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

Not sure the philosophical speculation is as deep as a cute magazine story.

i've been jamming that Jarrett track so hard, it's def gonna be in my Spotify year end track list thing

also realizing i would seriously consider a nice box set of just Dan instrumental tracks, if it didn't take up a stupid amount of shelf space. listening to the Gaucho instrumental demo on Youtube right now to compare with the Jarrett and it does sound great.

I like all the fagen solo records but strangely the reunion SD albums do nothing for me. haven’t heard the Becker albums. 2c.

There was a leak a few years ago of some extended instrumental takes of I want to say Katy Lied tracks. I'll google real quick.

OK, they were Royal Scam takes. Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3rDQUCHnMI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp0TMxKGBlc

And so on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esz83G3jEUo

that one china crisis album is probably my favourite endeavor of Becker post-gaucho.

nightfly is a great album

there are two incredible moments in “green earrings” that pop into my head constantly: that purdie drum fill that leads into the first solo and that little climbing guitar lock that fills space between the keyboard stabs.

also the unexpected guitar pyrotechnics that open up the closing guitar solo

That Peg video is amazing. Even McDonald is like 'Man those guys are nuts, I sure learned a lot tho'

this is really fun, very not licensed beat tape made entirely of Steely Dan samples

he even samples Fagan rapping Uptown Baby from the Aja Classic Albums

https://streetcornermusic.bandcamp.com/album/derty-dans-cheap-thrills

Thanks!

my husband is in a music production class atm and has to sample something for his next assignment, and I think I've convinced him to sample the isolated McDonald vocal from Peg because I haven't stopped listening to SD, New Pornographers, or Destroyer for the past week or so.

that's not bad things to get stuck on

Thanks, JiC!

finally watched the aja classic albums documentary on youtube. lold at "pheromones for tots" re the "celeste" part in "deacon blues". forgot how incredible "home at last" is. purdie is on another level.

I would sit and watch one for every record tbh. My own holiday marathon

haha i looked for a gaucho one. perfect thing to do at work when no one else is here.

apparently a bunch of em are streaming free on Amazon Prime right now - started Goodbye Yellow Brick Road this AM. dunno if anything will be as perfect as Aja just cause the band themselves are such studio nerds that the format ends up making it a really complete testament to who they are as people and musicians.

the one on the band was a good one, filmed during danko’s lifetime

The Aja episode is good because the jams with the musicians is really tight. They got scenes with them playing together, most of those documentaries you might get an isolation section on a musician going over a certain part on the recording.

Coincidentally I gave 'Can't Buy a Thrill' and 'Pretzel Logic' a listen earlier today.

I got wondering if the later Dan ever re-visited 'Dirty Work' and/or 'Midnight Cruiser'. Probably not, but I like those two tracks.

classic albums are the best, love that show

Yes...'from the Jurassic period of Steely Dan.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTIRk0rn1Jo

Harmonized part of the solo was really cool.

Misses the big electric ascending lick that is on the recording. That's one of the best hooks in the original.

those guys are such good hosts in their own weird way it really would have been cool to see them go through their entire discography like this

(classic albums)

Agreed.

Mike Judge's show fits a niche on 'how crazy were they? pretty damn crazy.' Those are great for interviews with sidemen too.

Got really into Aja after I bought it in San Francisco, thinking I might never be in America again. The Classic Albums documentary got me into them. No desire to hear anything else, so I'll go to that thread now.

just watched the Aja doc, 90s Fagen looks like the bad guy from the "Love Is A Battlefield" video

We are young
Heartache to heartache we stand
Got a case of dynamite
I could hold out here all night
Both of us knowing
Don't take me alive

Come on with it,
You don't fight fair
That's okay, see if I care
Knock me twice, rap with your cane
It feels so nice, and you're out of the rain

I've been (re)trying to connect with "Gaucho" (the song) after it topped unperson's list last week, but it still sounds like the 1984 Saturday Night Live in-house band playing over the end credits, when the host and cast come out to bid everyone goodnight. That corny sax riff is the point in the dan discography when the old indie hipster me reasserts himself and says "Enough!"

Here's my list of the Four or Five Actually Bad Steely Dan Songs 1972-1980:

1. Gaucho - see above
2. Everything You Did - stultifying mid-tempo blandness
3. Monkey In Your Soul - chord changes thrown in at random, irritating baritone sax hook
4. My Rival - dumb "humour", hammy vocal, irritating organ solo
5. Through With Buzz - borderline, may be too weird and short to be bad

i could get talked into a couple of those being bad, but then i'd have to live with these bad songs popping up in my head all the time. i'm closest to you on "everything you did," furthest on the magnificent "gaucho." kinda wanna see what my version of this list would be.

I think if I were to make such a list almost all the songs would be from Pretzel Logic.

"My Rival" is the only song in their classic period I don't like. "Monkey in Your Soul" is great!

"Gaucho" is their best song.

I'm with you on "Everything You Did" and, like unperson, am less a fond of PL these days, possibly because it was my entry point twenty years ago and in retrospect doesn't seem representative.

I think PL is probably my least favorite of the classic era

I could do without the whole second side, excepting the title track.

it’s the only one besides RS I’ve never been obsessed with for weeks on end. I love them both (Scam slightly more), but i can’t say either have ever rotated through my ever-changing favorite 3 or so

i love morph the cat! not that i could tell you why or anything about the songs, really. just enjoy the floating, drifting nature of it, plus it just sounds pretty as hell.

anyway looking forward to this, love the title, feels like an abstract of the greater fagen/becker lyrical project

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Friday, August 24, 2012 2:16 PM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

morph the cat is the only fagen record i wouldn't recommend, the songs kinda go nowhere. sunken condos is funky and great

― who is extremely unqualified to review this pop album (BradNelson), Monday, August 15, 2016 12:06 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

What happened, Brad?

Nothing on The Royal Scam has ever really clicked for me. It's too, I dunno, antsy or something?

idk i’m a big enough dan fan that i got really into morph the cat at the start of the decade but i gradually realized the songs aren’t really there

It's my least favorite SD-associated album.

I struggled with 'Gaucho' (the song) at first but I love it now, it's so grandiose and ridiculous (in a good way).'My Rival' on the other hand is a song I enjoy but definitely one where I can sort of see that the band's detractors have a point, the organ solo is pretty bad.

The outright bad songs though, yeah I'd agree with 'Everything You Did' and some of the ones on Pretzel Logic - 'East St. Louis' and 'With a Gun' as well as 'Monkey...'.

Preztel Logic is the one I'm just sorta getting around to in 2020, several years after my original Dan rush. No beef with it, I just kept not finding copies of it at the record store! It's got some pretty awesome songs so I figure if I give it enough spins my brain will get aligned with it.

Royal Scam def has some of my least beloved Steely Dan songs when I'm just scanning the titles and thinking about them (Sign in Stranger, Everything You Did, the title track) but then when I put it on I'm like "ehhh this record's still kind of a jam." It helps that the first three tracks are just monsters, and that "Haitian Divorce" is such a huge earworm for me.