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

Gaucho was the record where Fagen and sound engineer Roger Nichols wrestled endlessly with the drum machine that Nichols had developed. The strain between Fagen and Becker was starting to show, as well.

Despite all that, Gaucho has Babylon Sisters, one of the most harmonically advanced pop songs I can think of. And it gets stuck in your head! Must hear now...

there, I said it

OTM. I bought it when it came out and have tried to get into it about 15 times — and aside from the lecherous "Who has a friend named Melanie?/Who's not afraid to try new things?" couplet in "Janie Runaway" and a little bit of "West of Hollywood", absolutely nothing has stuck with me. It's actually hard to listen to...

You can thank Keith Jarrett for that.

Is it "What Makes You Think You're the One" that I'm thinking of? The smashes right at the end of the song?

That's a review of Katy Lied, not Gaucho. And it does go somewhere, to this insightful place: "The music lets us know that their cynicism is no more a celebration of cynicism than their smack references are a celebration of smack, lets us know we can break the habit."

Gaucho is pretty devastating, actually. It's their most bitter album. I like that about it, but then again, I'm not entirely healthy.

Though not as lively as "Chain Lightning" or "King of the World," from back when they masqueraded as a rock and roll band rather than a "sophisticated pop/jazz group."

Masqueraded? What did they ever masquerade as? That's huge, fat bullshit.

My father actually dated a nineteen-year old in 1980. She took my sister and I horseback riding. Weird to think that she'd be 45 this year.

does anyone have the unreleased version of it? the mp3s aren't on this site anymore but the story seems interesting.
http://www.bigomagazine.com/archive/ARrarities/ARsdgaucho.html

The Nightfly was a nice comeback.

anyway, I rank their LPs thusly: Countdown>Pretzel>Can't Buy>Katy>Aja>Gaucho>Scam. "Scam" is just too fucking dried out for me, even though "Kid Charlemagne" and "Haitian Divorce" are ace. But "Haitian" sure pales beside August Darnell's "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy," while "Kid" ain't as good a bye-bye-counterculture song as the one they wrote for Thomas Jefferson Kaye, "American Lovers." that's ze rub, to my mind.

and their last two, I can't get into them at all, although they're certainly well-done and nastily funny, sexist, middle-aged lust and its discontents, whatever. maybe some day I'll change my mind about them too.

I didn't hear Gaucho until much later, because I thought (wrongly I now suspect) that my problem with Aja and Nightfly was their too glossy production; Gaucho had the reputation of being more of the same but with weaker songs, so I avoided it. Something must have persuaded me to give it a try, and while there are jazz-fusion-lite meanderings I don't care for, I do like a lot of the album. Babylon Sister especially is one of those rare tracks that when the track finishes I just want to hear it again.

thanks "friend"

www.megaupload.com/?d=794BE365

mine in order: Aja just barely edging out Countdown to Ecstasy, then Katy Lied, then Gaucho though I can go back & forth on the order there - then Pretzel Logic, Royal Scam & Can't Buy a Thrill

admittedly I've listened less to Scam since my first big I-only-wanna-listen-to-SD phase circa 1989 so I should probably go look at it again...I seriously can't imagine ranking it higher than Katy Lied though, c'mon, that thing is the mid-period monster