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 have no use for the band but the gallagher bros. antics and shit-talking has always been 100% awesome to me, they are so incredibly dumb though, which i guess is part of the charm

― adrian "stanky" legg (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, July 18, 2013 6:27 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

great post

bump.

http://rymimg.com/lk/f/l/cc9a06052f337adc5c5996368e4cd8c8/1676824.jpg

Best band ever

rikki don't wear that native american headgear

Apparently Janet booked us at something called "Coachella." The last time we spent that much time in the desert was when Walter and I hired a Cahuilla shaman to help us work through our differences in opinion re: 8-10k Hz crash presence on "Gaucho." I can't recall if we got over it, but we both ate so much of some sort of off-brand peyote derivative that Walt engaged in some extended metaphysical riffing with a Centruroides exilicauda and I was pretty convinced that I was Gene Vincent's shoes.

Net, I don't see this ending particularly well.

- fagen

oh which was almost certain fake, sorry bros

^can confirm that ;)

hilarious though

aw fake? good fake tho.

Yeah their booking agent is named Bev

even better than janet

I don't know what it says about me, and music, and music in 2015, and me and music in 2015, that Steely Dan and ac/dc are the two acts at Coachella that jump out as the ones I would want to see the most.

I have never knowingly heard Steely Dan but 2015 is the year where that finally changes. I was going through my late grandpa's record collection at Xmas for the final time before my grandma gets rid of them and he had Can't Buy A Thrill, Katy Lied & Aja so I snuck them in our keep pile. I will have to wait til I'm home alone to listen to them though cos my wife claims to hate them.

http://www.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2015/01/06/why-steely-dan-belongs-at-coachella
http://www.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2012/01/20/steely-dan-fans-are-assholes

ha ha, love this...they should get the touring band from the first two records back together--Michael McDonald, Skunk Baxter, Denny Dias, and Royce Jones--and just play from the first four records. That band was unbelievably sick from the few bootlegs out there

Steely Dan is a band I used to hate but now like though I kind of envy people who legit hate them

Like I wish I could resist their self-impressed cynicism and tasteful licks

ive never in my life had the desire to attend coachella until now

Wow, both those LAW articles kind of suck. As for the latter, I know there are some assholes who like Steely Dan, and a few that are in Steely Dan, but the times I have seen them they've attracted an overwhelming just-here-for-a-good-time crowd of middle aged pot smokers and suburban couples. A la, dunno, Jimmy Buffett. Because I am an asshole, I've often wondered, do these people even listen to the lyrics? Do they know anything about the musicianship? Or are they just there to boogie.

i've been ambivalent about steely dan for a while but getting really into those joni records from court and spark through don juan i feel like i am really opening up to them. those joni albums were the gateway for me, they've brought me into a lot of different 70s stuff

quaaludes

I've often wondered, do these people even listen to the lyrics?

short answer is no

recalling the moment I explained to my prog-musician weed dealer that Everyone's Gone to the Movies was about pedophilia

I just heard Two Against Nature for the first time last week. It's terrible! I'll stan for 70s-era Dan all the way, but man. There's like two good songs: "Gaslighting Abbie" and "Cousin Dupree" but the rest was boring as fuck. Where's the jaw-dropping Denny Dias solos? Where's the hip-hoppin' future-sample drumbeats? Where's the soothing Michael McD background vocals? And why is the production so goddamn LIFELESS?!?! Should I even bother with Everything Must Go?

yeah Everything Must Go is much better – trust me.

EMG is way worth it

There's like two good songs: "Gaslighting Abbie" and "Cousin Dupree" but the rest was boring as fuck.

"jack of speed" or gtfo

Everyone's Gone to the Movies was about pedophilia

It's sort of disturbing how many SD songs are about jailbait girls and perverts. Everyone's Gone to the Movies, Janie Runaway, Hey Nineteen, Cousin Dupree ...

But yeah, Everything Must Go is great. It's impossible to find online, last I checked, but there is an EPK of them riding around in the back of a cab in Vegas while the taxi cab confessions driver interviews them about the album.

^^Uh, look upthread at the posts of August 2nd, 2014.

Oh shit! Last time I looked it was IMPOSSIBLE! Day made, thanks.

holy shit that is the best video ever

I don't like either of the reunion SD albums. I do love all of Fagen's solo albums except for Kamakiriad, though. Sunken Condos is great.

Everyone's Gone to the Movies was about pedophilia
It's sort of disturbing how many SD songs are about jailbait girls and perverts. Everyone's Gone to the Movies, Janie Runaway, Hey Nineteen, Cousin Dupree ...

But yeah, Everything Must Go is great. It's impossible to find online, last I checked, but there is an EPK of them riding around in the back of a cab in Vegas while the taxi cab confessions driver interviews them about the album.

― Josh in Chicago

You should read Thomas Pynchon, similar thing

I've often wondered, do these people even listen to the lyrics? Do they know anything about the musicianship? Or are they just there to boogie.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, January 7, 2015 9:25 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to be fair, if steely dan weren't boogie-able then they wouldn't be half the band they are.

i mean, if they were just potheads with jazz chops and a taste for obscurantist lyrics...

for real. what i love about SD is that they function fine as a pop band with a ton of great singles if that's what you want from them, i think playing up the darkness/satire sometimes does a disservice to the entirety of their virtues.

you know when you think about it, lyrically their sensibility might be closest to someone like el-p.

Wow, both those LAW articles kind of suck.

ftfy

did LAW ever not suck? i don't remember. i feel like back in 2000 it wasn't terrible. it's just shit now though.

is the narrator in Hey Nineteen really a "pervert"?

a thirty year old going out with a nineteen year old! (grabs smelling salts).

he isnt even going out with them tho iirc

calling that "perverted" demonstrates a really straitened sense of morality or just normalcy

isnt he like, a dude who used to go out with young girls back when he was young reminiscing about that time?

Let us tell you: Listening to the Dan is akin to reading novel. You need a liberal arts degree to get it. Trust me, kids, it's not that you don't like Steely Dan, it's that you don't get it. It requires some formal humanities training to truly grasp the brilliance of a mellotron solo in the middle of a song about nuclear genocide. The lyrical nuances of a song like "Everyone's Gone To The Movies" are easily lost when you haven't spent four years critically analyzing texts. Yep, Katy Lied is a lot closer to Ulysses than Exile On Main Street.

alt weeklies need to die eh

oh wait i forgot the retha franklin part

i sense the guy is trying to talk to a 19yr old and she's not at all interested or on the same wavelength and the guy ends up alone at the end of the song with cocaine and tequila

nothing wrong with that

he ends up with a curvy colombian iirc

the song is great bc it's not tragic or perverse, it's wistful and a bit decadent