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

The attractions suck w out bruce tbrr. It took me a long time to realize that the best thing about early EC is Bruce's basslines.

Was talking about Bruce with a friend the other day. His basslines are just so creative and busy, we were trying to pinpoint some other contemporary doing the same thing. Like, I hear the Motown/Stax stuff he emulates, even early on, but he is so inventive and musical and fluid, almost like Jaco at times. Can't think of anyone like him. He really carries a lot of those melodies, or at least offers amazing counter melodies.
Seen EC a bunch since 1994-ish comeback - solo, with Nieve, with the Attractions, with the Imposters. I think I'm done, too. But he also plays really well as a support act of sorts, like when I saw him tour with Emmylou Harris, giving him a chance to bust out some classic country covers (of which he was a pioneer, as far as rock and roll/punk dudes go), plus duet with Emmy on some stuff. I imagine playing with SD would direct him more toward his most ornate material. Lotsa chords and whatnot.

Not sure SD could support a Sirius station, mostly because of the relatively limited catalog (even including solo stuff) and lack of much heyday live material. SD live these days, as always, goes pretty far to recreate the records, though the soloists do get some time to shine. What I would like is if they gave Becker and Fagen a show, like Dylan had and Petty has. Those shows were/are great, and let the personalities have a lot of fun, both as speaking DJs and as pickers of surprising songs.

Bruce Thomas is brilliant and integral to the albums but the band is fine live, if i had to swap out one member it'd be him over Steve or Pete for sure

Man, I couldn't swap out any of those dudes. Everyone was integral. We're not talking Steely Dan here.

I mean, we are, but ...

i saw costello on the when i was cruel tour and he brought the house down

yeah i saw that tour too and it was killer. saw him again a few years later and he was kinda coasting. can't see how he couldn't do a solid hour and 15 minutes tho -- dude's catalogue is pretty deep, his voice is still in good shape, steve nieve is still very entertaining.

It was my first time too – a killer set.

he played a lotta loud, distorted guitar.

There's a Steely Dan vibe to some of this album, especially in the lyrics novelist Michael Chabon wrote for you. How much did you have that band in mind?
They're always the good standard that you shoot for if you're trying to make lyrics about interesting characters and weird antiheroes. I feel like Steely Dan's presence has never been more felt in music that's considered hip and vital---you've got the Daft Punk records, and I hear it in stuff like Ariel Pink.
Did you have a second choice for a famous novelist? Like, do you think Jonathan Franzen would have killed it?
(Laughs) Michael was the only person I thought of. In my mind, it was an experiment to see if it worked. With a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author, it's like, "When is it OK to ask him if he's down to rewrite something?" But he was definitely cool with it. I was thinking of records like "Automatic" by the Pointer Sisters, where i's a pop-R&B records that has lyrics in the verse like, "All I can manage to push from my lips is a stream of absurdities." I want to inject some turns of phrase every now and then.
-----from "Mark Ronson Q&A" by Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone, February 12, 2015

Damn, typo right off: he said "*gold* standard," not "good standard."

is there gas in the prose? yes, there's gas in the prose

and keep my advent to yourself

Steely Dan are the foremost musical act in history whereby attempts at criticism always, and I mean always, make them sound even better. 70s/coke/smooth/jazz/guitar solos/sneer/Fagen/sarcastic/snobs/production

Pretty weak argument to say that describing them as "smooth jazz" makes them sound better to an unjaundiced eye. You're clearly already on the Steely Dan train so of course you'd feel comfortable twisting those (fairly accurate) barbs around to make them sound like attributes of great distinction. I dislike Steely Dan, and the above words certainly don't make me think they're better than I gave them credit for.

listening to the sw00ds broadcast on Sunday and rehearing these fine songs, I realized I've barely listened to their lyrics.

how is "smooth" a "barb"? actually it's kind of meaningless thing to say.

Smooth jazz is almost always a negative phrase in criticism. It's a shorthand for music that sounds like Kenny G.

enlightening, thank you

hasn't steely dan been cool again with the teenagers for like 3 years now

in addition, Becker and Fagen heard Steely Dan the other night and liked what they heard.

I liked 'em best on the first two albums, and also Pretzel Logic, but the foregrounding of jazz elements was maybe a cause for trepidation, because it's very spare, very careful especially after the expansiveness of Countdown To Ecstasy. Would like to hear PL's songs live, hopefully just a little more relaxed, a few more solos, more jazz. What the hell, there's some great stuff on there as is, esp. the version of Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Loo."
After that, it's cherrypickin' time: "Aja," Fagen's "New Frontier"---how is Becker's solo album?
I should listen to Katy Lied and The Royal Scam.
Saw Fagen's New York Rock and Soul Review (if that's the name) do a show for PBS, really liked it: refined without being too slick or pristine; refined (and propulsive) as in self-discipline.
The smooth jazz is usually boring at best, although the smooth jazz self-pity of "Deacon Blues" was a pisser at the time. Didn't help that I was living in Tuscaloosa, and the Crimson Tide line meant that it got meant played even more than it would have otherwise. Also that was in the Age of Punk dammit.

I just listened to Katy Lied! Seems splendid for the most part, with classic Dan melodic devices, but also distinctive solos, rhythmic turns--nothing too smooth, but not fusion-bound either, and Fagen seems passionate, the character just going for it, no matter how paranoid or desperate he may be, gotta take a chance baby, while things are kinda beautiful sometimes, "wear down the weary hours," o yes. 10 songs in 35 minutes, and rich stuff.

"Any world that I'm welcome to is better than the one I'm from," firm and determined.

Kind of Blue is smooth

uh yeah, but you know we're talkin "smooth jazz" in the elevator-y radio format subgenre sense. No doubt the smoothness of Kind of Blue helped make it the best-selling jazz album of all time; smoothness is not nec. a bad thing (and even smoove-j format comes in handy, if background is indeed what I'm looking for). Of coures KoB and "All Blues" in particular are way too covered and especially auto-programmed: PDQ Bach once did an album about an NPR station that was proudly "All Pachebel All The Time," and Pachebel's "Canon in D" is to "All BLues" as "Stairway To Heaven" is to lazy-ass Classic Rock stations---not the fault of the music, or the fans, except those who are too passive to complain about this kind of shit, assuming they don't like it (if they do, never mind).

I'm not sure Steely Dan are "smooth jazz". They are straight up r & b, seventies style, I always listen to them mixed in with funk and jazz-funk music. When people call them elevator music, it kind of feels like a misunderstanding of seventies musical language. Prob. because most people come to the Dan via classic rock.

Pachebel's "Canon in D" is to "All BLues" as "Stairway To Heaven" is to lazy-ass Classic Rock stations

this is not how analogies work!

When people call them elevator music, it kind of feels like a misunderstanding of seventies musical language.

Pachebel's "Canon in D" is to "All BLues" as "Stairway To Heaven" is to lazy-ass Classic Rock stations

this is not how analogies work!

― example (crüt), Wednesday, February 18, 2015 9:36 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
They are when I lose interest in the middle; it's a tiresomely common radio practice.

It's how they *do* work when etc.; sorry.

How music works, ideally, in an elevator? When it's bland, sometimes wan, keeping strong emotions and impressions filtered, sentimentalized and watered down, controlled, in an efficient, mobile cubicle of sound. Don't get me wrong, background music can be just right, and the last thing I want to hear between floors is death metal. But when I sit down to listen, I want more. That was true in the 70s as well. So this thread got me finally checking Katy Lied, next stop is The Royal Scan. Speaking of cubicles, better get back to it.

I can't remember the last time I heard music inside an elevator.

i guess i'm of the mind that whatever i think of "smooth jazz" (and i do like a fair amount of stuff in that category, more bob james than kenny g) i don't think it's a bad thing if rock fans and critics get their assumptions shaken up from time to time, and late-70s steely dan's inclinations toward "smooth jazz" function in that way.

and the way that the dan's melodies stand out, and the way their lyrics rub against the occasionally copasetic textures of "gaucho" in particular, is important.

but i'd be lying if i said i could embrace "gaucho" unreservedly as john darn1elle and others in ILM steely dan threads have been able to do.

bland, sometimes wan, keeping strong emotions and impressions filtered, sentimentalized and watered down, controlled, in an efficient, mobile cubicle of sound

this is so relative, it could describe any music, smooth or not.

but it's true, steely dan gets played on smooth jazz stations.

interestingly, "smooth jazz" is an endangered species--sales, radio stations, etc. all down from previous heights.

http://jazztimes.com/articles/54758-crossing-over-is-smooth-jazz-dead

(from 2012, but probably even more true now)

yeah, i almost typed "got/was played on smooth jazz stations"

aja and gaucho are the best... a masterpiece of hope and a masterpiece of despair

RIP smooth jazz some things are too smooth for this world

My muñequita

my Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa

Just tried on The Royal Scam: most of it doesn't grab me right away like most of Katy Lied, but the title track does; ditto "Kid Charlemagne," "The Fez," "Green Earrings"--especially that last, with its jumping rhythm and the stir of sounds, even that flying insect synth from "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" comes in on the fade--but some other tracks start great, then get too settled-in, about half-way through: something about the tempo. Also the music winks at us sometimes, "don't take the narrator too seriously." Which works on the traffic islands of "Haitian Divorce," but I prefer total loon commitment of "Green Earrings" etc., not that the music ever gets as out there as the guys in the lyrics are (doing their damndest to get, in some cases: hey they gotta be them).

smooth jazz is alive and well on the pop charts

or seventh chords are at least. close enough.

George Benson was one of the most blatant touchstones of the Daft Punk disc, so ...

(GB being a great example of a dude with chops so sick he basically burned through trad jazz, fusion and all sorts of stuff as a relative kid and probably had nowhere else to go but smooth.)

the last thing I want to hear between floors is death metal

you lost me here man

Don't want to hear death metal while I'm in an elevator, just something nice and vague and reassuring. Re never hearing any kind of music in elevators any more, of course the term, like the Steely Dan music I'm complaining about, is from the 70s/early 80s, or that's its "prime." Anyway, glad this thread got me to check out Katy Lied and The Royal Scam/

Royal Scam = best Dan.

Only one I don't love is Pretzel Logic, because after the 'hits,' it contains the most filler of any SD album imo

^ otm re: pretzel logic

it's funny though, as with every 70s SD album except for Can't Buy A Thrill, there's people who'll say "that's the best one." For me the songwriting on Pretzel Logic isn't at the same level as Katy Lied or most of Royal Scam but the groove gets pretty great, it's easy to underrate Rikki but it's an amazing tune