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

Bob Dylan: "I think of myself more as a song and dance man"

it's pretty clearly not the musicians drawing the line, as well as all the r&b covers of Beatles songs there's Janis Joplin's very public Bessie Smith worship, the Grateful Dead playing Dancing in the Street at like every show etc etc

i'm sure this has been discussed on more relevant threads here and elsewhere, but these comments of Dylan's- when i was like 9 years old i had some video with interview clips of Dylan and he'd say shit like "i'm just a guitar player" and at that age it struck me as totally disingenuous. and i def think he's deliberately confounding and messing with square journalists, cultivating his aloof persona etc. but i'm much more inclined to think he's ultimately being honest about how he sees himself and what he does, who he has most in common with... never got too deeply into Dylan myself, maybe someone else can clarify.

Remembering Geezer Butler in a Black Sabbath documentary moaning about how, in the 60s, every club you went to in Birmingham was playing Motown and Soul and there was nowhere for them to play.

Well really if we're gonna overanalyse a Dylan quip "song and dance man" within that context would refer back to vaudeville, not so much Motown.

did i imply he's referring to Motown?
he's just asserting that he's a performer first and an author second, basically.

my question is whether he's unhelpfully casting the former in a diminutive light, tbc.

I think the questioner was undoubtedly doing that by focusing on words/poetry - I think Bob is being genuine (or as genuine as Bob ever gets).

Well the discussion was centred around when the division between "dancing music" and "listening music" began, I think the quote was originally thrown in this thread, prob jokingly, in reference to that. It'd be disingenious for me to suggest the performer vs songwriter dichotomy doesn't overlap with this, but I don't think they're interchangeable...so yeah, I think that quote is 99% messing with the reporter, but in as far as I could imagine it as sincere, it's about refering back to old timey showbiz and I think that's just a differebt divide?

xp

gotcha. i think "dancing music"/"listening music" and "entertainer"/"artiste" are VERY closely related, actually.

Met a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you

Met a man Bojangles and he'd dance for you

― Alito Bit of Soap (President Keyes), Tuesday, June 27, 2023 4:06 PM (twenty-one seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i think this gets at it - i think he wanted to align himself with an older type of folk archetype (not either the Serious Rock Poet or Protest Folk Singer) but like the rascally side of the folk/blues traditions, the music that was entertainment for people sung by traveling singers

also like someone said he probably just said it because it sounded cool and would confound ppl

so if they're not i am probably guilty of conflating those two things xxp

ok, that is a helpful explanation ty

it seems to me that the story is much more complicated than "once upon a time all music was dance music, then white critics in the '60s..."

for starters, i think as with so many things in anglo-american culture, white hipsters were parroting a development that had already happened 15 years earlier in black art, namely bebop and the social architecture of standing around and listening because enthusiasm was perceived to be square.

heroin would've been part of that, i'm guessing, long before the rise of quaaludes.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

I think the working theory itt isn't that "all music was dance music", but rather that all Rock & Roll (which back then would have included Soul/R&B as well as Rock music) was.

gotcha. i think "dancing music"/"listening music" and "entertainer"/"artiste" are VERY closely related, actually.

I think UMS is probably otm about the Dylan quote, but on a wider level, I think these categories changed throughout history and so while to our modern times I'd mostly agree, at the time of that interview I think things were murkier. The initial wave of Rock & Roll was despised by establishment musicians who would probably have thought of themselves as entertainers more than artists, viewed the new music as a disgrace to Quality Entertainment, and while the music of those establishment types was also to some extent danceable, the kind of wild dancing that Rock & Roll featured was def in the mix for why your Sinatra and Dean Martin types would've been hostile. Just a lot of racket you know, not something you can sit down and listen to like Peggy Lee singing something from the Great American Songbook.

In a way the mid-60's move to Rock as art/music to listen to was also somewhat paradoxically I think a generational reaction to this: damn straight Rock & Roll ain't quality entertainment, it is something way more important than your stupid crooners, it is ART. This I think does break down mostly along racial lines: ppl like Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, James Brown saw Sinatra at the Sands as aspirational, a model to some extent aesthetically and certainly commercially (all those showtunes on Motown albums!). John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Roger McGuinn, etc. I think had zero interest in ever becoming Sinatra, that was their parent's music. So I kinda viewed the Dylan quote as trolling the interviewer by suggesting he is entirely that model, "I'm not an artist man I'm just a nightclub entertainer" type thing. I think I probably missed the mark on that, the ums reference to the rascally travelling singer is probably closer to what he meant. But then he did end up doing Sinatra cover albums.

Assuming that Dylan is trolling is generally a safe assumption.

The interesting question is, when is he NOT trolling?

it seems to me that the story is much more complicated than "once upon a time all music was dance music, then white critics in the '60s..."

for starters, i think as with so many things in anglo-american culture, white hipsters were parroting a development that had already happened 15 years earlier in black art, namely bebop and the social architecture of standing around and listening because enthusiasm was perceived to be square.

heroin would've been part of that, i'm guessing, long before the rise of quaaludes.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

booming post

yep

Really don't think "all music used to be dance music" is sonething anyone said or believes, guys.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

― budo jeru, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 06:03 (five hours ago) link

I think the working theory itt isn't that "all music was dance music", but rather that all Rock & Roll (which back then would have included Soul/R&B as well as Rock music) was.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 28 June 2023 09:42 (one hour ago) link

Having read the excellent Elijah Wald book (it was required in a History of American Pop Music class I took) I recall his basic argument being: Rockism colors the way we talk about pre-rock music, and it leads us to overstate the importance of novel developments like bebop. We do this at our own peril, lopping off the wider context ('pop music' == social dancing music) in which even the musicians who played bebop had to make rent (and/or pay the dope man) by playing Glenn Miller waltzes in dance venues for the countless terminally unhip members of the terminally American public who were flocking to see The Glenn Miller Story in theaters in 1954.

Second terminally there was a mistake, but a funny one

Daniel otm

i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it

A large portion of music (or at least Western, professionalized music) was at least nominally religious for quite a while. Lots of Renaissance and Baroque and classical works were church-sponsored and not meant for dancing per se. There are, of course, many traditions of religious dancing. But
the ecclesiastical works of, e.g., Bach and Handel were not, I suspect, destined to get sick acid-house club remixes.

Folk music, otoh, has probably been associated with dancing forever.

for starters, i think as with so many things in anglo-american culture, white hipsters were parroting a development that had already happened 15 years earlier in black art, namely bebop and the social architecture of standing around and listening because enthusiasm was perceived to be square.

This true as far as the white parroting is concerned, but the main reason dancing wasn't allowed at bebop performances initially (e.g., "No Lindy Hopping" signs at venues) was because the clubs were too small for dancing. It wasn't that bebop fundamentally couldn't or shouldn't be danced to -- or, as dancers at the time said, "Well, maybe YOU can't dance to it..."

the wider context ('pop music' == social dancing music) in which even the musicians who played bebop had to make rent

totally! my point was less that beboppers were the first to outlaw dancing and more that there's always been a process through which dance music becomes folk music becomes art music. the boundaries are porous and context-dependent. so i wasn't trying to introduce a new rockist narrative about the supremacy of bebop, but just introducing it as one among many examples to counter a larger annoying narrative about white rock in the '60s emerging itt

Now thinking of Monk dancing. Thelonious, my old friend.

the discussion was centred around when the division between "dancing music" and "listening music" began

this is what i was responding to

Yeah ok, should've added "within Rock & Roll", didn't think to because I'd assumed that was the context we were having the discussion in but can see how it could come across diff, my bad.

it's all good, i mean the discussion was interesting and i just was trying to push it to become more interesting by including more data, which Tarfumes did.

just put a hold on the Wald book at my library.

good posts

Daniel-

Just a lot of racket you know, not something you can sit down and listen to like Peggy Lee singing something from the Great American Songbook.

you're right that this part eluded me, i'm 100% on the same page about the rest.

having said that, i think it's worth challenging the assumption entirely that music had always been for dancing and then some intellectual, hipster shit went down and ruined it.

this isn't really my stance at all idk. i think pop needs more party poopers.

Folk music, otoh, has probably been associated with dancing forever.

Mostly but thinking of a strain of Irish (and other probably) trad music that’s very story based and would have mandated close listening to follow the words.

Good point; when we think of how bards memorized Homeric poetry or the Mahabharata or Gilgamesh or whatever, the feats of memory must have been music-adjacent.

I am a 52-year-old white collar knowledge worker / office drone and I have to alphabetize things surprisingly often. I cannot alphabetize things without singing the song in my head.

There are hundreds of folk ballads, not designed for dancing, from England, Scotland, Ireland.

Yes and also hundreds of pieces that are - jigs, reels, morris-adjacent material, plus polkas and waltzes and gavottes and square-fance material and quite a lot of fiddle music and line dances and and and

I don't think I said that there isn't non-dance music, nor did anyone say that there isn't dance music. There is plenty of both, and lots in between. Not sure why this is even being presented as a conflict or argument

I think because we were talking about a shift in the 60s, which was when Greenwich Village folk was more of a sit and listen thing than a dance-a-jig thing

Another example of a dance form becoming art music for seated enjoyment: in 1924 you had Paul Whiteman commissioning George Gershwin to write “Rhapsody in Blue” which was billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music” and performed in a classical music venue.

Another example of a dance form becoming art music for seated enjoyment: in 1924 you had Paul Whiteman commissioning George Gershwin to write “Rhapsody in Blue” which was billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music” and performed in a classical music venue.

Who gives a shit

Can we get back to talking about bad sneakers

what is the danciest steely dan track, and is it the fez

"Peg" is pretty dancey.

"King of the World" is one of my favorite deep cuts - that would get me dancing

Are there any Steely Dan songs with extended segments (not just a couple of measures) in non-standard time signatures like 5, 7 or 9? For that matter, I'm having trouble thinking of any in 3 or 6 (except parts of "Aja").

When I think of the Dan I don't really think of time-signature wankery. Close harmony, yes. 5s and 7s and 9s, not really. They're not Dream Theater.

I think "Two Against Nature" is said to be 6, which is really just 3 if you squint right, but I have never had to count it in a performance setting and I hope I never have to.

Closest I can think of is "Babylon Sisters" & "Home At Last" which both employ Bernard Purdie's shuffle, essentially (quarter note) triplets over half-time.

https://francisdrummer.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/steely-dan-babylon-sisters-drum-sheet-music.png

...all of this is in the radical 4/4 time obviously, but the polyrhythms at play (esp the ghost notes) is where it gets "fun".

Sure, they subdivide beats into triplets all the time, it's the basis of swing.

A half-time shuffle does not (to me) read as odd. If I have think about it (which I mostly don't), I regard it as a two-bar phrase.

It really is 4/4 at heart. Instead of having the main snare accent snare on 2 and 4, you just put it on the 3. But in actual practice, most people aren't really counting - once you have the feel internalized, you don't need to count.

I can really get down to night by night (dance wise)

https://i.ibb.co/48fdtc3/Screenshot-20230630-140854.png