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

BLASPHEMY

People who think great craft and good chops are antithetical to "feelings" (too intellectual? not enough from the heat?) hate Steely Dan. But that's just as silly as thinking great craft and good chops are *necessary* for creating great music. You can't make rules about this stuff. Orbit makes them sound like they're Blood, Sweat & Tears, or something.

That may be true; but what seems to me to be far more prevalent is people who hate Steely Dan ascribing the reason for that hatred to a belief that great craft and good chops are antithetical to "feelings"

I will not take anyone seriously who thinks that "Babylon Sisters" is sterile and unfeeling.

orbit do you hate relaxing?

That's interesting. So you think it's a rationalization? Just an "I hate this, what's wrong with it, ah, I know!" kind of thing?

I suspect that's a significant factor - particularly for those for whom SD "represent" something (e.g. "everything that punk stood against" or the sort of music that's listened to by your "smarmy yuppie boss").

Hence I suspect why so many people seem to feel it perfectly reasonable to attack / dismiss SD without feeling the necessity to complicate the basis of their judgment by having actually listened to them first; and consequently why so many other people have been made to feel that liking them somehow represents some sort of betrayal of principles.

I like that they're a fusion of "taste" and "tasteless" -- the boho/lit/jazz leanings wouldn't be nearly as fun if they weren't accompanied by this Curb Your Enthusiasm-like hateful-but-hilarious middle-aged industry dickhead sensibility. I love them even more as they're getting older.

This is exactly it for me, at least with the radio station I listened to growing up. They played the same "hits" over and over and over again and I just learned to cringe every time I heard them, no matter how cool I thought it was that they were named after a sex toy. Although: I did love "Hey Nineteen" when it came out, but I'm still not sure if that was the song itself or my adolescent whatnot reacting to the fabulousness of the Solid Gold dancers uh "interpreting" it every week while it was still on the charts.

Maybe I'll come around to the band some day, but it's going to take a lot of time and possibly some therapy.

Becker: "And it was just a quirk of Donald's and my natures that we thought superimposing jazz harmonies on pop songs was subversive in a much more subtler way. But i guess most people writing songs don't look at it that way.. lucky for us!"

Fagan: "I think people who are sophisticated in the sense that they want to hear some kind of substance in the lyrics are musically going to tend to be primitivists. They have that kind of nostalga de la boue, they are into this purity thing of rock'n'roll; they see it as once being the sort of revolutionary teenage thing and they want to maintain that. I don't know why groups who have some good writers as far as the lyrics go don't get bored playing the same old rock'n'roll stuff..."

That's their starting point. That's before all the musicians came in.

To me SD is nothing if not emotional, at their core. Allegedly "sterile" chops played with precise warmth and lyrics that satirize their intended audience.

My roommate hates 'em too, but she thinks Ryan Adams is a genius and I have to hear "Rock and Roll" every morning so fuck her.

Your roommate, Gear!, could be charged for cruel and unusual punishment.

All night long
We would sing that stupid song
And every word we sang I knew was true.

also, one thing that struck me about reading This Band Could Be Your LIfe was how the whole punk/70s rock "war" was largely bullshit anyway (at least for the bands in that book)...I mean all those kids like 70s/60s/classic rock...Ian MacKaye and Rollins worshipped Nugent, the Minutemen CCR, and Gregg Ginn (and I think one of the Sonic Youth folks too) loved The Grateful Dead.

USA Punx were into Blue Oyster Cult and y'all's know it

"Steely Dan's career started self-indulgently in the 70s, and they outdid themselves in the pretension department with each subsequent album. Do It Again, Reeling In The Years, and Rikki Don't Lose That Number may just be the reason punk was born. Twenty years later, their Two Against Nature reunion won four Grammys, including album of the year, largely because fans were stoked to hear some new Steely, and because the boys delivered an album full of the jazzy, catchy songs they were famous for. On their new Everything Must Go, they sound bored and out of ideas. Fagen hasn't much to say lyrically, and Becker has nothing engaging to play. Where are the funky rhythms and contagious solos that made Steely Dan FM radio staples? Save the $18 and head to the nearest elevator."

Also, I refuse to believe that punk "saved" us from anything other than limited high-$$$ majors-only access to the production, promotion and release of music.

FAGEN: Sometimes it frightens me when we get some weird stoned Moonie with these weird ideations about these songs, and he starts talking about taking some kind of ACTION against who knows what.

BECKER: There was a guy living in Las Vegas when our first album came out who thought - his girlfriend had left him I guess - all of the songs were stories his girlfriend had told us. He wasn't asking any questions; he just wanted his girlfriend back. And we didn't know anything about the girl. But he thought every one of those stories was about him.

FAGEN: It's your basic Arthur Bremmer syndrome. We get a lot of letters that are written in very small printing with little pictures in the corner.

MUSICIAN: Well, you're talking about the perverse fringe of "active" listeners.

BECKER: No, this is the heart and soul of our audience, I've got news for you. Those weird people on the street - every hundredth weirdest one has a Steely Dan record at home.

MUSICIAN: People that are essentially out-takes.

BECKER: Right, or just flipped-out. Like that guy who hi-jacked that bus today [a friend of theirs had been hijacked in midtown Manhattan] probably has forty-seven copies of The Royal Scam at home.

haha beautiful.