Why do people rag on Steely Dan's "Gaucho" so much?

But that's what's so hellish about it. It's Los Fucking Angeles.

A thought I had on another thread:

T/S: The best album about LA

Guns n' Roses Appetite for Destruction or Steely Dan Gaucho? Two sides of the same coin, I think.

Story:
http://www.bigomagazine.com/archive/ARrarities/ARsdgaucho.html

'Second arrangement' is probably my most listened to Steely Dan song. 'The Bear' is also good. If they had been finished and included, I think Gaucho would be an easy consensus for best Steely Dan album

READ THE FUCKING THREAD

however i had "deacon blues" stuck in my head this afternoon. i usually hate songs with long choruses (and repeating long choruses, at that), but "deacon blues" is just perfect. something about how assuredly bewildered fagen's delivery seems supersedes any possible klutziness.

And am I just imagining that Streisand covered "Barrytown"? I know she did the early-Becker/Fagen "I Mean to Shine," but I love the idea of her sticking it to the Archie Bunker type of "Barrytown."

It's funny reading this sentiment toward these two albums. Having grown up in a very Dan-friendly house, I've always loved their music, and The Royal Scam and Gaucho are my favorite albums. Scam is certainly not their greatest album, but, more so with Steely Dan than with most bands, certain songs tend to make indelible marks on your memory and hold such strong connections. Whenever I hear "Kid Charlemagne" or "Caves of Altamira" I'm instantly reminded of a rather fond period of my life. Whether it is because of how often I listened to that record then or some meaning within those songs I do not know.

Also, on the talk of Scam upthread as neo-hippie favorite I can attest, as me and my friends were deep into our Phish phase and spun the album hundreds of times (I was 16....). Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the album seems to be the only one where they focused mroe on texture and groove and funk (in some places) than on their usual character sketches and dark contemporary commentary. It's easy to listen to "The Fez" when you've taken 8 bong hits.

Gaucho on the other hand is no guilty pleasure. It is a work of pure yet restrained genius, with loads of sleaze, contempt, antipathy... over the most sophisticated, glossy, presicse sounds...it's a gripping album.

Alright, last time I read it (admittedly a while ago) nobody had, and a text search for 'bootleg' came up empty. Sorry for ruining your day.

That being said:

the lost gaucho album >>>>>> gaucho

is very true.

is it safe to like "since u been gone" yet?

You can find the source for the title track in 'Long as You Know You're Living Yours' from the Keith Jarrett and co album Belonging. Jarrett noticed this as well, sued and now receives a co-writing credit on the track.

AMG:

Themes:
Night Driving
At the Office!!!!
Late Night

I just ordered a cheap used copy of this.

In an advance copy of Marooned[ that a friend managed to snag, Phil Freeman devotes a third of his Motorhead essay to Gaucho; it's mostly an excellent encapsulation of this discussion.

This is great (from the Stylus piece):

Consummate critics in their own right, Walter Becker himself nails Gaucho above. It wasn’t the peak of their sound, it was more like its implosion: a spotless album not only portraying and mocking, but literally embodying the shellacked vapidity of their Los Angeles lifestyles and the escape—a fantasy of breezy opulence—that their music offered to their fans.

It says exactly what I've always felt about them - that while satirizing a scene, they also create a perfect picture of it, so that I can feel like I'm in on the jokes even though they're about a lifestyle and time I never knew.

yeah that's a good piece.

phish's golden age (imo) is 97 when they were deep in funk

stop it.

"Brut and charisma poured from the shadow where he stood"

really, these guys were The Best.

"Szechuan dumplings, now that the deal has been done. I'm the one."

My favorite Dan album.

In an advance copy of Marooned that a friend managed to snag, Phil Freeman devotes a third of his Motorhead essay to Gaucho; it's mostly an excellent encapsulation of this discussion.

Well, as I said in the piece, I had originally thought long and hard about making Gaucho my album pick for the book. It's still absolutely my favorite SD album; for me it works like a short story collection, something like Bret Easton Ellis's The Informers (a very underrated book, btw).

for me it works like a short story collection

absolutely OTM. The fullest flowering of their weird lyrical specificity.

Apologies for using the word "specificity".

I finally picked up a copy and I think it's great.

I had never caught one of the best lines in "Hey Nineteen" before:

The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing

The way he phrases it is so spot-on -- he really sounds drunk and depressed, as though the tequila and coke are the only things propping him up.

I think "Columbian" at the time meant weed - not that there isn't plenty of coke on the album, but "Columbian" was a common designator for weed at the time

Ah, ok. Actually drunk/stoned fits that line better than drunk/coked-up.

And the whole mood of the song too - resigned rather than grandiose.

I made myself coffee and read the OTHER Steely Dan thread again; it really is the most amazing thing on ILM.

Please take me along when you slide on down

So what the hell is the "Custerdome?"

Becker: 'It's, ah, one of the largest buildings in the world. You know, an extravagant structure with a rotating restaurant on top.'

Fagen: 'It exists only in our collective imagination. In the Steely Dan lexicon it serves as an archetype of a building that houses great corporations...' "

from Reeling in the Years

i was kinda hoping it would be here. no luck.

I was just in chat with a certain Alex-in-NYC-type (it's all good, hate on what you wanna hate on), and somehow Dan came up, and I found myself defending them at length (well, length for chat anyway) even though I know it's not like I'm going to create converts that way. But it helped me put a couple of ideas into words that apply well to Gaucho:

I feel like this album gets the same criticism as books that cause people to say things like, "I don't want to read another book about the problems of middle aged white guys." "Oh boo hoo. You're tired of taking young girls home for meaningless cocaine-fueled sex. Poor you." But that criticism doesn't see the forest for the white guys, so to speak.

And of course the haters with the bigger record collections don't like the over-perfect sound, but over-perfect is much more the point than perfect in this case -- it's an intentional counterpoint to how crusty with filth the characters are on the inside. The record is filled with singularly bloodless studio performances, and oh how people love to point that out, but once you get inside the album's point of view, the sound is an uncomfortable defense mechanism, like an overzealous tendency toward gallows humor (which Fagen also has, is the rightful owner of, and is very good at). The songs have the same kind of "mellow" as a violent prisoner on a huge dose of tranquilizers -- lookin' pretty chill right now, but still at high risk for hurting himself or someone else. Oh my god, what happens when all that shit wears off?

There are a lot of SD songs that deal with the same basic theme, but on this album it's distilled: this is a world where everyone wants nothing more than to be presentable, but that's been taken care of, and no one has any good ideas about what to want next. Instead they have some very bad ideas, ideas that victimize young women in the first two tracks, encourage the cycle of drug addiction in another two, foster poisonous and/or jealous relationships throughout, and then in "Third World Man" the coup de grace: giving up the whole game, total retreat, holing up in your house and engaging in some (undefined by the song) solitary, obsessive nuttiness until one day you accidentally blow up the neighborhood. (Of all the scary people on this record, that's the one I'm most afraid of becoming.)

I get grandiose with praise too often, but when will this album get its due as the breezily scathing, horrifyingly easy-going little masterpiece that it is?

See above thread.

Yeah, I know, it was just on my mind, is all. Shrug.

I made myself coffee and read the OTHER Steely Dan thread again; it really is the most amazing thing on ILM.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Sunday, June 10, 2007 4:06 PM

Which thread in particular?

This one.

I've come to think there is no album more perfect and brilliant all the way through.