logic" because these lines are killing me right now:

"I have never met Napoleon, but I plan to find the time.
'Cause he looks so fine upon that hill;
They tell me he was lonely, he's lonely still.
Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago."

I was listening to this yesterday driving across the windswept steppe of central Kansas, on the freeway but totally fucking alone, and this line hits so hard, laying out human loneliness but mocking it too, both because the lonely person is just a statue, and because all your loneliness in the here and now is swept away too. I mean I get that this is a totally middlebrow sentiment put my inartful way, but in the song it's something a lot deeper.

Middlebrow at its best, then...like Amadeus. Lovely post.

The transition from the third to fourth line is a killer/

yes! It's that third to fourth line, in particular "still", suggesting ongoing loneliness, to "those days are gone forever". And now that I think about it a little more, the "I plan to find the time" in the first line is another mockery of the lonely ones whose time has passed.

"with a gun" is so undersung

easily "barrytown" here, though my dad would say "with a gun". my favorite of the dan records i'm very familiar with

your father knows best kev

mawkish

Sorry, wrong word! I think I meant "awkward". "Charlie Freak" is, in fact, mawkish, but I like it anyway.

"Night by Night" would be better with the Countdown to Ecstasy production, so much of their sound had been softened just one year later.

I balked at "mawkish" at first, but I just figured it was intended to mean something like unpleasant rather than sentimental.

"night by night" slick funkiness is part of the appeal, a smash radio hit from an alternate universe

The white funk is what I find oft-putting, a bit like "The Fez."

night by night is one of their best songs in the whole catalogue

i don't like "the fez," mostly because i prefer their smirking sex jokes to be a bit more subtle, and the groove is a bit more repetitive and sterile than usual

idk if i fully stand by my post in the c or d thread, but i'm still amused by it: Steely Dan C or D?

If you loved "Night By Night," check out The Royal Scam

yep precisely the problem

the opening of “night by night” with the fluttering horns is dazzling

"Throw Back the Little Ones" is a much better "let's be as weird as we can" song than "Through With Buzz".

... interesting that, I think, the only Dan songs with strings are the latter and "FM".

I used to have Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied back-to-back on the same CD. (Burned it from the old box set which had everything but divided up indifferently.) They don't sound like the same album but they complement each other really well - probably their most tuneful and song-oriented albums.

"throw back the little ones" is one of my very favorite dan songs

The only Dan songs with strings are "Through With Buzz" and "FM", and both of those string arrangements are arguably "in quotes": the first a silent-film melodrama pastiche, the other a nod to slick late-70s MOR.

“Through with Buzz” and “Monkey in Your Soul” are genuinely unsettling. Serial killer shit. But like in a New York shut-in kinda way. Like if Newman from Seinfeld were actually the Son of Sam. Or if “Taxi Driver” was a comedy. Great songs both.

Agreed.

Gawd “Night By Night” RULES

such an INTENSE song