Polled At Last: STEELY DAN - ILM Artist poll #50

Tributes and homages are by nature acknowledgments of limits or showing how far you've matched or outperformed the subject imo

lol can you imagine Donald and Walter on album 3 going "welp, we're as good as Bird now, if not better"

I can imagine them thinking that around album 6, true or no

on the fine Colombian, sure

xpost

the existence of that 2011 rarities night show really gives me a little hope that someday SD will loosen the reigns of perfectionism enough that they may do an archival project with unreleased songs. even new re-recordings of some of those old rarities would be cool.

this poll is already making me look at the songs that have placed so car in a new light. that fuzzy little bass or low guitar line in "Monkey" is so cool.

(xp) i'm not sure all tributes/homages are specifically acknowledgments of how you've matched or not matched the subject, but i do think all tributes/homages are at least as much about the author as they are about the subject.

how the hell can Becker toss off a solo as precise and awesome as the one in that "Second Arrangement" clip? Cuz he's Walter Becker.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-hp6LjbRalf8/Uz3VWyoszoI/AAAAAAAAAIo/SNtocPFlNHU/w640-h320-no/Everything+You+Did.jpg

56. Everything You Did
From: The Royal Scam
Released: May, 1976
101 Points, 5 Votes

turn up the eagles
the neighbors are listening

^^ the highlight of Side B

my favorite on royal scam, and a very late drop for me. i want an office/listening room that looks exactly like that image.

also, how did "turn up the eagles..." not win the lyrics subpoll?

In the song "Everything You Did," a lyric says, "turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening." Glenn Frey of the Eagles said, "Apparently Walter Becker's girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day and that was the genesis of the line." Given that the two bands shared a manager (Irving Azoff) and that the Eagles proclaimed their admiration for Steely Dan, this was more friendly rivalry than feud.

Later that year in a nod back to Steely Dan for the free publicity, and inspired by Steely Dan's lyric style, the Eagles penned the lyrics, "They stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast" in their hit "Hotel California". Frey commented, "We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so 'Dan' got changed to 'knives,' which is still, you know, a penile metaphor."

Timothy B. Schmit, who played bass on The Royal Scam and two other Steely Dan albums, would later join the Eagles.

which is still, you know, a penile metaphor

well, yeah.

This seems like a good spot for the Steely Dan/Eagles episode of Yacht Rock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb_XEwgfmDk

Didn't want to embed it and clutter the thread.

could some audiophile ID that setup? I presume it's historically accurate (1976)?

imagining Becker-Fagen floating in a space capsule is makin' me chuckle over here

http://i.imgur.com/xdAyLkt.gif

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-kuPf-3ZGxDI/Uz3ZLKhvINI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/riBpKtpBVTU/w640-h320-no/Throw+Back+the+Little+Ones.jpg

55. Throw Back The Little Ones
From: Katy Lied
Released: March 1975
132 Points, 7 Votes

Holy crap is that image unsettling.

a neat template for Kate Bush's first three albums

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-a2fGCkWGJXU/Uz3eJ5ogkjI/AAAAAAAAAKA/sbKChBgbd_0/w640-h320-no/Through+With+Buzz.jpg

54. Through With Buzz
From: Pretzel Logic
Released: February 20, 1974
143 Points, 7 Votes

as noted above, the string section adds to the general fucking weirdness

feels like it began a something Fagen and Becker had written as an exercise or dare--can we write a song that has one-line verses?---and then managed to turn into this wonderfully bizarre little song. love it

i feel like those short verses and the general structure is very much like a lot of blues songs, but obv the song isn't especially bluesy and they did away with anything like solos or extra repeats of anything and stripping it so bare is a big part of its appeal.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-w4EnXtWV8aw/Uz3jcO0XLLI/AAAAAAAAAKs/yVYKSfMNxss/w640-h320-no/My+Rival.jpg

53. My Rival
From Gaucho
Released: November 21, 1980
156 Points, 7 Votes

this would have been like 22 or 23.

pplains, these images are awesome

xp
Huh?

we only turned in a Top 20 but if it was say a Top 30 then it would have placed somewhere around there.

my least favorite Gaucho song

on my personal ballot i might add.

"through with buzz" was my #2. weird and wonderful. hi-fi guided by voices.

in some ways, i think, guided by voices has spent the past 20 years trying to match "through with buzz," and failing.

and robert pollard could sing "maybe he's a fairy" without the slightest hit of irony, guilt or any second thought at all.

these images are making me impossibly happy.

Man, I could go line-by-line on "My Rival" - they do not put a foot wrong in the lyric, undercutting every noir signifier they introduce. "I'll match him whim for whim!" It's such a great Fagen showcase, too - how his delivery underlines "whining stranger," the punchline of "he weaaaars a heaaaring aid." I love that soap opera organ too, and the cry of the backup singer at the end just melting into the air...

TOO LOW

haha yeah on the soap opera organ

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-CpvhLBlDblo/Uz3m4YXjLHI/AAAAAAAAALU/qeaZX6d6S3I/w640-h320-no/Kings.jpg

52. Kings
From: Can't Buy a Thrill
Released: November 1972
171 Points, 9 Votes

wasn't there some ancient ilx thread where someone was doing lolcat-style steely dan macros and a picture of don & walt with the caption "MY RIVALS - SHOW ME THEM"? it's stupid but that still cracks me up.

wow, didn't expect "Kings" to make the cut

hot licks and rhetoric
don't count much for nothing

"Kings" very narrowly missed my ballot. it sounds like a preview of some of their grander later songs with the slightly more limited band they had in the early days, which gives it its own kind of charm.

"My Rival" is the first of my 20 to place. the groove and lyrics are gold. sounds like it would've fit and been by far the best track on two against nature had they saved it for some reason.

i still recall when i first held
your tiny hand in mine
i loved you more than i can tell
but now it's stomping time

"my rival" might have been my first steely dan love

Guitar solo on "Kings" is all-time.

It is. CBAT was the last classic-era SD fan I bought, and to hear what was an essence a songwriting collective feel their way towards finding the right arrangements and players for the material made the album sound special. This and Aja are the transitional albums for me: there's another Dan beyond those albums powerless to be born or something.

feels like it began a something Fagen and Becker had written as an exercise or dare--can we write a song that has one-line verses?---and then managed to turn into this wonderfully bizarre little song.

judging from that fagen instructional piano video someone else posted on the voting thread, "chain lightning" also occurred as a result of an exercise, which iirc is "what if we wrote a blues that never arrived at the iv chord"