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 Nightfly is tremendous and I'd also rank it above Gaucho though several of Gaucho's songs are better than any individual songs on the Nightfly. But the Nightfly is just so light and free, but still with the dark flourishes here and there ("The Goodbye Look") -- just a wonderful record

after all my gaucho shit talk i'm listening to gaucho now and it's really great

maybe the best steely dan album is the steely dan album you're listening to ~~right now~~

maybe the best steely dan album is the steely dan album you're listening to ~~right now~~

this is pretty true

there's a steely dan album for every occasion

Is "My Rival" an Alex Chilton cover?

i like so cal coked out sd better than nyc academic jazznerd sd

haha um no

xp

"Hey 19" is kind of a Chilton narrative tho.

"Gaucho" is about Chris Bell's experience at a gay bar iirc

This thread made my dig out my copy of Gaucho for the first time in a while (the 2000 CD remaster) and was surprised to see that Keith Jarrett no longer gets a part-credit for the title track - p sure he did at one point? It's definitely a steal from ''Long as You Know You're Living Yours'

I see it as a little similar to Taurus -> Stairway to Heaven. Opens very similarly with a very similar vibe/sound/harmonic device, but goes somewhere completely different.

I mean I'm sure they ripped it off, but all they really ripped off was the groove at the beginning.

i kinda worry that gaucho (a good album IMO but not my favorite of theirs) is getting a little over-theorized

i'm not sure the sound is as 'conceptual' as folks here make it out to be. it seems like a logical next point in a line of development, if a little more out on a limb than some might have expected.

xpost

I can't find the studio version of the Jarrett tune on YouTube, but on this live version at about 23:40 Garbarek is playing the same melody as Gaucho - it's a lot closer than the Taurus/StH biz imho:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OIMvHdJ_04

i'm not sure the sound is as 'conceptual' as folks here make it out to be. it seems like a logical next point in a line of development, if a little more out on a limb than some might have expected.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Thursday, August 18, 2016 8:31 PM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, completely agree.

i mean, fagen and becker are nothing if not smart, and not averse to intellectualizing their own work, but i'm still not sure that the musical texture of gaucho can be made to bear all the connotations people have placed on it here.

... huh?

Over-theorising is half the fun of listening/consuming

I think the musical texture of gaucho pretty clearly fits the themes of the album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-e-UqBO2Nc

He definitely plays one melodic lick that sounds a lot like a lick in Gaucho, but beyond that the two go pretty different places. Maybe it's more than Taurus:Stairway, but it's still a pretty small part of the song ripped off in the end.

And Steely Dan's is better!

x-post

i'm not so sure myself... i've heard the texture described as attenuated and enervated, and i'm not sure that's what i'm hearing or more to the point what people would be hearing absent the themes of the lyrics. a lot of the music seems more congruent with a certain vein of muso jazz/r&b that critics usually take to connote very different things when set to different lyrics (or no lyrics at all).

Can't listen at work, but is the riff more involved than the "Rikki..." vs. "Song for My Father" brouhahah of several years ago?

Yeah I'd say it's more of a lift than that.

Classic

This album is totally fun and usually readily available and cheap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig1VW-nTgJk

As s this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5eNQN9v4zM&list=PLkzpRcOyCkKEqqwW3EhG2WDAw9lGAeT_3&index=4

"Babylon Sisters: old creep plies young girls with drugs"

I always assumed Babylon Sister was about hiring a hooker. Open to correction of course.

It's Babylon Sisters, plural. It's about getting ready to have a threesome, maybe somewhere by the beach. The drugs and young part are probably there too (not necessarily underage but definitely younger than the speaker).

I don't think they're prostitutes because hiring two prostitutes and driving "out of
Town" would be insanely expensive. Plus it sounds like he's trying to be cool and seductive with them.

Like a Sunday in T.J.
That it's cheap but it's not free

Are they black? I thought I read someone saying that

i'm so sick of people calling them "THE DAN!". no offense. it's like the "VINYLS" of jazz pop for me. on the facebook group i'm on where people post pictures of what they're listening to people are always making "a case" for steely dan. like "woah, now hold on now, you might think they were a faceless corporate slick etc etc BUT their albums were really good..." and it just always reminds me of this thread and that i've been on the internet too long.

http://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/assets/img/SteelyDan_SW_527x376-c25f05639e.jpg

the dan is coming from inside the house

Pitchfork just called...

"Babylon Sisters: old creep plies young girls with drugs"

this is the the backstory of like 36% of steely dan songs

and most of them also involve wistful, melancholic reflection by said creep

Hearing a couple thousand people collectively singing lines like "bodacious cowboys such as your friend will never be welcome here / high in the Custerdome" and (of course) "the Cuervo Gold, the fine Columbian / make tonight a wonderful thing" was fun, even moving. But I also resented the experience because I wanted Gaucho all to myself, and finally cursed my decision to go to the concert when it would have been better to stay home and listen to the twenty-four-bit remastered version on my Bose noise-canceling headphones.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/10/06/leave-alexa-alone/

i swear Gaucho plays like Buhloone Mindstate. Some mind blowing songs on an otherwise unfinished album

perhaps Pos and Becker's health issues during production cast a similar shadow...

Nate, you can have both the collective and individual experience

I have seen Steely Dan live twice, one show was transcendent and unbelievable etc and the other one was mostly forgettable (Mike McDonald opened and even guested on a few Dan numbers, that was neat) but I think it had a lot to do with the sound of the venue.

Which is to say, the show at the nice theater that mostly hosts musicals was absolutely the best sounding show I've ever attended, whereas the show at the shitty new amphitheater with "lawn seating" that played host to anyone and anything sounded kind of shitty, which is a drag when you've come out to see Steely Dan

Buhloone is my favourite De La Soul album. Unfinished or not.

looks like Don's got a side gig writing for Slate:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2016/10/ed_sullivan_a_short_vision_and_how_nuclear_fears_fueled_the_counterculture.html

Evidently, that film ultimately led to the brilliant "New Frontier" video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBruAooXPNU

I love his movie reviews for Premiere mag from the 80s -- what was his nom de plume again?

Libby Gelman-Waxner.

Wow amazing thread here. As a newbie to ILX just wanted to register my lifelong love and admiration for Steely Dan. I also love all kinds of Punk derived musics, in fact my #1 all time band is the previously mentioned FALL. And I feel no conflict of interest. Actually I find them kinda similar in a sorta post-Beat lyrical style way. Anyway, great thread.

Fagen one of the few other lyricists whose work repays lifelong scrutiny to the same extent as MES's!

Vyrna, were you ever on the Fegmaniax mailing list in its heyday?

meanwhile the man behind the thread title is using his Twitter to relentlessly street team for the new Gorillaz LP