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 think the only weird thing about it is that it doesn't have much to do with the song? It's longer and there is more of it, but I don't know how much weirder it is than the strummed chord at the start of "Don't Take Me Alive."

the final line of the intro is more or less repeated during the chorus. the weird thing, i guess, is that there is no real western music theoretical framework that "explains" what's going on in the intro but it sounds good anyway.

It's not such a weird intro: it uses the same sonic palette as the body of the song, it returns to the tonic regularly, and the song needs something at the beginning and in the middle, it would be pretty dull otherwise.

Enjoyable video if you don’t already know the composition of the song. Every time I see these I want to bust out my guitar and learn the song
He could play down the reactions a bit though. “Oh!”

I don't know, the older and crankier I get the more I appreciate enthusiasm.

i still yelp every time i hear a perfectly executed keltner snare roll

I shriek when I hear an add 9 chord.

I only trust Blayne Westphall's take on these things

In the Aja doc they talk about bringing in entirely different bands to play the songs, like musical chairs, musical bands. How great would it be if an official alternate Aja could be made — the same songs but with different players and arrangements

Although I presume that those discarded versions never got past recording the rhythm tracks, so you'd be listening to a lot of instrumentals with no overdubs or lead parts.

You should know
how all the pros play the game
(You change your name)

it was hilarious on that classic albums when they played rejected guitar solos and made fun of them

I'd buy an album of Pegs, the full song repeated with the rejected solos.

Classic albums scene doesn't give you enough of them and in the right context to judge.

I saw some 45s at a swap meet today, and one of them was "Peg" b/w "The Fez".

The rejected Peg solos kind of suck
Not a hard decision to choose Graydon
Hindsight 20/20

we don't even hear them sitting properly in the mix!

I read somewhere that one of the rejected solos is Becker himself.

https://i.imgur.com/ZnGTToB.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64tH5d92d48

"We will come rejoicing, reeling in the years."

I was listening to Wishbone Ash today, and I realized how much "Reelin in the Years" rips off "Blowin' Free", which was a bit hit a few months earlier.

*big hit

The shuffle ? The vocal harmonies?

The dueling lead guitars? I kind of see some resemblance, but not enough to cry foul.

In other (I Got The) news...

Definitely…unquestionably weed https://t.co/rO1R6h1LRu

— David Crosby (@thedavidcrosby) April 5, 2022

Just found out there's a SD cover band called The Fine Colombians.

https://www.facebook.com/TheFineColombians/videos/2229771193705148/

If anyone would know, it would be DC

But wasn’t it recorded during the height of becker’s coke use? So maybe

I always understood it to be weed.

From the mouth of Becker himself, this pretty much settles it for me as weed (and my millennial ass was team coke before)

I submit that "fine Colombian" refers in this instance to marijuana, as evidenced by Mr Becker's gloss on this subject at https://t.co/m8n5ctby5p during his recitative over the band's vamp starting at 2:50.

— Howard A. Rodman (@howardrodman) April 5, 2022

Team Coke = Team Ralph excels at sleeping.

I mean, c'mon.

I *want* it to be coke, but I know it's weed.

always assumed coke

Tempted to post a video of a friend of mine kicking it in a Dan cover band but maybe this is not the thread for that.

The shuffle ? The vocal harmonies?

The dueling lead guitars? I kind of see some resemblance, but not enough to cry foul.

Yes, all the above. Given that "Reelin" was recorded a few months after Argus came out, and the similarities, I would be very skeptical that they hadn't heard it. I'm not saying they owe them royalties or anything.

Argus only went to #169 on the Billboard Charts, and knowing Fagen and Becker's tastes, I highly doubt it was on their radar. Maybe Jeff Baxter heard it.

never heard "Blowin' Free" before. it's lovely!

with effort, i can definitely hear the connection. kinda feel like we need someone who was "there" in '72 --- was this getting AOR play? It seems like it was a much bigger deal in the UK, peaking at #3 on the albums chart and winning Sound magazine's readers' poll for album of the year. Would that have pushed up the likelihood of the Dan hearing it?

well, one of WA's guitarists thinks so:

More specifically, Powell believes that the stirring outro to Blowin’ Free was a direct influence on two of rock music’s classic songs: “It was among the most borrowed ideas of the era; I can hear [the twin-guitar finale] in Steely Dan’s Reelin’ In The Years, and also, of course, in The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy – that was definitely influenced by Blowin’ Free.”

xp
I was there (maybe a bit after its peak) and I heard it, so it must have gotten some radio play. I bought WA's Live Dates album, which came out at the end of 1973, and I never bought things "sound unheard."

But you could also scrape up some Allman Bros track that did the twin lead thing too.

caught them live for the first time a few weeks ago in an outdoor amphitheatre in concord, california. incredible show. their drummer is insane. DF seems like he's having a blast

Gonna see ‘em tomorrow night at an outdoor pavilion. Gonna lay back on my blanket, smoke a jazz cigarette and reel away them years.

Hate to say this, but I can definitely imagine their shows being better now that Becker is gone. Both times I saw them, he seemed inebriated in his long-winded rants and erratic playing. (Miraculously, his solos were fine at the second show, but they were awful at the first.) It was a little bit of a shock because when I saw them play live on TV years earlier, he wasn't like that at all. I didn't know he had cancer and in retrospect, I wonder if he was just inebriated as a way of dealing with it, similar to how Warren Zevon went crazy with his long-dormant vices when he found out he was terminal.

His long winded monologues during hey nineteen were hilarious and a very big part of the shows for me. It was so "them" and I'm sad he isn't around anymore. His guitar playing was exquisite.

They were a part of the set btw and half scripted. He wasn't out of it man you just missed that it was a bit.

It was kind of obvious a large chunk of what he said was scripted when he repeated a lot of stuff both times I saw them (in the span of a year and a half probably). I was referring more to his tone and demeanor, even when he introduced the show with the boilerplate “we’re going to play all your favorite hits.”

I saw a recent "news headline" where Steve Jones would rather listen to Steely Dan than the Sex Pistols..

Well, why not? Sure he's not going to get entertainment from listening to himself

lol I saw a news story about how John Lydon actually likes Pink Floyd