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

seems like cocaine was often grown in Peru and then processed in Columbia in the late 70s/early 80s

I thought Bolivia was cocaine.

But definitely weed in 1980. "Colombian" was practically synonymous with good weed.

i don't know about the slang back then
but i feel like in the context of a skeevy guy trying to seduce a young woman the story, that weed makes more sense, trying to create a relaxing hey let your guard down mellow out type of vibe

Man I would puke on tequila and weed.

lord knows i have

i haven't read that article about why the kids like steely dan, but i believe it can be summed up as "you learn to love steely dan after you barf and return to the party and continue drinking"

i know what the kids do. they're barfing out there

when I was 12 I would listen to “bodhisattva” and “my old school” back to back as soon as I got home from school, I was not very cool

must have been a hard drinking elementary school

Which Steely Dan tune has that lyric

*teenager looking at ilx in the late 70s/early 80s & reading the posts about what columbia is* damn these guys are cool as hell...

so much meta

I believe it was on this forum where I learned that “Colombian” would have meant weed not coke in 1980

― brimstead, Thursday, July 22, 2021 2:18 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I can't wait to use this newfound nugget of trivia, but unfortunately I don't go to any millennial/zoomer parties.

Yeah, Columbian = weed, not coke, at least then.

Also, not seeing Cuervo and coke as a "wonderful thing" - not saying it might not be a rocket ship to a good time, but wouldn't describe it as wonderful.

https://i.imgur.com/r5LyEPv.jpg

Are you dumplin' in the years?

Tel.: 718-736-3065

"Don't lose THAT numbah!"

fine = powder. If the lyrics were "dried columbian" maybe I'd buy that they were talking about grass.

― BrianB, Thursday, July 22, 2021 1:31 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

fine has another meaning you know

Dough it Again

Get along, Kid Char Siu main

Who's got the fine bud?

Drink your big black cow and get outta here!

Is there bao on the plate? Yes, there's bao on the plate.

Listening to Countdown to Ecstasy, one of my very favorite SD albums. I hadn't heard it in a while (maybe even years), and it sounds even more glorious.

I love the studio pro records they'd later make (IIRC Katy Lied was the first, but even Pretzel Logic had studio pros in addition to their regular quintet), but there was definitely a trade-off of gaining something at the expense of something else. An even trade perhaps, but it's still a shame the original group didn't last longer than a few albums. They're so good on Countdown - Baxter alone is sooo good on "My Old School," especially on the second solo. Stephen Thomas Erlewine (the All Music Guide's main critic) singled out those last two tracks "Pearl of the Quarter" and "King of the World" as 'overlooked gems' and he's right - they're not just great, they bring something new to their music that they never really pursued further.

Also "Razor Boy" sounds like a tongue-in-cheek comedy about a philanderer getting his nuts cut off by some crazed man after sleeping with his wife. "The better half" being his bottom half, "the fancy things" being his nads, etc.

Yeah. Three phases in my mind. The Brill building stuff , which is well worth seeking out if you haven’t heard it, then those kind of funky, weird early records up to Katy lied, then the late period rococo of royal scam through gaucho

i do love countdown to ecstasy, it's true.

they did bring in the occasional studio pro as early as the first album, e.g. elliot randall on "kings" and "reelin in the years"

those last 2 tracks plus "Your Gold Teeth" are my favorite parts of the album. Just spun it the other night because I had "King of the World" stuck in my head.

I've always been a fan of "My Old School," but it now reminds me of the worst ex story I've ever heard. I can't give all the details because it happened to a close friend of a friend, but it takes place at an elite university on par with Bard, and the story basically starts with him going home before finals and someone saying "Didn't you hear? He may not be coming back at all!" And like the song, it involves a drug bust with the girl in question trying to "cooperate" with the prosecutor by putting it all on him. (He was innocent - she was in cahoots with some other guy and lucky for him, the prosecution found that all out for themselves.)

yes yes Baxter’s solos on “my old school” are great, he’s jaw dropping on “bodhissatva” as well (or is some of that Denny Dias?)

Supposedly he's the second solo on "Bodhissatva" and Dias was the first. I think Baxter did the solo on "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," which is ANOTHER favorite. I should give Dias props too - both him and Baxter were amazing in Steely Dan, and they were very different guitarists too. My favorite Dias solo is probably on "Your Gold Teeth II" from Katy Lied. BEAUTIFUL, absolutely exquisite.

Bodhissatva's solo is pretty nuts and it is by Dias (although it might have been Baxter on the back and forth on the closing part). Dude on youtube has worked it out note for note and it is all over the neck, just a crazy piece that lets me know I can't play for crap and I could never contemplate how you could come up such a piece. It's got some pretty crazy phrasing at times kinda country, at times kinda bebop and then it has the back and forth 70s blues rock thing to close. It is a really long solo too...

On "Bodhissatva" or really any other track with a long solo, I'm wondering if 1) Dias just had the luxury of playing take after take until he nailed it or 2) if they actually cheated a bit and cut more than one take together? (I noticed earlier that Dias's solo on "Your Gold Teeth II" *may* have spliced two takes together - it sounds like there could have been splice right after a particularly good drum fill.)

Anyway, I finished giving Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied a good listen too. Hadn't heard either in their entirety in a while. What a great trio albums - Countdown through Katy Lied really is the peak for Steely Dan to me. What's kind of startling is when they do something unexpectedly moving. Most of the time, they're almost doing a Randy Newman thing where the songs are coming from the perspective of a deeply disturbed or untrustworthy character, and they have favorites they return to (lots of characters struggling with hard drugs, the occasional fascist or reactionary nut), but then you have a song like "Charlie Freak" or the much more direct "Any World That I'm Welcome To." Fagen really lets his guard down on the latter, and apparently Becker wasn't too crazy about doing songs like that which is probably why they were a rarity until Fagen started his own solo career. "Charlie Freak" is a nice curve ball though - it's not obvious where it's going until the very end. It's the type of thing that might feel like a heavy handed morality play if you dramatized it into a story, but it works great as a song.

Odd that you say Becker didn't like those songs or lyrical topics, because I think songs like "Junkie Girl" or "This Moody Bastard" on his solo records are a lot closer to that earlier emotional openness than anything on Fagen's solo stuff.
I mentioned above the Thomas Jefferson Kaye album Second Grade, whose Fagen/Becker songs are very much in that vein.

Good point. I looked into it more and I couldn't find anything directly from Becker saying he didn't "like" that kind of material. The most substantial thing I could come up with was this quote from 1982 when Fagen was making The Nightfly:

"I actually tried to write these new songs with as little irony as possible," Fagen told the New York Times. "I guess Walter's lyrics tend to have a little more bite than mine, to be more detached. I wanted this album to be a little brighter and a little lighter than a Steely Dan record. I wanted it to be more fun to listen to. And I wanted to make an album that was more personal..."

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/donald-fagen-the-nightfly-album/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MXBrmHnhc8

i do find it interesting that fagen gets a lot of the credit for the lyrical "bite," even though he credits that sensibility to walter. it's probably because fagen was the singer.

Becker might not have signed off on something like "Maxine" or "Walk Between Raindrops".

Or “morph the cat” … sheesh

Don’t know how I feel about these two new live tracks.

Listening to "Hey Nineteen": nice trombone solo, I guess? This will be as pointless a release as Alive in America.

I don't think much of "Things I Miss the Most", but it's nice they play (he plays) at least one song from the reunion records.

Dan agnostic Lloyd Cole has been listening to all the albums including the solo works and posting capsule reviews on Twitter. Don’t agree with everything, but I think he’s right more often than not.

In case you missed my latest late night review in the #SteelyDan series. The whole thing is in my timeline. https://t.co/Md6wn30qKs

— Lloyd Cole (@Lloyd_Cole) August 9, 2021

Lloyd Cole hates "Babylon Sisters" and loves "Gaucho", it's incomprehensible to me.
He's right that the singles on The Nightfly are better than anything else on the record, or in the rest of Fagen's catalogue.

preferring “gaucho” to “babylon sisters” is a very reasonable opinion

I actually gave Gaucho a good listen. I also tried their two "reunion" albums and have no desire to hear those again, so I'll say that Gaucho is probably my least favorite album from their original run...but I've also come around to the idea that none of them are bad and all are worth hearing. If Gaucho was somehow their only album in their existence, I'd probably be a lot kinder because I can still hear a lot of what I like about them in that album even if I strongly prefer the others.

"Gaucho" and "Third World Man" often fight for the right to be my favorite Steely Dan song.

and Cole's description of "Third World Man" is otm.

his actual insane opinion is that “kid charlemagne” is “almost pretty cool but ruined by carlton”

xxp both great choices.

I’ve never heard anything Lloyd cole did that’s worth remembering

He has his moments. I believe the pinefox is quite partial to him.