Steely Dan - The Royal Scam poll

best sd clav song is night by night

my fave SD album. am not voting as i cant decide between 'haitian divorce', 'dont take me alive' and 'caves of altamira'. 'kid charlemagne' is about as funky as they got too. the whole set is brilliant not a duff track on it.

ok decided to go for "Sign In Stranger." YOU ZOMBIE!

The Royal Scam is the first Steely Dan record that doesn't exhibit significant musical progress from its predecessor,
This line from AMG is total bullshit right? Royal sounds nothing like Katy. It seems like the album where they beacame the Steely Dan that people think of when they hear the name. Katy Lied still sounded somewhat like a band playing in a room, while Scam is the fist one to sound like a studio machine firing on all engines.
basically jaymc otm.

for me, it's probably the weakest of the original run of albums. even so, there's lots of strong stuff here. i'm leaning Charlemagne cause it fucking bangs, but i've got a soft spot for caves and haitian divorce.

also "turn up the eagles, the neighbors are listening" A++

Yeah, I never managed to get into that album really.

I think it's their best album...and so does Rickie Lee Jones...and I voted for "The Caves Of Altamira" and "Night By Night" is their best clavi song...and...oh i forgot

as a collection it seems unfocused but there some real gems in it. but "Kid Charlemagne" changed my fucking life for real, some of the best narrative on Fagen's resume. 'Clean this mess up else we'll all wind up in jail/those test tubes, and the scale' one of the all-time couplets.

I don't find the album too bad, but there are some single tracks dragging it down considerably. "The Fez" and the title track both get too repetitive and monotonous in the long run.

This is my second favorite SD album -and their most rockin' album since "Countdown". No bad songs on it. Probably "Sign In Stranger" would be my pick.

Kid Charlemagne has one of those Fagen idées fixes - or whatever you want to call them - "Careful what you carry." As in "I can see from what you carry that you come from Barrytown."

That and the letters, the shoes. Has anyone made a list of his repeated lyrical tropes?

haha Geir and I agree!

this album kicks so much collctive bottom.

Kind of a throwback to Ecstasy, it seems to me, with the longish jammy tracks, and the hotshit solos standing out a bit more against the repetitiousness (which I don't mind at all, but I don't mind "Show Biz Kids" either).

"Kid Charlemagne" comes real close, but I wish Larry Carlton's guitar licks were a little bit less tasteful - "Skunk" Baxter-style edginess woulda been more appropriate. So I go with "Sign In Stranger". Love that Monkish piano and "Do you like to take a yo-yo for a ride?"

kid charlemagne.boring answer,but true.

Went with "Royal Scam" because it's such a phenomenal and focused lyric, and a true one as far as the lie so many people were sold as they entered America.

"Sign in Stranger" is one of the very few Dan songs that I never remember how it goes; like "Razor Boy" and "Everything You Did" and "Boston Rag" and "Rose Darling."

Kid Charlemagne has one of those Fagen idées fixes - or whatever you want to call them - "Careful what you carry." As in "I can see from what you carry that you come from Barrytown."

That and the letters, the shoes. Has anyone made a list of his repeated lyrical tropes?

I'm no expert but didn't Walter Fagen write a shitload of the Steely Dan lyrics? Maybe even the majority of them?

its the best sd album - a lot of people dont realize this - why because they r dumb i dunno

Yeah, Becker wrote a lot of those lyrics.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this is kinda like the katy lied poll for me where i wanted to vote something other than "dr. wu" but it just seemed too perfect a song...

...so anyway, kid charlamagne, i'm boring.

if i could vote again - caves

Haitian Divorce, particularly for the "Now we dolly back/Now we fade to black -> soaking wah solo" bit, which is a bit of a trick, yeah, but it gets me every time.

its the best sd album - a lot of people dont realize this - why because they r dumb i dunno

just wanna point out that this opinion is insane

best Dan records are aja and ecstasy

see now there's a man who know what's up

"katy lied" comes very very close to those two also as does "gaucho" which is the one about which the most convincing "no, see, this one is actually the best" case can be built

I'd put Royal Scam on a par with Katy Lied, which is a tier below Aja and Countdown, but above everything else (in my personal estimation).

Why the Gaucho love, j)hn?

That is to say, I've never had love for that album outside of Babylon Sisters, Hey 19, and the one about heroin that gets played on all the smooth jazz stations.

I mean, Glamour Profession would've been great minus two or three minutes and if Fagan's voice wasn't shot to shit.

Yeah I have no use for that album after track 1. Really I even like the two albums from this decade more than Gaucho.

I'd rep for every song on Gaucho actually and have no idea what you're talking about in re: Fagan's voice on it; it was fine then, fine a couple of years later on The Nightfly, etc - what do you mean by "shot"? he's got the same range, same essential timbre, etc.

trying to think top of my head about gaucho:
time out of mind, straight classic, especially the time-sig change breakdown
glamour profession, almost too nuanced, but great
title track, holy fuck, just fabulous albeit ripped off from keith jarrett
third world man, would have fit better on royal scam but still good
hey 19, song needs no defending from me
ditto babylon sisters

all gravy - the album seems even more worked-over than aja, which is its only real weakness; it threatens to go sterile, sounds like they're trying to hard to out-do the intensity & complexity of aja. but it's still fantastic.

this was all talked to death on the Gaucho thread

I'm going to re-listen to all 7:30 of Glamour Profession and get back to you on that.

man now I got that "time out of mind" breakdown stuck in my head, so incredible

xpost: I'll check that out.

all aboard
the Carib Cannibal
off to Barbados
just for the ride
Jack with his radar
Stalking the dread moray eel
At the wheel
With his Eurasian bride
--

good luck unpacking all that

I mean the complaint against it, for me, is that it's so dense as to be opaque. I can dig that. but it's a natural progression from everything they've been doing up to that point.

Oh man, lyrically I have nothing against it! But I think that Fagan's just at his nasaliest here to a fault.

It's too late for me to post coherent thoughts on Gaucho, but briefly: no album I've heard in the last five years has terrified me so much. I can't even describe the tonal colors of the title track: its mockery of the Gaucho is so tender, merciless, and empathetic that it belies the Dan's reputations as cynics. There's the difference between cynicism and irony.

John, among others, has posted great things on Gaucho in its own thread.

and the lilt of "Third World Man." I always imagine this crab sinking slowly to the bottom of the sea, as thin layer upon layer of sand buries him.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

SEE THE GLORY

justice is served, although I'm surprised by zero votes for "Green Earrings" - that's a solid tune with some really nice breezy combo work and one of the most hermetic lyrics in the SD canon

yeah, "my rival" is the only track I can't get into on gaucho. still, I probably rate countdown and gaucho as my faves these days.

I used to not be feelin' gaucho/nightfly much, but now I love em both. probably more to do with my personal trajectory re: the dan than anything. mostly worked my way through the back catalog chronologically since just about each album is slicker than the last and it was a little bit of a problem for me at first.

The Nightfly is wonderful for entirely different reasons.

gaucho was a dead last for me (of the first 8) for years, but its stock has risen considerably as i've gotten older. top tier w/ Aja, Katy & Countdown now.

Scam's the one that kinda leaves me cold these days, even though it's still v v awesome.

Didn't Gaucho win the overall SD album poll?

no and no:
POLL: Best Steely Dan album
Best Steely Dan/Donald Fagen/Walter Becker Album

Everything you did also great, the pop clarity breakthrough of I NEVER KNEW YOU, the Eagles line referenced above, great funny/gross lyrics. Am I alone in thinking Sign in Stranger is the weak link here?

"sign in stranger" is glorious for paul griffin's dancing piano and elliott randall's gorgeous outro guitar solo.

"the fez" is the obvious weak link, tho i appreciate its oddness and wouldn't remove it off the album

"dont take me alive" got played on the local classic rock radio as much as "reelin" or "hey 19" when i was a kid. i guess it was still dj's choice there before clear channel bought up everything. i was surprised to learn later that it wasn't a single.

Whitey otm re: The Royal Scam title track. It's maybe the only song I would describe as "plodding" in a good way. For me the weak link is "Don't Take Me Alive." The verses and guitar work are awesome, but the chorus has always struck me as uncharacteristically clunky, particularly "Well I crossed my old man back in Oregon/Don't take me alive"

Always felt that the absent 'bastard' in Everything You Did could be the narrator from Dirty Work.

lol nice.

narrator of Deacon Blues could be the Dirty Work guy 5 cynical years down the line

The Royal Scam the song is way underrated here. Incredibly heavy and funky in its own way. I love the background vocals and muted horns. Maybe one of their bleakest and least funny lyrics, just hammering home the emptiness and unfulfilled promises of the American Dream for immigrants. The fact that it doesn't go anywhere is kind of the point, imo: The last lyric is the first line repeated. The cycle continues.

It's not as slow or weighty, but "Charlie Freak" is another equally direct, compassionate song about subjects mired in drug addiction.

i remember
the rings of rare design!

i remember!
that look in your eye

yeah I love that the album considered the biggest bummer in their catalog has The Fez on it

xps

My neighbor has just come out for the evening and has blasted "Sign-In Stranger" and now "Don't Take Me Alive".

Now they've moved over to "Deacon Blues".

I would have thought the first song was an invitation for you to come over but the second song confuses the message

No confusion, the songs do indeed spell out the whole message. They're just crazy.

Really feeling this lately. The playing on this album is so sick. The horns on caves of altamira are some of the best, the interplay as the saxophone weaves in and out. The guitar solo on green earrings. The talkbox guitar solo on haitian divorce. The Fez coming on like love unlimited orchestra as interpreted by some kind of disco android. All the apocalyptic sci fi imagery in the lyrics. So great.

For whatever reason -- and it could be as simple as "Kid Charlemagne" being an all-time banger -- this is the album I return to most often. There are other Dan LPs where the tracklist looks better on paper, but something about this one just works. Even the title track, which is not an enjoyable piece of music in any other context, is a fitting album closer, along the lines (no pun intended) of "Mass Production."

One of my top 1 or 2 by them, depending on the day.

pic.twitter.com/t7Dtr8kvvX

— I.G.Y. azalea (@HaitianDvorce) May 11, 2023

people who do it without the fez on vs. person who never does it without the fez on

My 12 yr old, who loves steely Dan now, will just randomly go around singing the fez

Saw a Steely Dan tribute band for free at a local park recently. Couldn’t believe they played “The Fez,” which I love.

“Green Earrings” isn’t my favorite track, but I really dig it.

"Don't Take Me Alive" came in surprisingly low. I'd rate it just below "Kid Charlemagne," and on some days even above it.

Steely Dan really does not have duffer tunes, so their LPs especially in the first run are all good. That first three tunes out of the gate on this one is pretty hot.

When I first started listening to the Dan way back as a teen, I had the Greatest Hits and Aja for a long time. At some point in early 90s I got this one and Countdown to Ecstasy on Lp same day for a couple bucks each. I liked Countdown but listened to the Royal Scam A Lot in many different states of buzz.

‘Caves of Altamira’ really was fascinating to me on its origins.

For whatever reason, Countdown was both my late night drinking and my early morning hangover and shower album in college. Royal Scam was never widely listened to in my group. Now, I think it's one of their strongest from start to finish.

Honestly I don't think there's an incorrect answer to the question, "which of Steely Dan's first seven albums is your favorite?"

"Avalon."

"Minute by Minute"

“Althea”

i was sitting in the passenger seat of my friend's car one time and Steely Dan came on the classic rock station. He remarked that his dad used to play him Steely Dan records when he was a little kid and he always imagined them as a bunch of investment bankers. It struck him as the kind of music investment bankers make. i think he thought they were kinda lame.

had another friend in high school who took jazz guitar lessons, he was into this album at the time. i always think of him scatting along to the amazing Larry Carlton solo in Kid Charlemagne when i hear this, or mouthing the words "and there wasn't even any Hollywood" with a big grin on his face. i could've posted that in the time and place thread but here we are.

the Kid Charlemagne/Caves if Altamira one-two punch takes it tho.

but you and me, we understood