And when you smile for the camera / I know I'll love you better
June 16, 2023 7:21 PM Subscribe
Surrender to Steely Dan - How the insufferably perfectionist duo captured the hearts of a new generation of listeners
Pappademas tries out several theories to explain the Danaissance’s timing. The most compelling of them is the idea that their songs, full of gallows humor and wry disillusionment, resonate with a generation raised on crashing economies and a climate crisis. “Donald and Walter’s songs of monied decadence, druggy disconnection, slow-motion apocalypse, and self-destructive escapism seemed satirically extreme way back when; now they seem prophetic,” he writes. “We are all Steely Dan characters now.”
Steely Dan’s music posed a question: Was it possible to be an ironist and a perfectionist simultaneously? Was taking rock and roll this seriously a high-concept joke, or the only way to unlock the music’s full creative potential? Or had Steely Dan somehow come up with a blend of both, a virtuosic balancing act of scathing satire and fervent earnestness? At one point, Pappademas describes Fagen and Becker as “cynical about their own cynicism,” a phrase that hints at the fierce idealism that runs beneath the surface of even their iciest music.
Such contradictions made Steely Dan an anomalous presence in the landscape of 1970s rock. The band-that-wasn’t-really-a-band was devoid of the phallic swagger of, say, Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith. While Bruce Springsteen was redefining heroic authenticity and gracing the covers of national magazines, Fagen and Becker retreated behind their retinue of characters. Steely Dan’s ever-changing lineups deprived the band’s public of the personality-driven soap operas that fans thrilled to in groups such as the Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac. The pair’s refusal to tour stood out as arena rock became a massive business; Fagen and Becker never even appeared on one of their studio-album covers. At a time when rock stardom was synonymous with being cool, the two of them seemed uninterested in being rock stars and completely indifferent to being cool.
[...]
Now, as a new generation of listeners discovers the band, the sonic and stylistic polish of Steely Dan that seemed so divisive in the ’70s—and in the ’90s—is evidently no longer such a deterrent. Slick doesn’t carry the sting that it used to.For those weary of the “rockism”-versus-“poptimism” debates of the past couple of decades—and who isn’t?—Steely Dan offers a welcome escape from the reductive opposition between rock as Promethean self-expression and pop as a big-tent pleasure center. The band didn’t mind being dismissed by the most doctrinaire rock partisans: “soulless, and by its calculated nature antithetical to what rock should be,” as a Rolling Stone review of Aja summed up the brief against them. At the same time, Steely Dan’s music is unapologetically snobbish, flouting the “everything is great” ethos of extreme poptimism.A band that charts an idiosyncratic path ends up acquiring an eclectic audience, this one united by a tenacious devotion to the work of a pair of artists who were themselves nothing if not devoted.
Archive link
So, the "new generation" talked about here is Millennials? The person writing the article was a teenager in the 90s, so I guess they're writing about their peers?
I mean, I guess that's sort of right on time in some ways. It's a rhyme with the Tony Bennett revival during Gen X, maybe?
The article is needlessly insulting to Steely Dan throughout, beginning with its below-the-headline tag. And I'm really glad they're finding a new audience but I wish this wasn't the article that was written about that phenomenon.
I haven't been present in any of the places where Steely Dan have worked any more than this author has been, but I've been alive maybe 15 years longer than them and was reading Rolling Stone religiously through my precious decade that started with a 1, and I don't remember any of the disdain they're talking about being a part of the zeitgeist during the actual time they were recording their big albums. Aja was something I saw in everyone's stack of LPs. It wasn't some alienating and detached exercise in calculated music making. It was deeply loved.
posted by hippybear at 7:34 PM on June 16, 2023 [49 favorites]
So, the "new generation" talked about here is Millennials? The person writing the article was a teenager in the 90s, so I guess they're writing about their peers?
I mean, I guess that's sort of right on time in some ways. It's a rhyme with the Tony Bennett revival during Gen X, maybe?
The article is needlessly insulting to Steely Dan throughout, beginning with its below-the-headline tag. And I'm really glad they're finding a new audience but I wish this wasn't the article that was written about that phenomenon.
I haven't been present in any of the places where Steely Dan have worked any more than this author has been, but I've been alive maybe 15 years longer than them and was reading Rolling Stone religiously through my precious decade that started with a 1, and I don't remember any of the disdain they're talking about being a part of the zeitgeist during the actual time they were recording their big albums. Aja was something I saw in everyone's stack of LPs. It wasn't some alienating and detached exercise in calculated music making. It was deeply loved.
posted by hippybear at 7:34 PM on June 16, 2023 [49 favorites]
I never paid attention to their enigmatic lyrics, but their jazz-influenced music affected me then and affects me still. I've about got Peg figured out on keyboard, but I have a long way to go on most of their other tunes.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:00 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:00 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yacht Rock
Particularly, Ep. 10 NEEERRRRDS
being a part of the zeitgeist during the actual time they were recording
Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago...
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:00 PM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Particularly, Ep. 10 NEEERRRRDS
being a part of the zeitgeist during the actual time they were recording
Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago...
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:00 PM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]
Also, sorry this is sticking with me and I won't read or comment more tonight, this pull quote even in the FPP above the fold: "Donald and Walter’s songs of monied decadence, druggy disconnection, slow-motion apocalypse, and self-destructive escapism seemed satirically extreme way back when; now they seem prophetic". Um... These songs were written and recorded in the mid-70s. Any amount of "druggy disconnection" or "self-destructive escapism" that you might be interpreting as satirically extreme... This author needs to research the mid-70s more.
posted by hippybear at 8:08 PM on June 16, 2023 [45 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:08 PM on June 16, 2023 [45 favorites]
This article, he should've sent it off in a letter to himself.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:15 PM on June 16, 2023 [55 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:15 PM on June 16, 2023 [55 favorites]
This is music from my teenage years which did not stick with me at all. I didn't hate it, many of my friends loved it. I heard it was making a comeback and so I gave it another listen - I still think it is insipid frippery, the musical equivalent of David Hockney paintings, intricate in its tediousness and elaborate in its self importance, not bad enough to be awful but not good enough to persist, it's just sort of there, an unwelcome guest.
posted by Rumple at 8:16 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Rumple at 8:16 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
Um... These songs were written and recorded in the mid-70s. Any amount of "druggy disconnection" or "self-destructive escapism" that you might be interpreting as satirically extreme... This author needs to research the mid-70s more.
Jesus Christ THIS. Don and Walt knew exactly what a shitshow the later-christened Me Decade was turning out to be.
Show business kids making movies of themselves
You know they don't give a FUCK about anybody else
Anyone who calls this 'yacht rock' should be beaten severely with their own Sperry Top-Siders
posted by hangashore at 8:25 PM on June 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
Jesus Christ THIS. Don and Walt knew exactly what a shitshow the later-christened Me Decade was turning out to be.
Show business kids making movies of themselves
You know they don't give a FUCK about anybody else
Anyone who calls this 'yacht rock' should be beaten severely with their own Sperry Top-Siders
posted by hangashore at 8:25 PM on June 16, 2023 [36 favorites]
I grew up in a time and place (Ohio, late 80s) where we saw “new music” (REM, the Smiths, the Cure) as deeply uncool and we therefore gorged ourselves on classic rock. Steely Dan has always been one of my favorites. I remember smoking weed in my parents driveway and listening to Katy Lied and Countdown to Ecstasy back to back, being blown away by the complexity and learning how production value can have way more impact than any guitar hero. I remember someone describing Steely Dan to me as stories without plot or characters. Truly a band where the style is the substance.
posted by slogger at 8:29 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by slogger at 8:29 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I think there were plenty of other substances involved as well.
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:00 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:00 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I still think it is insipid frippery, the musical equivalent of David Hockney paintings, intricate in its tediousness and elaborate in its self importance, not bad enough to be awful but not good enough to persist, it's just sort of there, an unwelcome guest.
cool story what was the point of letting everyone know you don't like a thing other people like?
posted by logicpunk at 9:03 PM on June 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
cool story what was the point of letting everyone know you don't like a thing other people like?
posted by logicpunk at 9:03 PM on June 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
Steve Albini had a Twitter thread earlier this year that was headed with “I will always be the kind of punk that shits on Steely Dan.
“Christ the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up,”
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:09 PM on June 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
“Christ the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up,”
posted by Jon_Evil at 9:09 PM on June 16, 2023 [14 favorites]
I'm beginning to remember why I normally steer clear of music posts, and to regret opening my mouth in this one.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:12 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:12 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
“Christ the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up,”
It just couldn't be
And only a fool would say that
posted by hangashore at 9:16 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
It just couldn't be
And only a fool would say that
posted by hangashore at 9:16 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
I never really listened to Steely Dan when younger, perhaps because I perpetually somehow confused them with Stealers Wheel and Steeleye Span, all of which were in my dad’s record collection. I did listen to The Nightfly approximately one thousand times, though, which was stuck in my dad’s car stereo for several years. Lyrically, it was more or less opaque to me at that age, and it’s been interesting to come back to it 30 odd years later with enough musical and historical context to know what the songs are actually about. For some reason it grabs me more than the Dan records, maybe because it’s almost a concept album in some ways.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:20 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:20 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Metafilter: Bodacious cowboys such as your friend will never be welcome here
posted by credulous at 9:21 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by credulous at 9:21 PM on June 16, 2023 [9 favorites]
All I know is that my offspring are not interested in Steely Dan, no matter how much I get them to listen. And that’s fine because they’re allowed to like or dislike or have no opinion on music but I’m happy to hear that The Kids are listening. There’s so much great music from other decades that should never be forgotten.
Me, I loved the Dan from the very first time I heard them, for all the same reasons that everybody else loves them for. And also because of the inscrutable lyrics.
Aja is a brilliant and amazing album that stands out from their other brilliant and amazing albums.
posted by ashbury at 9:30 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
Me, I loved the Dan from the very first time I heard them, for all the same reasons that everybody else loves them for. And also because of the inscrutable lyrics.
Aja is a brilliant and amazing album that stands out from their other brilliant and amazing albums.
posted by ashbury at 9:30 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
cool story what was the point of letting everyone know you don't like a thing other people like?
I mean, what's the point of letting everyone know you like a thing other people like, or don't like. What's the point of anything, including Steely Dan?
posted by Rumple at 9:32 PM on June 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
I mean, what's the point of letting everyone know you like a thing other people like, or don't like. What's the point of anything, including Steely Dan?
posted by Rumple at 9:32 PM on June 16, 2023 [12 favorites]
I’m torn on the Rumple/Logicpunk exchange, because usually I side with Logicpunk’s train of thought of ‘why tell people who like a thing that you don’t.’ But in this case, I kinda love how over-the-top and literary Rumple’s take is. Almost like Rumple’s vocabulary in writing about the band is somehow equivalent in ambition to the chord voicings and guitar lines in their songs.
posted by umbú at 9:43 PM on June 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by umbú at 9:43 PM on June 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
this thread got awfully personal over someone's opinion.
I listened to a lot of steely dan on the classic rock station my parents listened to growing up. I'm no music critic or anything but I find it nostalgic and familiar and don't think about it much beyond that.
I liked Rumple's opinion too. Like a favorite foreign movie.
posted by sibboleth at 9:44 PM on June 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
I listened to a lot of steely dan on the classic rock station my parents listened to growing up. I'm no music critic or anything but I find it nostalgic and familiar and don't think about it much beyond that.
I liked Rumple's opinion too. Like a favorite foreign movie.
posted by sibboleth at 9:44 PM on June 16, 2023 [7 favorites]
I kinda love how over-the-top and literary Rumple’s take is.
You might use it if you feel better when you get home.
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 PM on June 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
You might use it if you feel better when you get home.
posted by flabdablet at 9:46 PM on June 16, 2023 [13 favorites]
I think that their compositions are really interesting songs in themselves, and timeless classics of uh various genres. Like Stanley Kubrick, their obsessive polish and endless re-takes are like fetishes for nerdy fans who like obsessive polish and endless re-takes.
William Gibson described them as a subversive virus infecting popular consciousness with a William Burroughs decadence inserted within a lounge muzak format.
I think they're great because in their Creem Magazine interview they only talked about marketing their own brand of dog food, which would be grey like their music.
posted by ovvl at 9:48 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
William Gibson described them as a subversive virus infecting popular consciousness with a William Burroughs decadence inserted within a lounge muzak format.
I think they're great because in their Creem Magazine interview they only talked about marketing their own brand of dog food, which would be grey like their music.
posted by ovvl at 9:48 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I like Steely Dan a lot but it’s hard for me to imagine taking somebody’s your-favorite-band-sucks-isms personally in this day and age (except perhaps if they are in the band).
posted by atoxyl at 9:54 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 9:54 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
RE: the article, I know people have good reasons not to want to talk about Kanye these days, but if you’re going to talk about Millennials, hip-hop, and Steely Dan, it seems hard to avoid his sampling “Kid Charlemagne.”
Though most of the Millennial Dan-heads I know are really more prog nerd types.
posted by atoxyl at 9:56 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
Though most of the Millennial Dan-heads I know are really more prog nerd types.
posted by atoxyl at 9:56 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
This might be out on a limb, but I get the sense that for at least some of the college age students that I have contact with, it’s a Thundercat world, where Stevie Wonder has replaced the Beatles and the Stones as a foundational reference. If that’s even a little true, it would make sense that there could be an opening for Steely Dan with some new listeners who wouldn’t think twice about liking jazz-derived harmonic complexity, adventurousness, and super tight playing.
posted by umbú at 10:01 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by umbú at 10:01 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]
*biting my (metaphorical) tongue not to be a prescriptivist about Yacht Rock and Steely Dan's place in the genesis of the (admittedly arbitrary) genre*
Prompted by the mention four or five comments up, here's a link to William Gibson's essay/not-a-review, Any 'Mount of World, originally written for Addicted to Noise and also collected in 2012's Distrust That Particular Flavor (though glancing at it now, I'm a little surprised that as a one-time hippie of a similar vintage, he interpreted the "fine Colombian" in "Hey Nineteen" as cocaine rather than weed).
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 10:06 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Prompted by the mention four or five comments up, here's a link to William Gibson's essay/not-a-review, Any 'Mount of World, originally written for Addicted to Noise and also collected in 2012's Distrust That Particular Flavor (though glancing at it now, I'm a little surprised that as a one-time hippie of a similar vintage, he interpreted the "fine Colombian" in "Hey Nineteen" as cocaine rather than weed).
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 10:06 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think they're great because in their Creem Magazine interview they only talked about marketing their own brand of dog food, which would be grey like their music
Anybody got a link to this? I’m having a hard time finding it.
posted by slogger at 10:26 PM on June 16, 2023
Anybody got a link to this? I’m having a hard time finding it.
posted by slogger at 10:26 PM on June 16, 2023
I like Steely Dan. Self-aware hipster sleazeball lounge music. They would fall apart if their songs weren't actually so fuckin good. I think it's easy to take them for granted.
Yacht Rock
If it was you snuffleupagus who introduced me to that, thanks. Every now and then I laugh remembering the scene where one of the smooth crew tests a bit of the poison used to kidnap Kenny Loggins. "Mellow, but not smooth. And kinda shitty..." "...Jimmy Buffet!"
posted by fleacircus at 10:52 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yacht Rock
If it was you snuffleupagus who introduced me to that, thanks. Every now and then I laugh remembering the scene where one of the smooth crew tests a bit of the poison used to kidnap Kenny Loggins. "Mellow, but not smooth. And kinda shitty..." "...Jimmy Buffet!"
posted by fleacircus at 10:52 PM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
...“soulless, and by its calculated nature antithetical to what rock should be,” as a Rolling Stone review of Aja...
I have heard Rush described almost exactly that way to me. And I like both Rush and Steely Dan. Not superfan, but I went through phases for each band when I was WAAAAAaaaaaay younger.
I like revisiting Steely Dan now and again, and Aja is a masterpiece, but lately I have noticed a ton of Steely Dan coming across my radar that the algos are tossing my way. And then I see this post, and I think, next thing I know they'll be playing Steely Dan in the Market basket OH SHIT THEY PROBABLY ALREADY ARE ARENT THEY fuuuuu
posted by not_on_display at 11:19 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have heard Rush described almost exactly that way to me. And I like both Rush and Steely Dan. Not superfan, but I went through phases for each band when I was WAAAAAaaaaaay younger.
I like revisiting Steely Dan now and again, and Aja is a masterpiece, but lately I have noticed a ton of Steely Dan coming across my radar that the algos are tossing my way. And then I see this post, and I think, next thing I know they'll be playing Steely Dan in the Market basket OH SHIT THEY PROBABLY ALREADY ARE ARENT THEY fuuuuu
posted by not_on_display at 11:19 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
some excellent Steely Dan backstory here:
Demos: The Beginning of Steely Dan | Steely Dan Decadence
Before there was Aja, before there was the Gaucho, before there was Reelin' In The Years, and before there was even My Old School, there was Fagen & Becker. Or maybe it was Becker & Fagen. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. They were incredibly similar, and incredibly distinct, but they would become Steely Dan. There was a complementary interest in Jazz (Duke Ellington), Sci-Fi, (Philip K. Dick), and black humor. A review (or revue) of Steely Dan is impossible without discussing Fagen & Becker's origins in the culture of the 1960s—and their segue away from it. There was Bard College and Bob Dylan, but their was also Charlie Parker, Tom Lehrer, and even Vladimir Nabokov. Then there was Jay and the Americans, then there was Kenny Vance...
posted by philip-random at 11:44 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
Demos: The Beginning of Steely Dan | Steely Dan Decadence
Before there was Aja, before there was the Gaucho, before there was Reelin' In The Years, and before there was even My Old School, there was Fagen & Becker. Or maybe it was Becker & Fagen. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. They were incredibly similar, and incredibly distinct, but they would become Steely Dan. There was a complementary interest in Jazz (Duke Ellington), Sci-Fi, (Philip K. Dick), and black humor. A review (or revue) of Steely Dan is impossible without discussing Fagen & Becker's origins in the culture of the 1960s—and their segue away from it. There was Bard College and Bob Dylan, but their was also Charlie Parker, Tom Lehrer, and even Vladimir Nabokov. Then there was Jay and the Americans, then there was Kenny Vance...
posted by philip-random at 11:44 PM on June 16, 2023 [6 favorites]
I have room in my heart for AC/DC "Highway To Hell."
I have room in my heart for Rolling Stones "Beggars Banquet."
I have room in my heart for Toni Price "Hey." Also anything else of hers.
I have room in my heart for Jo Carol Pierce "Bad Girls Upset By The Truth."
I have room in my heart for Nirvana "Bleach." Plus everything else they did.
I have room in my heart for Cheap Trick first three albums. Plus, because life can sometimes be just absolutely grand, I came across the Steve Albini mix of "In Color." It is awesome.
I could go on and on and I'd like to but I'm turning in for the night. The point I am attempting to make is that I have room in my heart for all kinds of music. Music which doesn't blow my skirt up, well, hey, I've found plenty that I love.
Just because I don't like something doesn't make it wrong or bad. It's just music that's not for me.
Now. What I do not have room for in my heart is pretentious blowhard dickbrains who presume to tell me, or you, or anyone, why they think this band or record sucks and, more, that we suck if we if we disagree with them.
It is not us who suck. It is them. I hope this mope gets hit by a bus.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:58 AM on June 17, 2023 [18 favorites]
I have room in my heart for Rolling Stones "Beggars Banquet."
I have room in my heart for Toni Price "Hey." Also anything else of hers.
I have room in my heart for Jo Carol Pierce "Bad Girls Upset By The Truth."
I have room in my heart for Nirvana "Bleach." Plus everything else they did.
I have room in my heart for Cheap Trick first three albums. Plus, because life can sometimes be just absolutely grand, I came across the Steve Albini mix of "In Color." It is awesome.
I could go on and on and I'd like to but I'm turning in for the night. The point I am attempting to make is that I have room in my heart for all kinds of music. Music which doesn't blow my skirt up, well, hey, I've found plenty that I love.
Just because I don't like something doesn't make it wrong or bad. It's just music that's not for me.
Now. What I do not have room for in my heart is pretentious blowhard dickbrains who presume to tell me, or you, or anyone, why they think this band or record sucks and, more, that we suck if we if we disagree with them.
It is not us who suck. It is them. I hope this mope gets hit by a bus.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:58 AM on June 17, 2023 [18 favorites]
As apparently an elder millennial, I like Steely Dan and see my friends like it. And I'm always confused when I see articles like this being like "why do their lyrics continue to resonate?" Well maybe you're listening for the lyrics but all I hear is beautifully, beautifully recorded electromechnical (not digital, not yet) pianos
posted by solarion at 2:19 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by solarion at 2:19 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
The old Prosoundweb Recording, Engineering, and Production board had a discussion on Worst Band In The World back in 2006 which didn't start out as a thread on Steely Dan, but the bashing begins on the FIRST REPLY and it devolves from there, however, the person who mentions Lester Bang's opinion on Kraftwerk makes a good point. (Kraftwerk (and Steely Dan) as antidote to amphetamine-rock, which was a style at the time)
posted by mikelieman at 2:26 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by mikelieman at 2:26 AM on June 17, 2023
You’re telling me Steely Dan is a band and not a meme? Where have I been.
one of my friends once described Sparks as “Steely Dan for theatre kids.” I would like to teleport to the alternate universe where Sparks have this kind of pull among the youths.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:08 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
one of my friends once described Sparks as “Steely Dan for theatre kids.” I would like to teleport to the alternate universe where Sparks have this kind of pull among the youths.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:08 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Steve Albini had a Twitter thread earlier this year that was headed with “I will always be the kind of punk that shits on Steely Dan.
he might as well use the charts for toilet paper because god knows he can't read them
posted by pyramid termite at 4:20 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
he might as well use the charts for toilet paper because god knows he can't read them
posted by pyramid termite at 4:20 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
I get the sense that for at least some of the college age students that I have contact with, it’s a Thundercat world, where Stevie Wonder has replaced the Beatles and the Stones as a foundational reference.
Yes. The article doesn't really talk about the revival of 70s jazz-funk - with conspicuously excellent musicianship and stylish production - over the last 15-odd years that's probably driving people to listen back to some of the current bands' influences. Vulfpeck have covered multiple Steely Dan songs in live shows, and Snarky Puppy have toured with them...
posted by offog at 4:25 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Yes. The article doesn't really talk about the revival of 70s jazz-funk - with conspicuously excellent musicianship and stylish production - over the last 15-odd years that's probably driving people to listen back to some of the current bands' influences. Vulfpeck have covered multiple Steely Dan songs in live shows, and Snarky Puppy have toured with them...
posted by offog at 4:25 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
I wholeheartedly love Steely Dan, and I'm so glad I got to see them perform while Walter was still alive. As a piano player, I'm more drawn to what Donald is doing, but still.
Depending on the audience, my yacht rock tribute band leans hard into the Dan catalogue on many a night. Last night at a wedding we only played Peg and Reelin' in the Years, but Black Friday, Rikki Don't Lose That Number, My Old School and Kid Charlemagne are frequently in the set.
The ages of my bandmates range from squarely Gen X to early Millennial, but nowadays we regularly have Gen Z fans in the crowd, holding up signs and wanting to pose for pictures. I think we're in our 14th year of playing together (we waver on commemorating our first rehearsal our our first gig.) The Dan also inspired a boozy side hustle we started during the pandemic, and thus far there has been no C&D letter.
posted by emelenjr at 4:35 AM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Depending on the audience, my yacht rock tribute band leans hard into the Dan catalogue on many a night. Last night at a wedding we only played Peg and Reelin' in the Years, but Black Friday, Rikki Don't Lose That Number, My Old School and Kid Charlemagne are frequently in the set.
The ages of my bandmates range from squarely Gen X to early Millennial, but nowadays we regularly have Gen Z fans in the crowd, holding up signs and wanting to pose for pictures. I think we're in our 14th year of playing together (we waver on commemorating our first rehearsal our our first gig.) The Dan also inspired a boozy side hustle we started during the pandemic, and thus far there has been no C&D letter.
posted by emelenjr at 4:35 AM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Vulfpeck have covered multiple Steely Dan songs in live shows
Funny - I was thinking “who is the current Steely Dan?” and Vulfpeck is exactly where I landed.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 4:40 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Funny - I was thinking “who is the current Steely Dan?” and Vulfpeck is exactly where I landed.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 4:40 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
The book referenced in TFA is a super-fun read, recommended for Steely Dan aficionados and really, anyone who enjoys the literary equivalent of a platter of treats that are delicious, but so densely rich and sweet that you can only have a little each time or you just hit a wall.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:41 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:41 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
This author needs to research the mid-70s more.
Ha, I haven’t read the article in full, but yeah, let me say as someone who came of age in the 70’s that Steely Dan’s lyrics resonated with me because of lived experience, and they never seemed all that cryptic.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Ha, I haven’t read the article in full, but yeah, let me say as someone who came of age in the 70’s that Steely Dan’s lyrics resonated with me because of lived experience, and they never seemed all that cryptic.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Every Steely Dan song plays a little movie in my head and the power to evoke that is not universal across the musical landscape. If I could, I'd produce a Natasha Lyonne/Rian Johnson "Poker Face" season that takes my favorite tracks and crafts an episode around each one.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 4:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
My ten(ish) year old self, at the town’s annual carnival… on a ride called “The Hustler” that spun me in multiple circles at the same time, forces pinning me against the car I was in and kept me sliding into the person next to me. Enthusiastic shouts from fellow riders, the noise of the ride and the engine , and speakers blaring Steely Dan’s “Do it again” with the Doppler effect lending a spacey vibe to the normally rock steady beat and slick vibe… One of my fondest recollections.
STEELY DAN!
posted by kabong the wiser at 5:03 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
STEELY DAN!
posted by kabong the wiser at 5:03 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Dan is the finest musical navel gazing you ever will hear.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:05 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:05 AM on June 17, 2023
The book referenced in TFA is a super-fun readI’m pretty Dan-agnostic (and some of Pappademas’ recent bylines have put me off his work a bit), but Pappademas described it as “Bluets with Steely Dan,” and that description makes me curious to read it.
posted by pxe2000 at 5:05 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
cool story what was the point of letting everyone know you don't like a thing other people like?
You appear to be suggesting that only people who agree with you should be allowed to take part in this discussion. Do I really have to explain why that's a bad idea?
posted by Paul Slade at 5:17 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
You appear to be suggesting that only people who agree with you should be allowed to take part in this discussion. Do I really have to explain why that's a bad idea?
posted by Paul Slade at 5:17 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
On how to to categorize SD and/or what to think of them: I'm weirdly reminded of that video with Pharrell and Maggie Rogers (I promise this will be relevant, hang on), where she was an MFA student at NYU and he was giving a master class and raved about her track. In his feedback after, he raves about it - he opens his feedback with "I have zero notes for you." But then he goes on to say that the reason why he has no feedback is because "you're doing your own thing," and he discusses why that is so valuable; it's like nothing else, so no one can compare it to anyone else or categorize it with someone else. "It's like when the Wu-Tang clan came out, no one could really judge it. You either liked it or you didn't. You couldn't compare it to anything else. And that is such a special quality."
I would say that Steely Dan is also similarly unique. Too jazzy to be straight rock, too rock to be jazz, with lyrics about urbane cynicism at a time when everyone else was doing either loud punk or bubble-gum pop - and somehow it was getting played by suburbanites who were also listening to Frampton Comes Alive or Boz Scaggs. At least, that was the case in my own rural-suburban childhood home; Mom playing Aja around the house while she did housework is one of my musical core memories. (And before you think that this sounds like a slag - "music for suburban 70s mothers to clean to" - note that another of Mom's favorites was Prince's second album, on 8-track. My parents had unusually broad taste in music.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:20 AM on June 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
I would say that Steely Dan is also similarly unique. Too jazzy to be straight rock, too rock to be jazz, with lyrics about urbane cynicism at a time when everyone else was doing either loud punk or bubble-gum pop - and somehow it was getting played by suburbanites who were also listening to Frampton Comes Alive or Boz Scaggs. At least, that was the case in my own rural-suburban childhood home; Mom playing Aja around the house while she did housework is one of my musical core memories. (And before you think that this sounds like a slag - "music for suburban 70s mothers to clean to" - note that another of Mom's favorites was Prince's second album, on 8-track. My parents had unusually broad taste in music.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:20 AM on June 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
Donald Fagan's second solo album, Kamakiriad, was my favorite album of 1993, and is still a great companion on a road trip. Highly recommend you check it out or revisit if it's been a while.
An aside, a long-forgotten memory just popped up: The linked article references the '93 concert tour (the album was produced by Becker and they went on the road together), and I remember being newly pregnant, horribly nauseated, and annoyed beyond belief that they didn't play a single song from this record so I decided we should leave early. The dingdongs at the concert site had parked cars in rows of three; ours was trapped so we couldn't get out, and then the venue initially didn't let us back in until I threw a hormone-fueled hissy fit. Good times.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:31 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
An aside, a long-forgotten memory just popped up: The linked article references the '93 concert tour (the album was produced by Becker and they went on the road together), and I remember being newly pregnant, horribly nauseated, and annoyed beyond belief that they didn't play a single song from this record so I decided we should leave early. The dingdongs at the concert site had parked cars in rows of three; ours was trapped so we couldn't get out, and then the venue initially didn't let us back in until I threw a hormone-fueled hissy fit. Good times.
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:31 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
If younger people, which apparently means Millennials, are appreciating Steely Dan, I'm glad for them. I wasn't a fan as a younger person, but I'm a big fan now.
Gen-X, in my experience, had a lot of complicated feelings about commercialism and selling out and authenticity and whatnot, and it caused some of us to miss out on some good stuff.
posted by box at 5:35 AM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Gen-X, in my experience, had a lot of complicated feelings about commercialism and selling out and authenticity and whatnot, and it caused some of us to miss out on some good stuff.
posted by box at 5:35 AM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
I cried when I wrote this song; sue me if I play too long.
posted by gimonca at 5:37 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by gimonca at 5:37 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
“Donald and Walter’s songs of monied decadence, druggy disconnection, slow-motion apocalypse, and self-destructive escapism seemed satirically extreme way back when; now they seem prophetic,” he writes. “We are all Steely Dan characters now.”You know exactly what kind of book you're reading when the author writes "We are all [whatever] now," and it's not a good one. Fortunately, he precedes that sentence with the ahistorical notion that "monied decadence, druggy disconnection, slow-motion apocalypse, and self-destructive escapism" somehow better characterize the 2020s than the 1970s, so it's a relief when the next sentence is just an irritating cliché.
I like Steely Dan well enough. Aja and Gaucho are great, and all their albums have at least two good songs, even if, when I was a in the 1990s and 2000s, classic rock radio overplayed the debut's big hits, which gave no indication of what made their later work interesting. It's nice to hear Wayne Shorter take a solo in "Aja," but if I want to hear Wayne Shorter at his best, I listen to a Wayne Shorter album, and that goes for pretty much everything about Steely Dan's jazz influence. I love to hear add9 chords and so on in pop songs, but I like them a lot better in the actual jazz fusion music of the period, where group cohesion and exploratory improvisation mattered a lot more than they do in Steely Dan's world of perfect takes by musicians working separately.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 5:41 AM on June 17, 2023
I'm the one
Who must make everything right
Talk it out 'til daylight
posted by thecincinnatikid at 5:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Who must make everything right
Talk it out 'til daylight
posted by thecincinnatikid at 5:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I personally think that if we cannot accept a hatred-versus-love thread about Steely Dan, an extremely successful band founded in the seventies by two now retirement-age white men which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in, apparently, 2001...I mean, for pete's sake, you're allowed to disagree vigorously about an established cultural touchstone, even to say that you really hate and despise it even, yea verily, if other people love it. Saying that you think Steely Dan is useless frippery is not like insulting someone's national dish, cultural hero, religion or cherished professional achievement. Like, we just cannot be this emotionally cathected about massively successful white guy bands from the seventies - if someone insults one's white guy band from the seventies, one has to be able to detach one's identity enough to view that as a spirited disagreement along the lines of bar conversations about Star Trek versus Star Wars.
Steely Dan I can take or leave, personally, but I like prog rock a lot, so I know what it is to enjoy cryptic lyrics and tight musical production.
posted by Frowner at 5:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
Steely Dan I can take or leave, personally, but I like prog rock a lot, so I know what it is to enjoy cryptic lyrics and tight musical production.
posted by Frowner at 5:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [17 favorites]
Oh fuck all this. I'm just going to go back to liking Steely Dan (and most of Fagen's solo work) on my own without worrying about why. This stuff is too complicated for a quiet Saturday morning.
posted by Naberius at 5:51 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Naberius at 5:51 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
As a musician who played through the indie 90s, I’ll just say that Steve Albini was known by lots of bands and engineers to be a giant dick.
posted by caviar2d2 at 5:57 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by caviar2d2 at 5:57 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
There is no band more divisive in my house than Steely Dan - my husband, who is a multi-instrumentalist, audiophile, and Prog Person can't stand them - he comes down firmly in the "soulless" camp. While I, as a folk guitarist and Deadhead love the ear-candy production, the cool chord progressions I never would have thought of, and the evocative lyrics.
I listen to them all the time when I'm home alone.
posted by Daily Alice at 5:58 AM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
I listen to them all the time when I'm home alone.
posted by Daily Alice at 5:58 AM on June 17, 2023 [8 favorites]
I’m glad to see this Donald and Walter on the blue instead of the other two.
By the way, Vulfpeck isn’t the new Steely Dan. For that, you want:
Young Gun Silver Fox
State Cows
Monkey House
posted by emelenjr at 6:13 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
By the way, Vulfpeck isn’t the new Steely Dan. For that, you want:
Young Gun Silver Fox
State Cows
Monkey House
posted by emelenjr at 6:13 AM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
two now retirement-age white men
One of whom has since diedbehind the wheel of cancer.
posted by box at 6:30 AM on June 17, 2023
One of whom has since died
posted by box at 6:30 AM on June 17, 2023
(Also, this article talks about how Fagen and Becker dismissed the idea that rock bands are democracies, and that's something I really like about them.
Like, here's two bands I don't especially like, contemporaries of Steely Dan, Eagles and KISS. Both of these liked to pretend they were democratic, even brotherly, when it was clear to anyone remotely paying attention that Henley/Frey and Simmons/Stanley were the ones in charge.
At least Steely Dan was honest about it.)
posted by box at 6:33 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Like, here's two bands I don't especially like, contemporaries of Steely Dan, Eagles and KISS. Both of these liked to pretend they were democratic, even brotherly, when it was clear to anyone remotely paying attention that Henley/Frey and Simmons/Stanley were the ones in charge.
At least Steely Dan was honest about it.)
posted by box at 6:33 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’ve always thought their song titles were better than their songs. Their music is fine but I’m often not a fan of their nasal singing style. I’d compare them to early Roxy Music, where Bryan Ferry sings in that silly fake accent. Can only put up with that in small doses.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:09 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:09 AM on June 17, 2023
As a musician who played through the indie 90s, I’ll just say that Steve Albini was known by lots of bands and engineers to be a giant dick.
Yes, and he owns that and has apologized, and has grown.
posted by cooker girl at 7:17 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yes, and he owns that and has apologized, and has grown.
posted by cooker girl at 7:17 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
This discussion has been fascinating to read as a ZIllennial (tangent: am I one of the youngest MeFites here?)
I've seen disco and ABBA and the Dan slowly reach tentative appraisal growing up throughout the 00's and when finally coming of age by the mid-10's where now only the lamest or most reactionary would be caught dead still hating them (sorry not sorry for hyperbole). Dan would prove to continue to be more tentative in their new critical standing though, both the snobbishness as pointed out by Hamilton here, and their, ah, shall we say 'non-PC' credentials that still get them derided as part of the similar (white, male) rock establishment that kinda shunned them as noted by Frowner. (My personal technically proficient 70's[/80's] white bois of choice were the Police, and of course Stevie Wonder reigns supreme over all as noted above)
(The [first-wave at least] punks were always more catholic in their tastes than popular/convenient retrospective or their hardcore fans gave them credit for though: Johnny Rotten loved Can and Van der Graaf Generator; the Ramones loved ABBA; Talking Heads loved disco. Jury's still possibly out on them hating the twin snobs Fagen and Becker tho)
As for Albini, I count Big Black among my favourite acts (even moreso than the Dan) but also to his chagrin place the impeccably noxious "Cables" next to "Reelin' In the Years" on my Desert Island Playlist. It's interesting though: both Stevie's and Steely's cynicism are like two sides of the self-hating coin: punks and preppers with similar disgust and (self-?)loathing, against the establishment. Anyway my point being: even as someone who never had that sort of kneejerk punk contrarianism nurtured, I still found that thread dunking on them fucking hilarious as much as he was full of it; opinions - even like (and by) assholes - they can still be fun!
Anyway, if there's a 70's band that'd be an interesting counterpoint to discuss on the Blue it'd be KISS, now there's another act viewed with somewhat similar disdain by the critical establishment and whose reputation may have, if anything, decreased in the coming years...
posted by Pachylad at 7:19 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've seen disco and ABBA and the Dan slowly reach tentative appraisal growing up throughout the 00's and when finally coming of age by the mid-10's where now only the lamest or most reactionary would be caught dead still hating them (sorry not sorry for hyperbole). Dan would prove to continue to be more tentative in their new critical standing though, both the snobbishness as pointed out by Hamilton here, and their, ah, shall we say 'non-PC' credentials that still get them derided as part of the similar (white, male) rock establishment that kinda shunned them as noted by Frowner. (My personal technically proficient 70's[/80's] white bois of choice were the Police, and of course Stevie Wonder reigns supreme over all as noted above)
(The [first-wave at least] punks were always more catholic in their tastes than popular/convenient retrospective or their hardcore fans gave them credit for though: Johnny Rotten loved Can and Van der Graaf Generator; the Ramones loved ABBA; Talking Heads loved disco. Jury's still possibly out on them hating the twin snobs Fagen and Becker tho)
As for Albini, I count Big Black among my favourite acts (even moreso than the Dan) but also to his chagrin place the impeccably noxious "Cables" next to "Reelin' In the Years" on my Desert Island Playlist. It's interesting though: both Stevie's and Steely's cynicism are like two sides of the self-hating coin: punks and preppers with similar disgust and (self-?)loathing, against the establishment. Anyway my point being: even as someone who never had that sort of kneejerk punk contrarianism nurtured, I still found that thread dunking on them fucking hilarious as much as he was full of it; opinions - even like (and by) assholes - they can still be fun!
Anyway, if there's a 70's band that'd be an interesting counterpoint to discuss on the Blue it'd be KISS, now there's another act viewed with somewhat similar disdain by the critical establishment and whose reputation may have, if anything, decreased in the coming years...
posted by Pachylad at 7:19 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes. The article doesn't really talk about the revival of 70s jazz-funk - with conspicuously excellent musicianship and stylish production - over the last 15-odd years that's probably driving people to listen back to some of the current bands' influences.
This is the story here, because love or hate it, Steely Dan is doing the thing that makes any music historically significant (in contrast to only being historically notable, i.e., well-known in its time): having measurable downstream influence. My 19-year-old, budding musician nephew loves Steely Dan (to the chagrin of his Eagles-loving dad, I'm sure), and it definitely affects his music-making.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:45 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is the story here, because love or hate it, Steely Dan is doing the thing that makes any music historically significant (in contrast to only being historically notable, i.e., well-known in its time): having measurable downstream influence. My 19-year-old, budding musician nephew loves Steely Dan (to the chagrin of his Eagles-loving dad, I'm sure), and it definitely affects his music-making.
posted by LooseFilter at 7:45 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
As a child of the 70s I always found Kiss to be a bit of a yawn; the only way I could make sense of their success was by putting it down to the novelty appeal of their Blokes In Weird Makeup look, because I could find nothing in their songwriting that their contemporaries weren't better at. My feelings toward Kiss pivoted to active dislike once I started seeing Simmons interviewed about stuff other than music.
posted by flabdablet at 7:53 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 7:53 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
..."music for suburban 70s mothers to clean to" - note that another of Mom's favorites was Prince's second album, on 8-track. My parents had unusually broad taste in music.
The image of a suburban mom vacuuming the family room to Sexy Dancer makes me very, very happy. Thank you!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:58 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
The image of a suburban mom vacuuming the family room to Sexy Dancer makes me very, very happy. Thank you!
posted by Thorzdad at 7:58 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
preppers
Hmm, I have to question that. I* grew up and still live in New England, and I think of preps as WASPs, as people born with a sense of belonging, and Steely Dan's music is full of people on the edge, of the disaffected, of "gentleman losers."
After noting that Donald Fagen is Jewish ("his parents helped found a synagogue in New Jersey"), rabbi and longtime Steely Dan fan Jeffrey Salkin asked rhetorically, in A kaddish for Walter Becker, "What was 'Jewish' about Steely Dan's music?"
posted by virago at 8:04 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Hmm, I have to question that. I* grew up and still live in New England, and I think of preps as WASPs, as people born with a sense of belonging, and Steely Dan's music is full of people on the edge, of the disaffected, of "gentleman losers."
After noting that Donald Fagen is Jewish ("his parents helped found a synagogue in New Jersey"), rabbi and longtime Steely Dan fan Jeffrey Salkin asked rhetorically, in A kaddish for Walter Becker, "What was 'Jewish' about Steely Dan's music?"
It is Jewish as metaphor. It is the kind of marginality that we encounter in their lyrics -- of people who are totally on the outskirts, looking in.* A motley mix of Italian, French, Austrian, and Scotch-Irish.
posted by virago at 8:04 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I was a young, budding guitar player when I first heard Reelin' In The Years and that guitar, played by Elliot Randall, hooked me for life. I don't apologize for being a Steely Dan fan nor do I mention it. It just is. If young people discovering them and their influence on current artists bothers you, that's your choice but there are more important things to get angry about.
posted by tommasz at 8:20 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 8:20 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Virgo, you're thinking of preppIES. PreppERS are those guys who stockpile a year's worth of canned food and guns in anticipation of a supposed inevitable collapse of society.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:24 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:24 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
As a younger millennial, I find myself constantly baffled by people treating Steely Dan's music like it's somehow controversial. Not that I disbelieve them, exactly: it's more that I can't imagine getting more than mildly annoyed at them at best. Is it that their sound is... chill? That their lyrics are... wry? That they made music that was... polished?
I guess the flip side, to me, is that I was born well past the point where rock and punk had "sold out," and came of age just as "indie rock" was shifting from a brief hiccup of purported "authenticity" to just being a term for bands whose singers were whiny men and twee women. (Not a dig! I enjoy whiny men and twee women!) For me, the notion that there's one kind of music that's more "real" or "personal" or "liberating" is kind of silly; sure, I can find profound meaning in my favorite 60s and 70s artists, but I also grew up with a media monolith dedicated to venerating those two decades, as a new generation of cynical charismatics did their best to generate Product and Brand that emulated Led Zeppelin or Love or whichever totem they felt they could grind the biggest youthful fanbase out of.
(It doesn't hurt that half of the Gen Xers I meet who venerate rock n' roll are sad grouchy dudes who still want to fuck teenagers. "Authenticity" starts sounding like the same kind of code word that libertarians use "freedom" to mean, you know?)
I'm only vaguely aware of what "hipster" meant in the 70s, and my notion of what "sleazy" looked like back then is hazy because everything about the 70s, in retrospect, looks like some kind of sleazy. It's not that I think those terms don't apply to Steely Dan so much as it all kinda cancels out to me. What's left is melody, arrangement, and whether words are fun to sing along to, all of which Steely Dan has in spades.
After a decade or two of indie music that was aggressively electronic, aggressively acoustic and lo-fi, or aggressively garage rock, is it surprising that The Youths discovered polished ensemble music and decided they liked it? Anybody who's old enough to know the phrase "yacht rock" is too old for their opinions on what "real music" sounds like to mean anything, and all the hallmarks of "authenticity" have become the shit that people self-consciously replicate at great expense. (I love Steve Albini, and I think that Albini is a tremendous producer, but a whole lot of shitheads try to sound like Steve Albini, too.) At some point, once the cultural context fades, all that matters is whether the music is good. And with Steely Dan, I feel like the answer to that question is so self-evident that it in turn makes the answer to "why are people getting into Steely Dan again?" self-evident too.
(This also absolutely applies, as Pachylad said, to ABBA, whose comeback album I still listen to on a regular basis. There's nothing remotely cool about it, and in fact it might qualify as vaguely cringe—but it's fucking good, and eventually that's all that counts.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:30 AM on June 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
I guess the flip side, to me, is that I was born well past the point where rock and punk had "sold out," and came of age just as "indie rock" was shifting from a brief hiccup of purported "authenticity" to just being a term for bands whose singers were whiny men and twee women. (Not a dig! I enjoy whiny men and twee women!) For me, the notion that there's one kind of music that's more "real" or "personal" or "liberating" is kind of silly; sure, I can find profound meaning in my favorite 60s and 70s artists, but I also grew up with a media monolith dedicated to venerating those two decades, as a new generation of cynical charismatics did their best to generate Product and Brand that emulated Led Zeppelin or Love or whichever totem they felt they could grind the biggest youthful fanbase out of.
(It doesn't hurt that half of the Gen Xers I meet who venerate rock n' roll are sad grouchy dudes who still want to fuck teenagers. "Authenticity" starts sounding like the same kind of code word that libertarians use "freedom" to mean, you know?)
I'm only vaguely aware of what "hipster" meant in the 70s, and my notion of what "sleazy" looked like back then is hazy because everything about the 70s, in retrospect, looks like some kind of sleazy. It's not that I think those terms don't apply to Steely Dan so much as it all kinda cancels out to me. What's left is melody, arrangement, and whether words are fun to sing along to, all of which Steely Dan has in spades.
After a decade or two of indie music that was aggressively electronic, aggressively acoustic and lo-fi, or aggressively garage rock, is it surprising that The Youths discovered polished ensemble music and decided they liked it? Anybody who's old enough to know the phrase "yacht rock" is too old for their opinions on what "real music" sounds like to mean anything, and all the hallmarks of "authenticity" have become the shit that people self-consciously replicate at great expense. (I love Steve Albini, and I think that Albini is a tremendous producer, but a whole lot of shitheads try to sound like Steve Albini, too.) At some point, once the cultural context fades, all that matters is whether the music is good. And with Steely Dan, I feel like the answer to that question is so self-evident that it in turn makes the answer to "why are people getting into Steely Dan again?" self-evident too.
(This also absolutely applies, as Pachylad said, to ABBA, whose comeback album I still listen to on a regular basis. There's nothing remotely cool about it, and in fact it might qualify as vaguely cringe—but it's fucking good, and eventually that's all that counts.)
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:30 AM on June 17, 2023 [15 favorites]
> Steve Albini had a Twitter thread earlier this year that was headed with “I will always be the kind of punk that shits on Steely Dan.
Huh. Whod'a thunk that Albini was such a control-queen Karen?
posted by smcdow at 8:33 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Huh. Whod'a thunk that Albini was such a control-queen Karen?
posted by smcdow at 8:33 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
And maybe it's the Jewish "outsider" in me speaking here, but frankly, looking around at the scene you belong to and going "All y'all look like shitheads" is pretty much the only timeless thing you can say about any scene. See also: Frank Zappa, Suede's Dog Man Star, Bob Dylan, Daft Punk making a hit album mourning how music all turned electronic on account of Daft Punk, etc.
I don't even know Steely Dan's lyrics well enough to know that that's what they're doing, but there's a fine line between "aloof sneering" and "correctly reading the room," and it's rarely a line that people in the room are sober enough to draw.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:34 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
I don't even know Steely Dan's lyrics well enough to know that that's what they're doing, but there's a fine line between "aloof sneering" and "correctly reading the room," and it's rarely a line that people in the room are sober enough to draw.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:34 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
EmpressCallipygos, I thought that Pachylad had said "preppers" when he meant to say "preppies." I should have asked him to clarify what he meant. (Re: preppers: It's very difficult to picture Fagen and Becker stocking up on hand-crank radios and water purification pills.)
posted by virago at 8:34 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by virago at 8:34 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yeah apologies to and for virago, I misused the p-word of choice.
posted by Pachylad at 8:38 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by Pachylad at 8:38 AM on June 17, 2023
Having been a very big fan since I was first exposed to their music when it was broadcast on top 40 AM radio, I think it's a little odd to always hear their lyrics described as inscrutable or cryptic. Cynical, sure. Ironic, ok. They didn't do high concept ideas or extensive opuses, like so many other acts dipped their toes in, or jumped whole hog, as did prog or fusion acts did. Steely Dan wrote songs. And they were always clearly rooted in jazz and R&B, which never left their vocabulary. For the most part, their lyrics were what they were, with not a lot of masking or deep metaphor.
I find they were more in common with acts like Randy Newman and Warren Zevon than, say, Fleetwood Mac or even Doobie Brothers.
I also think it's a little odd to present Becker and Fagan by their meticulous recording practices. Even Steve fuckin Albini is absolutely meticulous and exacting. The biggest difference between him and Becker and Fagan is the inputs they had to work with. Does anybody think the formula to get any kind of pop music hit was to slap half assed stuff together on a 4 track cassette?
Virgo, you're thinking of preppIES. PreppERS are those guys who stockpile a year's worth of canned food and guns in anticipation of a supposed inevitable collapse of society.
I'd assumed preppies were what was originally meant. Preppers makes even less sense.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:39 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I find they were more in common with acts like Randy Newman and Warren Zevon than, say, Fleetwood Mac or even Doobie Brothers.
I also think it's a little odd to present Becker and Fagan by their meticulous recording practices. Even Steve fuckin Albini is absolutely meticulous and exacting. The biggest difference between him and Becker and Fagan is the inputs they had to work with. Does anybody think the formula to get any kind of pop music hit was to slap half assed stuff together on a 4 track cassette?
Virgo, you're thinking of preppIES. PreppERS are those guys who stockpile a year's worth of canned food and guns in anticipation of a supposed inevitable collapse of society.
I'd assumed preppies were what was originally meant. Preppers makes even less sense.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:39 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is music from my teenage years which did not stick with me at all. I didn't hate it, many of my friends loved it.
I had zero problem with the first Steely Dan album but found things took a prolonged slide from there until Aja's overall jazzfulness absolutely bounced off of me. I saw (heard) nothing in it to like or grab onto. And it didn't help that it seemed to be a fave of a certain crowd of sleazy cocaine types I was vaguely affiliated with (climaxing in a situation where my life got threatened with fucking Peg playing in the background -- what stupid ass movie was this I'd gotten myself into?). So whatever, I opted for full avoidance of the Steely universe, which was not really that difficult given all the fabulously viscerally now music that was erupting all around in the name of punk, new wave etc.
But that was all forty-six years ago. Now, though I still have little to no time for Aja, I'm finding the other albums leading up to it of increasing interest. Similar to Frank Zappa's stuff through the 70s, I may be annoyed by some of it but I'd be a fool to write it all off.
posted by philip-random at 8:41 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I had zero problem with the first Steely Dan album but found things took a prolonged slide from there until Aja's overall jazzfulness absolutely bounced off of me. I saw (heard) nothing in it to like or grab onto. And it didn't help that it seemed to be a fave of a certain crowd of sleazy cocaine types I was vaguely affiliated with (climaxing in a situation where my life got threatened with fucking Peg playing in the background -- what stupid ass movie was this I'd gotten myself into?). So whatever, I opted for full avoidance of the Steely universe, which was not really that difficult given all the fabulously viscerally now music that was erupting all around in the name of punk, new wave etc.
But that was all forty-six years ago. Now, though I still have little to no time for Aja, I'm finding the other albums leading up to it of increasing interest. Similar to Frank Zappa's stuff through the 70s, I may be annoyed by some of it but I'd be a fool to write it all off.
posted by philip-random at 8:41 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
It's definitely cocaine
posted by supermedusa at 8:48 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by supermedusa at 8:48 AM on June 17, 2023
philip-random:
Your post sounds like it could have been lifted from a Becker/Fagan lyric.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:54 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Your post sounds like it could have been lifted from a Becker/Fagan lyric.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:54 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
Anyway, if there's a 70's band that'd be an interesting counterpoint to discuss on the Blue it'd be KISS, now there's another act viewed with somewhat similar disdain by the critical establishment and whose reputation may have, if anything, decreased in the coming years...
I remember reading a bit about an indie band in the early 90s who said that they weren't sure about whether they had what it took to be A BAND, to put themselves out there for the world to stare at. "And then we put on a KISS album," one of them said, "and it was just these goofy-looking guys singing about how they all had huge peckers and they all just had sex with ten girls. And they made millions and millions. And we were like, 'If they can do that, we can do that.'".
posted by delfin at 8:56 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I remember reading a bit about an indie band in the early 90s who said that they weren't sure about whether they had what it took to be A BAND, to put themselves out there for the world to stare at. "And then we put on a KISS album," one of them said, "and it was just these goofy-looking guys singing about how they all had huge peckers and they all just had sex with ten girls. And they made millions and millions. And we were like, 'If they can do that, we can do that.'".
posted by delfin at 8:56 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
See also: Frank Zappa
YES. Was about to say that, in response to "Steely Dan’s music posed a question: Was it possible to be an ironist and a perfectionist simultaneously?"
I like Steely Dan for the jazziness and the musical/production perfectionism. It's tasty music. And for the jaded coolness of the lyrics. (I was never musically adept, or cool, but so wanted to be). Aja is one of my primary references when checking out headphones or speakers.
I fully get that neither SD nor FZ have broad or universal appeal.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:57 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
YES. Was about to say that, in response to "Steely Dan’s music posed a question: Was it possible to be an ironist and a perfectionist simultaneously?"
I like Steely Dan for the jazziness and the musical/production perfectionism. It's tasty music. And for the jaded coolness of the lyrics. (I was never musically adept, or cool, but so wanted to be). Aja is one of my primary references when checking out headphones or speakers.
I fully get that neither SD nor FZ have broad or universal appeal.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:57 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
(Re: preppers: It's very difficult to picture Fagen and Becker stocking up on hand-crank radios and water purification pills.)
...though they certainly did have thoughts on the whole scenario (must have been from all the cobalt cigarettes)
posted by hangashore at 9:07 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
...though they certainly did have thoughts on the whole scenario (must have been from all the cobalt cigarettes)
posted by hangashore at 9:07 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
I didn't see this post until this morning, 77 comments in...
I have too much I want to say. I believe Hippybear and I are exactly the same age, and we have a lot of commonality in musical taste and opinions. I was a kid in the 70s so SD is part of the background radiation of my cultural reality. but I never listened to them seriously until college, when I got to know and appreciate them a lot. (its definitely cocaine)
I sat around in the late 80s drinking and doing cocaine with some friends and we had that exact conversation: pot or coke? we decided yes, it was definitely cocaine. it might seem, at a glance, that pot is more fitting to the chill moody vibe of SD, but I'm hear to tell you that coke fits in just right.
I love SD, yeah maybe they are an acquired taste, but its a mood, and sometimes it hits just right. gonna listen to some today. and I don't know how anyone could listen to Aja and say its cold. the songs are dripping with emotion, self-pity among them. is that cynical? idk, but its an emotion. totally full of feels, this stuff is.
did not know Kanye sampled Kid Charlemagne!! (my fav SD song) hmmm...(its definitely cocaine)
posted by supermedusa at 9:24 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have too much I want to say. I believe Hippybear and I are exactly the same age, and we have a lot of commonality in musical taste and opinions. I was a kid in the 70s so SD is part of the background radiation of my cultural reality. but I never listened to them seriously until college, when I got to know and appreciate them a lot. (its definitely cocaine)
I sat around in the late 80s drinking and doing cocaine with some friends and we had that exact conversation: pot or coke? we decided yes, it was definitely cocaine. it might seem, at a glance, that pot is more fitting to the chill moody vibe of SD, but I'm hear to tell you that coke fits in just right.
I love SD, yeah maybe they are an acquired taste, but its a mood, and sometimes it hits just right. gonna listen to some today. and I don't know how anyone could listen to Aja and say its cold. the songs are dripping with emotion, self-pity among them. is that cynical? idk, but its an emotion. totally full of feels, this stuff is.
did not know Kanye sampled Kid Charlemagne!! (my fav SD song) hmmm...(its definitely cocaine)
posted by supermedusa at 9:24 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
(also TOTALLY here for living in a Thundercat world with Stevie Wonder foundations, yes please!!!)
posted by supermedusa at 9:25 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 9:25 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Thank you, Tom Hanks. I think that pretty well sums my feelings on the Dan of Steel. I’ve been listening to them since I started down this thread, trying to find some kind of “yeah, I get the criticism” but couldn’t make that leap. I was really just enjoying the playing & the slick vibe. ‘Nuff said.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:41 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:41 AM on June 17, 2023
Dunno about “fine Colombian” being anything but pot. Who snorts coke with cheap ass mixto tequila?
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:44 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 9:44 AM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
(Re: preppers: It's very difficult to picture Fagen and Becker stocking up on hand-crank radios and water purification pills.)
...though they certainly did have thoughts on the whole scenario (must have been from all the cobalt cigarettes)
Ha! That same association was running through my head and was about to comment on it as well!
posted by sundrop at 9:45 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Airwindows Evergreens: Steely Dan's 'Do It Again' dynamics analysis (the old Airwindows blog series '100 evergreen hit records' had more, but it's no longer online).
If it was you snuffleupagus who introduced me to [Yacht Rock], thanks.
No, I saw it linked (probably here) just at the time I was realizing there was more to Steely Dan than their radio hits, myself. It's been around long enough that I wouldn't be surprised if it's an influence on these kinds of takes.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
If it was you snuffleupagus who introduced me to [Yacht Rock], thanks.
No, I saw it linked (probably here) just at the time I was realizing there was more to Steely Dan than their radio hits, myself. It's been around long enough that I wouldn't be surprised if it's an influence on these kinds of takes.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:47 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I’ll just say that Steve Albini was known by lots of bands and engineers to be a giant dick.
And Becker and Fagan were known for reducing respected session musicians to tears with their constant, snide, coke-fueled criticisms.
Recording studios turn everyone into dicks.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
And Becker and Fagan were known for reducing respected session musicians to tears with their constant, snide, coke-fueled criticisms.
Recording studios turn everyone into dicks.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Not that I disbelieve them, exactly: it's more that I can't imagine getting more than mildly annoyed at them at best. Is it that their sound is... chill? That their lyrics are... wry? That they made music that was... polished?
I think it helps to consider the difference in how music was consumed, distributed, and its cultural role in the 70s and early 80s.
We didn't have access to vast stores of music at our fingertips. As a kid in the 70s through the late 80s, I got most of my music off the radio (and then MTV, to some extent). In my town (near St. Louis) this meant a few AOR/Classic Rocks stations, top 40s, country, and "urban adult contemporary."
So – if you didn't like a song but it was popular in your preferred genre, there was no escape. You might start off kind of lukewarm about a song, but after several weeks of it popping up when you had time to listen to the radio, it might really grate on your nerves.
Today I can hop on the Internet and stream damn near anything I would want to listen to. If I don't like Steely Dan or Post Malone, I can easily avoid them 99.9% of the time. That might be harder if you're young and still going to clubs or bars or whatever it is people who socialize do... I'm not going to form a very strong opinion about something I can switch off after 5 seconds.
Also, I think music was more culturally at the forefront and authenticity was a huge deal. And there was just less of it. Music, I mean. I'm not sure how I'd get figures to back this up, but I'm pretty sure that the volume of new music being released today dwarfs what was being released in the 70s or 80s.
Y'all are lucky, at least where music is concerned, I think. I can't imagine what it'd have been like if I'd had access to so much music so easily as a teen. Every trip into the city to Vintage Vinyl was a pilgrimage. Finding a new album or back catalog album by anybody outside the mainstream was a major score.
Then again, my daughter does have access to all that at 17 and doesn't much seem to care, so...
posted by jzb at 9:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think it helps to consider the difference in how music was consumed, distributed, and its cultural role in the 70s and early 80s.
We didn't have access to vast stores of music at our fingertips. As a kid in the 70s through the late 80s, I got most of my music off the radio (and then MTV, to some extent). In my town (near St. Louis) this meant a few AOR/Classic Rocks stations, top 40s, country, and "urban adult contemporary."
So – if you didn't like a song but it was popular in your preferred genre, there was no escape. You might start off kind of lukewarm about a song, but after several weeks of it popping up when you had time to listen to the radio, it might really grate on your nerves.
Today I can hop on the Internet and stream damn near anything I would want to listen to. If I don't like Steely Dan or Post Malone, I can easily avoid them 99.9% of the time. That might be harder if you're young and still going to clubs or bars or whatever it is people who socialize do... I'm not going to form a very strong opinion about something I can switch off after 5 seconds.
Also, I think music was more culturally at the forefront and authenticity was a huge deal. And there was just less of it. Music, I mean. I'm not sure how I'd get figures to back this up, but I'm pretty sure that the volume of new music being released today dwarfs what was being released in the 70s or 80s.
Y'all are lucky, at least where music is concerned, I think. I can't imagine what it'd have been like if I'd had access to so much music so easily as a teen. Every trip into the city to Vintage Vinyl was a pilgrimage. Finding a new album or back catalog album by anybody outside the mainstream was a major score.
Then again, my daughter does have access to all that at 17 and doesn't much seem to care, so...
posted by jzb at 9:50 AM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think it’s quite possible that both Steely Dan and Steve Albini are overrated.
I’d compare them to early Roxy Music, where Bryan Ferry sings in that silly fake accent. Can only put up with that in small doses.
Ok that’s just silly.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:52 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’d compare them to early Roxy Music, where Bryan Ferry sings in that silly fake accent. Can only put up with that in small doses.
Ok that’s just silly.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:52 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Anyway, if there's a 70's band that'd be an interesting counterpoint to discuss on the Blue it'd be KISS,
Here's some trivia to close that circle: KISS' highest charting single, Beth, has the distinction of being the only KISS song to have none of the actual band members playing on it, other than Peter Criss' vocals.
So let's hear it for studio musicians. KISS, The Dan, all the lil' purrrrdy ones whatevah.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:52 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Here's some trivia to close that circle: KISS' highest charting single, Beth, has the distinction of being the only KISS song to have none of the actual band members playing on it, other than Peter Criss' vocals.
So let's hear it for studio musicians. KISS, The Dan, all the lil' purrrrdy ones whatevah.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:52 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Pachylad, no worries.
Good reads for those of us who like the Dan (all links ungated):
Bringing Up Steely Dan: Steely Dan's co-founder, Donald Fagen, makes his Cleveland-area parents proud. Cleveland Jewish News; w/photo of the Bard College English lit major hunkered down with a book at his sister's suburban home.
Born Middle-Aged: Eight Books on Steely Dan: A review of the literature on the 1970s jazz-rock ironists. LA Review of Books.
Steely Dan Dictionary:
The Infinite Jukebox: Steely Dan's Midnight [Midnite] Cruiser: British music blogger Martin Crookall on one of my all-time favorite early, early Dan songs.
Good reads for those of us who like the Dan (all links ungated):
Bringing Up Steely Dan: Steely Dan's co-founder, Donald Fagen, makes his Cleveland-area parents proud. Cleveland Jewish News; w/photo of the Bard College English lit major hunkered down with a book at his sister's suburban home.
Born Middle-Aged: Eight Books on Steely Dan: A review of the literature on the 1970s jazz-rock ironists. LA Review of Books.
Steely Dan Dictionary:
An A-Z glossary of obscure and confusing terms taken from the lyrics of Steely Dan songs. ... Note that this is a dictionary of real-life people and places only. ... There are a very small number of exceptions to this "no neologisms" rule -- for example, Custerdome and battle apple -- but only for cases where Becker or Fagen have provided a clear and unambiguous definition for these words during an interview.A kaddish for Walter Becker: What was Jewish about Steely Dan? Maybe more than we thought. On the occasion of Walter Becker's death in 2017, rabbi Jeffrey Salkin discusses the elements of Judaism in the work of the Dan. (The song "Gaucho" is quoted extensively.) Religion News Service.
The Infinite Jukebox: Steely Dan's Midnight [Midnite] Cruiser: British music blogger Martin Crookall on one of my all-time favorite early, early Dan songs.
Oh, it was obvious that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were clever, cleverer than us and knowing of it, and clever enough to be cooler, in on a joke that no-one without their intelligence would ever see, let alone understand. But 'Midnight [Midnite] Cruiser' was where it got to them. Where the cleverness remained but it had stopped protecting them.posted by virago at 9:57 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
At some point, once the cultural context fades, all that matters is whether the music is good. And with Steely Dan, I feel like the answer to that question is so self-evident that it in turn makes the answer to "why are people getting into Steely Dan again?" self-evident too.
I don't even know Steely Dan's lyrics well enough to know that that's what they're doing, but there's a fine line between "aloof sneering" and "correctly reading the room," and it's rarely a line that people in the room are sober enough to draw.
You probably do want to listen to the lyrics a little more then; the juxtaposition of the sound and the lyrical content is undoubtedly part of the Steely Dan thing. With that comes the hazard of the cultural moment not being accessible. At some point a blog made a point that it's kinda weird hearing "Hey Nineteen" in supermarkets and department stores, given what it's about.
I'd draw a comparison to Randy Newman on Trouble In Paradise. Which maybe does the thing people imagine Steely Dan doing more directly than they ever did. My Life is Good.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:07 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't even know Steely Dan's lyrics well enough to know that that's what they're doing, but there's a fine line between "aloof sneering" and "correctly reading the room," and it's rarely a line that people in the room are sober enough to draw.
You probably do want to listen to the lyrics a little more then; the juxtaposition of the sound and the lyrical content is undoubtedly part of the Steely Dan thing. With that comes the hazard of the cultural moment not being accessible. At some point a blog made a point that it's kinda weird hearing "Hey Nineteen" in supermarkets and department stores, given what it's about.
I'd draw a comparison to Randy Newman on Trouble In Paradise. Which maybe does the thing people imagine Steely Dan doing more directly than they ever did. My Life is Good.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:07 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
David Crosby claims the "fine Colombian" is weed. But the Dan commissioned a $150K drum machine for a single album, despite having Bernard Purdie and Jeff Porcaro on the sessions. That sounds like cocaine.
posted by credulous at 10:15 AM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by credulous at 10:15 AM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
fever dreams was my go-to lexicon for understanding Steely Dan in the later phase of my life with them. It's offline but this archive.org copy is pretty good.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:28 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:28 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
nasal singing style
I think it’s on the Classic Albums DVD for Aja where at one point Fagen says he sounds like Jerry Lewis. Like many aspects of their style, I think they leaned into that because the sound just worked in context, and that was always their primary consideration.
posted by mubba at 10:31 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think it’s on the Classic Albums DVD for Aja where at one point Fagen says he sounds like Jerry Lewis. Like many aspects of their style, I think they leaned into that because the sound just worked in context, and that was always their primary consideration.
posted by mubba at 10:31 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I trust David Crosby in this context.
Everyone, even from my conservative midwestern background and age, knew what Cuervo Gold was, and also had heard about "Columbian Gold". The typical clever wordplay of SD.
I didn't know about their proclivity for cocaine. I actually always thought they might have been junkies. But lots of folks did a lot of cocaine beck in the day. Ask Mick Fleetwood.
And yes virago, Midnight Cruiser is wonderful. You have good taste in Dan.
posted by Windopaene at 10:31 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Everyone, even from my conservative midwestern background and age, knew what Cuervo Gold was, and also had heard about "Columbian Gold". The typical clever wordplay of SD.
I didn't know about their proclivity for cocaine. I actually always thought they might have been junkies. But lots of folks did a lot of cocaine beck in the day. Ask Mick Fleetwood.
And yes virago, Midnight Cruiser is wonderful. You have good taste in Dan.
posted by Windopaene at 10:31 AM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ahh, Steely Dan. As long as I'm paying attention, it's just so so excellent, but the moment I... hey look, a squirrel!
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:42 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:42 AM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Back in the day (like the 1920s), "prepper" is what they called someone who went to prep school, and then the term broadened around the 1950s/60s to mean young people of a certain socio-economic class. I'm not sure when the current definition of prepper took over
posted by cooker girl at 10:44 AM on June 17, 2023
posted by cooker girl at 10:44 AM on June 17, 2023
cool story what was the point of letting everyone know you don't like a thing other people like?
You must be new here.
posted by MrBadExample at 11:03 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
You must be new here.
posted by MrBadExample at 11:03 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Steely Dan is fine and all but I've been bothered for years that it is somehow one of the most popular acts used for testing both professional concert sound systems and, more irritating, high end home audiophile systems where sound system nerds are really just listening to their sound system and not actually listening to music.
And I get it. They're really well produced albums. As far as production and recording quality is concerned it's basically the best of the best from the very peak of the state of the art for big studio production albums at the absolute pinnacle of what is even possible with an entirely analog studio, and this is a huge part of the magic of Steely Dan. Most of those albums totally sparkle and shine in ways that are just really amazing.
But there's like 40-50 years of equally very well produced music since then - especially electronic music - that is way more challenging and interesting for testing the qualities of a sound system. Come on you dinosaur nerds, try some Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada or Squarepusher or something new for once.
I've been to some major electronic/ambient focused shows working as crew and some old duffer of an engineer will ring out the PA with Steely Dan and I'm just biting my tongue and desperately trying to avoid saying something snarky like "Hey, you know there's going to be some really complicated and heavy stereo sub-bass, analog synths being pushed to the bleeding edges of sonic reproduction and weird hyper-complicated polyrhythms later, right? There's not even going to be a single guitar involved in this show."
And I get it, they want something they know that's familiar for the ring-out and first bring up of the sound, but maybe they should try something new and be familiar with that kind of music if they're going to be mixing shows that involve more modern music.
Even something relatively mundane and popular in the electronic music world like Boards of Canada has really deep production values. The kind of production values where it sounds nice and lush if a bit lo-fi on average or even some bad speakers but then there's all these details that reveal themselves on really nice speakers or PAs that you'd never be able to hear without really good sound.
Anyway, that's my only real complaint about Steely Dan. They're really good. I just wish hi-fi music nerds would get over them for being the default or go to for showing off a sound system.
posted by loquacious at 11:32 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
And I get it. They're really well produced albums. As far as production and recording quality is concerned it's basically the best of the best from the very peak of the state of the art for big studio production albums at the absolute pinnacle of what is even possible with an entirely analog studio, and this is a huge part of the magic of Steely Dan. Most of those albums totally sparkle and shine in ways that are just really amazing.
But there's like 40-50 years of equally very well produced music since then - especially electronic music - that is way more challenging and interesting for testing the qualities of a sound system. Come on you dinosaur nerds, try some Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada or Squarepusher or something new for once.
I've been to some major electronic/ambient focused shows working as crew and some old duffer of an engineer will ring out the PA with Steely Dan and I'm just biting my tongue and desperately trying to avoid saying something snarky like "Hey, you know there's going to be some really complicated and heavy stereo sub-bass, analog synths being pushed to the bleeding edges of sonic reproduction and weird hyper-complicated polyrhythms later, right? There's not even going to be a single guitar involved in this show."
And I get it, they want something they know that's familiar for the ring-out and first bring up of the sound, but maybe they should try something new and be familiar with that kind of music if they're going to be mixing shows that involve more modern music.
Even something relatively mundane and popular in the electronic music world like Boards of Canada has really deep production values. The kind of production values where it sounds nice and lush if a bit lo-fi on average or even some bad speakers but then there's all these details that reveal themselves on really nice speakers or PAs that you'd never be able to hear without really good sound.
Anyway, that's my only real complaint about Steely Dan. They're really good. I just wish hi-fi music nerds would get over them for being the default or go to for showing off a sound system.
posted by loquacious at 11:32 AM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well, they use Steely Dan instead of acid house music because they understand what Steely Dan is supposed to sound like.
/hides
posted by delfin at 11:56 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
/hides
posted by delfin at 11:56 AM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
something relatively mundane and popular in the electronic music world like Boards of Canada
Funny you mention BoC, I've noticed ROYGBIV is becoming standard pre-set music at venues. And various recognizable dub tracks have been a thing for a while (Lee Perry, the Congos, Twinkle Brothers, Prince Far I, etc)
I always thought Dark Side of the Moon was the most stereotypical hi-fi test album.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:00 PM on June 17, 2023
Funny you mention BoC, I've noticed ROYGBIV is becoming standard pre-set music at venues. And various recognizable dub tracks have been a thing for a while (Lee Perry, the Congos, Twinkle Brothers, Prince Far I, etc)
I always thought Dark Side of the Moon was the most stereotypical hi-fi test album.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:00 PM on June 17, 2023
Metal Machine Music is _right there_ for a full-spectrum test. Just sayin'.
posted by delfin at 12:04 PM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by delfin at 12:04 PM on June 17, 2023 [7 favorites]
Well, so is my signal generator.
I'd suggest some Muslimgauze for that kind of workout.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:04 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'd suggest some Muslimgauze for that kind of workout.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:04 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Wow, thanks for this post, and for the snippets of SD lyrics in the comments. Growing up in western NY in the 70s, listening to WPHD, I loved Steely Dan (the music that was available in the Buffalo area was amazing really), and I still do. We thought it was cool that they wouldn't tour because they could not reproduce their music to their perfectionist standards in a stadium (or at least that is what we read).
I don't really know what to make of this article - the author seems like they want to say something new about SD but I don't know what it is. YMMV.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:25 PM on June 17, 2023
I don't really know what to make of this article - the author seems like they want to say something new about SD but I don't know what it is. YMMV.
posted by bluesky43 at 12:25 PM on June 17, 2023
Music, I mean. I'm not sure how I'd get figures to back this up, but I'm pretty sure that the volume of new music being released today dwarfs what was being released in the 70s or 80s.
I don't have concrete figures for this either, but there's no way this is not true, and I think the statement holds up well into the 90s.
Just comparing and contrasting my own niches of stuff like techno, deep house, electro, ambient/noise and experimental it was a huge chore to find new music well into the 90s, especially anything on vinyl suitable for DJing, even when you went to dance music and DJ-focused indie record stores I could go through dozens and hundreds of records and most of them would be mostly forgettable flavors of the week with one or two real gems or floor burners, even from well established labels and discarding any vanity press stuff.
Today the output of just a half a dozen or a dozen labels I'm subscribed to on YouTube and they'd be filling up that indie record store with all new music on a weekly basis and so much of it is so good it's almost more difficult to find real stinkers and it's just overwhelming.
Even in a weird little niche corner of electronic music like electro there's more new releases every month that hold up very well to classic electro like Drexciya, and it's like so much music that it's more than all of the good electro released for the entire decade of the 90s being dropped online every month or every few months or so and it's a total firehose of new music.
A huge part of all of this is obviously the rise of the DAW and software based production where you can do everything "in the box" on a single laptop without so much as a $50 guitar pedal for a cheap reverb effect.
It used to be insanely expensive or time consuming to do something in production like stack up and use an FX chain of say, a few reverbs, a couple of delays and other common audio tools and experiment with those and bounce them around on tapes.
If you try to compare the costs (both financial and time) of the amount of complexity you can cram into a DAW session entirely on free open source software, free VSTs or affordable pro-grade DAWs like REAPER, Bitwig or Renoise and you're looking at like multi-millions of dollars worth of hardware based effects, mixer consoles, tape machines, tape stock and so on before even accounting for studio or engineer time and costs.
And you can do it all on little more than a cheap $500 laptop and maybe a decent $200ish external sound card and some nice studio monitors or headphones.
Like you can fully replace a major music studio that used to cost millions just to equip and build out with like $2-4k of computers, software, some decent speakers as monitors and maybe a MIDI/OSC/HID interface to use as a mixing desk or console.
And it's not just about hardware costs. There's also way more music and production education out there. Secret recipes aren't really a thing any more. You can learn basic to advanced music production and engineering without having to actually go to a school or experimenting for ages to teach yourself and dive right in to production in huge ways you just couldn't in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
And this is all just in my own particular niche of old geriatric raver shit. The same kind of things are happening in almost every genre and style of music ranging from prog rock to trap and rap to modern jazz to neoclassical and experimental and even pop and R&B. Like even if you filter out the random amateur level stuff on Soundcloud or YouTube there is SOOOO much music being released now.
Of all the problems of the modern world, finding new and good music isn't one of them.
posted by loquacious at 12:32 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't have concrete figures for this either, but there's no way this is not true, and I think the statement holds up well into the 90s.
Just comparing and contrasting my own niches of stuff like techno, deep house, electro, ambient/noise and experimental it was a huge chore to find new music well into the 90s, especially anything on vinyl suitable for DJing, even when you went to dance music and DJ-focused indie record stores I could go through dozens and hundreds of records and most of them would be mostly forgettable flavors of the week with one or two real gems or floor burners, even from well established labels and discarding any vanity press stuff.
Today the output of just a half a dozen or a dozen labels I'm subscribed to on YouTube and they'd be filling up that indie record store with all new music on a weekly basis and so much of it is so good it's almost more difficult to find real stinkers and it's just overwhelming.
Even in a weird little niche corner of electronic music like electro there's more new releases every month that hold up very well to classic electro like Drexciya, and it's like so much music that it's more than all of the good electro released for the entire decade of the 90s being dropped online every month or every few months or so and it's a total firehose of new music.
A huge part of all of this is obviously the rise of the DAW and software based production where you can do everything "in the box" on a single laptop without so much as a $50 guitar pedal for a cheap reverb effect.
It used to be insanely expensive or time consuming to do something in production like stack up and use an FX chain of say, a few reverbs, a couple of delays and other common audio tools and experiment with those and bounce them around on tapes.
If you try to compare the costs (both financial and time) of the amount of complexity you can cram into a DAW session entirely on free open source software, free VSTs or affordable pro-grade DAWs like REAPER, Bitwig or Renoise and you're looking at like multi-millions of dollars worth of hardware based effects, mixer consoles, tape machines, tape stock and so on before even accounting for studio or engineer time and costs.
And you can do it all on little more than a cheap $500 laptop and maybe a decent $200ish external sound card and some nice studio monitors or headphones.
Like you can fully replace a major music studio that used to cost millions just to equip and build out with like $2-4k of computers, software, some decent speakers as monitors and maybe a MIDI/OSC/HID interface to use as a mixing desk or console.
And it's not just about hardware costs. There's also way more music and production education out there. Secret recipes aren't really a thing any more. You can learn basic to advanced music production and engineering without having to actually go to a school or experimenting for ages to teach yourself and dive right in to production in huge ways you just couldn't in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
And this is all just in my own particular niche of old geriatric raver shit. The same kind of things are happening in almost every genre and style of music ranging from prog rock to trap and rap to modern jazz to neoclassical and experimental and even pop and R&B. Like even if you filter out the random amateur level stuff on Soundcloud or YouTube there is SOOOO much music being released now.
Of all the problems of the modern world, finding new and good music isn't one of them.
posted by loquacious at 12:32 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Well, they use Steely Dan instead of acid house music because they understand what Steely Dan is supposed to sound like.
Oh man, ok, I'll take the bait and play it straight for a moment. I didn't even mention actual acid house, and I wouldn't, because it has some of the absolute worst production values in all of dance music and it's right upthere with happy hardcore, breakcore and terrorcore. Even Psychic TV's Jack the Tab 12" on brand new, never played vinyl is absolutely horrid earbleed production values.
I mean they were producing *and* mastering that stuff on 4 track compact cassette Portastudios and using clapped out pawn shop guitar pedals and then blasting that on totally blown out renegade sound systems.
When someone tells me they really, really like acid house it's usually a warning sign for me that they either have hearing damage and/or they may actually be insane, and I'm saying that as someone who used to really like acid house.
Funny you mention BoC, I've noticed ROYGBIV is becoming standard pre-set music at venues. And various recognizable dub tracks have been a thing for a while (Lee Perry, the Congos, Twinkle Brothers, Prince Far I, etc)
Yeah, that is kind of why I mentioned BoC. And RIP Lee Perry.
My favorite sound system checks and tests have involved analog synths and other hardware hooked up directly to a really nice, big PA, and it doesn't even have to be anything fancy like a vintage Moog or Sequential Circuits synth or anything.
Back in the late 90s I was involved in a very large unpermitted desert rave that got busted, but not before we brought up the sound and rang it out with someone's Roland MC-303 Groovebox, which is a digitally controlled (DCO) yet analog synth and drum machine all-in-one kind of thing that - up until that point - I mainly regarded as a neat toy and not a serious piece of gear.
Good lord that thing can put out some serious bass. Before The Man showed up to shut us down we had the sand vibrating 1-2 feet in the air 100 feet out in front of the utterly monster sound system we had rented and it was totally amazing.
Anyway, sorry for the nerdy derail. I like Steely Dan just fine as a band and would much rather listen to them for the rest of my life than someone blasting construction site grade buttrock. At least the Steely Dan sounds nice.
posted by loquacious at 12:48 PM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
Oh man, ok, I'll take the bait and play it straight for a moment. I didn't even mention actual acid house, and I wouldn't, because it has some of the absolute worst production values in all of dance music and it's right upthere with happy hardcore, breakcore and terrorcore. Even Psychic TV's Jack the Tab 12" on brand new, never played vinyl is absolutely horrid earbleed production values.
I mean they were producing *and* mastering that stuff on 4 track compact cassette Portastudios and using clapped out pawn shop guitar pedals and then blasting that on totally blown out renegade sound systems.
When someone tells me they really, really like acid house it's usually a warning sign for me that they either have hearing damage and/or they may actually be insane, and I'm saying that as someone who used to really like acid house.
Funny you mention BoC, I've noticed ROYGBIV is becoming standard pre-set music at venues. And various recognizable dub tracks have been a thing for a while (Lee Perry, the Congos, Twinkle Brothers, Prince Far I, etc)
Yeah, that is kind of why I mentioned BoC. And RIP Lee Perry.
My favorite sound system checks and tests have involved analog synths and other hardware hooked up directly to a really nice, big PA, and it doesn't even have to be anything fancy like a vintage Moog or Sequential Circuits synth or anything.
Back in the late 90s I was involved in a very large unpermitted desert rave that got busted, but not before we brought up the sound and rang it out with someone's Roland MC-303 Groovebox, which is a digitally controlled (DCO) yet analog synth and drum machine all-in-one kind of thing that - up until that point - I mainly regarded as a neat toy and not a serious piece of gear.
Good lord that thing can put out some serious bass. Before The Man showed up to shut us down we had the sand vibrating 1-2 feet in the air 100 feet out in front of the utterly monster sound system we had rented and it was totally amazing.
Anyway, sorry for the nerdy derail. I like Steely Dan just fine as a band and would much rather listen to them for the rest of my life than someone blasting construction site grade buttrock. At least the Steely Dan sounds nice.
posted by loquacious at 12:48 PM on June 17, 2023 [9 favorites]
That's the thing about Steely Dan, though. It's a bunch of white dudes singing about white dude problems in a white dude society. It's not even remotely self-aware or socially conscious. It's fine for what it is, perhaps even the best example of the kind of thing that it is, but once you start viewing the ambient world through the They Live sunglasses that reveal the patriarchy and racism and social injustice, a lot of stuff one took for granted as "good stuff" just becomes kind of tired and uninteresting, and one bends an eye and ear towards what women and people of colour are doing instead.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:55 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:55 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's intensely self-aware and self-conscious, even if it can't see past its own sensibility. Compare the criticism of male novelists of the same generation, like Roth.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:07 PM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:07 PM on June 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's a bunch of white dudes singing about white dude problems in a white dude society.
I think it's really important here to point out that Steely Dan was always a couple of Jewish guys growing up in the 50s who dug and respected all kinds of people making all kinds of music, trying to make sense of the WASP society they grew up in, well aware of other cultures' musical idioms, and whose lyrics are generally focused on being quite critical of WASP society.
It's not even remotely self-aware
When people talk about Steely Dan's sense of irony, it is because they wrote songs from the perspective of a character who was clearly not themselves, and who they were perhaps critical of. Their lyrics are very self-aware, even if perhaps not by today's standards.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 1:20 PM on June 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
I think it's really important here to point out that Steely Dan was always a couple of Jewish guys growing up in the 50s who dug and respected all kinds of people making all kinds of music, trying to make sense of the WASP society they grew up in, well aware of other cultures' musical idioms, and whose lyrics are generally focused on being quite critical of WASP society.
It's not even remotely self-aware
When people talk about Steely Dan's sense of irony, it is because they wrote songs from the perspective of a character who was clearly not themselves, and who they were perhaps critical of. Their lyrics are very self-aware, even if perhaps not by today's standards.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 1:20 PM on June 17, 2023 [14 favorites]
Not to derail, but I had an mc-303 and it most definitely was not in any way analog. It is essentially a rompler with a built in pattern sequencer. Still a super fun device though.
posted by Television Name at 1:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Television Name at 1:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
my husband, who is a multi-instrumentalist, audiophile, and Prog Person can't stand them - he comes down firmly in the "soulless" camp.
This is funny - my husband fits the same description and has loved them since he was a teenager. I knew some of their big singles, but really grew to enjoy them. Their lyrics are a bit like Paul Simon in that frequently they set a mood while keeping a straight narrative just a little out of reach.
posted by PussKillian at 1:22 PM on June 17, 2023
This is funny - my husband fits the same description and has loved them since he was a teenager. I knew some of their big singles, but really grew to enjoy them. Their lyrics are a bit like Paul Simon in that frequently they set a mood while keeping a straight narrative just a little out of reach.
posted by PussKillian at 1:22 PM on June 17, 2023
Yeah, I think Thundercat is the heir to the Steely Dan lounge chair. I mean, he brought in Michael McDonald, not to mention Kenny Loggins.
posted by The Half Language Plant at 1:23 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by The Half Language Plant at 1:23 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
But there's like 40-50 years of equally very well produced music since [Aja]- especially electronic music - that is way more challenging and interesting for testing the qualities of a sound system. Come on you dinosaur nerds, try some Aphex Twin or Boards of Canada or Squarepusher or something new for once.
Old studio/broadcast guy here. In the 90s we often used Steely Dan 'Aja' as quickie checkout ... because we knew it. Because we loved it. (ditto for Dire Straits) And unlike most EDM or electronica those have some great acoustic sound - eg horn sections... Wayne Shorter ffs. If you're checking for quality of reproduction, you want a connection to real instruments.
(If you want the ultimate in over-engineered ear-candy for hifi demos, that's totally devoid of soul... Mannheim Steamroller)
...and I totally heart BoC... don't think I'd be using them as my primary reference material for system evaluation.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:48 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Old studio/broadcast guy here. In the 90s we often used Steely Dan 'Aja' as quickie checkout ... because we knew it. Because we loved it. (ditto for Dire Straits) And unlike most EDM or electronica those have some great acoustic sound - eg horn sections... Wayne Shorter ffs. If you're checking for quality of reproduction, you want a connection to real instruments.
(If you want the ultimate in over-engineered ear-candy for hifi demos, that's totally devoid of soul... Mannheim Steamroller)
...and I totally heart BoC... don't think I'd be using them as my primary reference material for system evaluation.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:48 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
Steely Dan was always a couple of Jewish guys
something I just discovered. Walter Becker wasn't Jewish. It pops up in that Demos link I posted earlier.
Fagen, of course, was Jewish, and I think the rest of your comment stands.
When people talk about Steely Dan's sense of irony, it is because they wrote songs from the perspective of a character who was clearly not themselves, and who they were perhaps critical of. Their lyrics are very self-aware, even if perhaps not by today's standards.
and I'm sure today's standards will come to fail by tomorrow's standards soon enough.
posted by philip-random at 1:54 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
something I just discovered. Walter Becker wasn't Jewish. It pops up in that Demos link I posted earlier.
Fagen, of course, was Jewish, and I think the rest of your comment stands.
When people talk about Steely Dan's sense of irony, it is because they wrote songs from the perspective of a character who was clearly not themselves, and who they were perhaps critical of. Their lyrics are very self-aware, even if perhaps not by today's standards.
and I'm sure today's standards will come to fail by tomorrow's standards soon enough.
posted by philip-random at 1:54 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's very difficult to picture Fagen and Becker stocking up on hand-crank radios and water purification pills.)
You never know…
Yes, we're gonna have a wingding
A summer smoker underground
It's just a dugout that my dad built
In case the reds decide to push the button down
We've got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:06 PM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
You never know…
Yes, we're gonna have a wingding
A summer smoker underground
It's just a dugout that my dad built
In case the reds decide to push the button down
We've got provisions and lots of beer
The key word is survival on the new frontier
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:06 PM on June 17, 2023 [6 favorites]
Steely Dan is like the soundtrack of my boomer parents wishing they hadn't had kids, so they could go get stoned.
I didn't know that these songs had names until today, but I still can't enjoy them, I know them too well
posted by eustatic at 2:17 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I didn't know that these songs had names until today, but I still can't enjoy them, I know them too well
posted by eustatic at 2:17 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I always thought Dark Side of the Moon was the most stereotypical hi-fi test album.
it's my understanding that a lot of professional engineers, even the ones in nashville who do country, use ac/dc's back in black - it's just THERE
---
That's the thing about Steely Dan, though. It's a bunch of white dudes singing about white dude problems in a white dude society.
like parker's band? - charlie freak? - any major dude? - turn that heartbeat over again? - don't take me alive?
they're a lot broader and more complicated than that - there's a lot of the underworld in their music
i like them, but i'm not their biggest fan - can't buy a thrill and pretzel logic are classics - countdown to ecstasy was a bit too much of a band album - and the albums after that got increasingly slick - gaucho seemed to lack something on half the tracks - their comeback album, two against nature, was a tuneless bore that was flawlessly played
what always intrigued me about them was the jazz arrangements and touches they threw into their music - until they took over
but then there's a ton of MPB artists who do this too ...
and kiss? - put them up against neil young and crazy horse - or led zeppelin - or black sabbath - or grand funk railroad
kiss really aren't that good
posted by pyramid termite at 2:48 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
it's my understanding that a lot of professional engineers, even the ones in nashville who do country, use ac/dc's back in black - it's just THERE
---
That's the thing about Steely Dan, though. It's a bunch of white dudes singing about white dude problems in a white dude society.
like parker's band? - charlie freak? - any major dude? - turn that heartbeat over again? - don't take me alive?
they're a lot broader and more complicated than that - there's a lot of the underworld in their music
i like them, but i'm not their biggest fan - can't buy a thrill and pretzel logic are classics - countdown to ecstasy was a bit too much of a band album - and the albums after that got increasingly slick - gaucho seemed to lack something on half the tracks - their comeback album, two against nature, was a tuneless bore that was flawlessly played
what always intrigued me about them was the jazz arrangements and touches they threw into their music - until they took over
but then there's a ton of MPB artists who do this too ...
and kiss? - put them up against neil young and crazy horse - or led zeppelin - or black sabbath - or grand funk railroad
kiss really aren't that good
posted by pyramid termite at 2:48 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
"Barrytown" seems to fairly clearly address redlining/segregation. (Told from the POV of someone who "likes things how they used to be.") It seems pretty clear that the Dan aren't setting the protagonist of the song out as a hero, but rather as someone who is kind of racist but doesn't regard themselves as such.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:09 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:09 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hmm. Well, I might be wrong about that, looks like some people think it's about the Moonies.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:13 PM on June 17, 2023
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 3:13 PM on June 17, 2023
this gave me the opportunity to think about what a good Steely Dan tribute band would be named
Ferrite Frank (strong fave)
Hard Hank
Taut Tony
Rigid Ron
posted by djseafood at 3:17 PM on June 17, 2023
Ferrite Frank (strong fave)
Hard Hank
Taut Tony
Rigid Ron
posted by djseafood at 3:17 PM on June 17, 2023
El Supremo
posted by credulous at 3:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by credulous at 3:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [4 favorites]
As an old, I remember drifting into Steely Dan back in the day. I was a hard rock/prog rock boy and like a lot of my peers were drawn in first by the guitar solos. I can recall a lot of dorm/frat conversations about the solos on SD albums from guys who normally were far more into Zep/Sabbath/Rush than anything remotely "smooth". But the guitar work, and there was a helluva lot of it, was a gateway drug. Then came the realization that the lyrics were just twisted masterpieces, sordid tales of gentlemen losers, dealers, and showbiz kids. And then of course, you were hooked. Hell, I've seen album collections that had the Clash and Steely Dan. Appreciation of Don and Walter was just a sign of an open mind and appreciation of the kind of music you could listen to in the heart of night, chilling down.
Yes, Aja is a standard for testing audiophile systems. It is impeccably recorded and has a beautiful dynamic range. But so does Supertramps's Crime of the Century, most of the Dire Straits catalog, Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat, Flim & the BB's Tricycle, and so on and so on. There's a LOT of poorly recorded music out there but the great ones are timeless.
posted by Ber at 3:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
Yes, Aja is a standard for testing audiophile systems. It is impeccably recorded and has a beautiful dynamic range. But so does Supertramps's Crime of the Century, most of the Dire Straits catalog, Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat, Flim & the BB's Tricycle, and so on and so on. There's a LOT of poorly recorded music out there but the great ones are timeless.
posted by Ber at 3:21 PM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
I mean, any band named after a literary strap-on sex toy can't be _too_ whitebread, right?
posted by delfin at 3:28 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by delfin at 3:28 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
this gave me the opportunity to think about what a good Steely Dan tribute band would be named
I've got you covered.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:42 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've got you covered.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:42 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
If it is wrong/bad to dislike Steely Dan, imagine how it goes when I mention I don’t like The Beach Boys!
posted by Gadgetenvy at 3:43 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Gadgetenvy at 3:43 PM on June 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
If it is wrong/bad to dislike Steely Dan, imagine how it goes when I mention I don’t like The Beach Boys!
I think you'll want to redirect such grievances over here.
posted by mykescipark at 4:22 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think you'll want to redirect such grievances over here.
posted by mykescipark at 4:22 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]
Steely Dan: more divisive than Trump
posted by not_on_display at 4:31 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by not_on_display at 4:31 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
> Flim & the BB's Tricycle
oh my god thank you so much for mentioning this forgotten band from my youth. my family had a huge collection of pirated cassette tapes from our friend who worked at a record store and was into "hi-fi." i played this one a lot but the tape went missing about 35 years ago and Flim & The BBs fell out of my memory altogether until just now. listening now on a youtube, what a flood of nostalgia. bless you.
posted by glonous keming at 4:38 PM on June 17, 2023
oh my god thank you so much for mentioning this forgotten band from my youth. my family had a huge collection of pirated cassette tapes from our friend who worked at a record store and was into "hi-fi." i played this one a lot but the tape went missing about 35 years ago and Flim & The BBs fell out of my memory altogether until just now. listening now on a youtube, what a flood of nostalgia. bless you.
posted by glonous keming at 4:38 PM on June 17, 2023
I just want to say that I've enjoyed this cover of Peg and think it's worth a listen/watch.
posted by indexy at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by indexy at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I never got any STDs off their fans, which is NOT something I could say about the Grateful Dead.
posted by brachiopod at 7:33 PM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by brachiopod at 7:33 PM on June 17, 2023 [10 favorites]
My husband just also lit up at me asking him about Flim and the BBs. He listened to them and a teenager and loved them but they had completely fallen off his radar. He’s lost in a nostalgia glow now and I’m going to hear new good stuff.
posted by PussKillian at 7:35 PM on June 17, 2023
posted by PussKillian at 7:35 PM on June 17, 2023
(Re: preppers: It's very difficult to picture Fagen and Becker stocking up on hand-crank radios and water purification pills.)
Maybe this will make it a little easier…
posted by Mchelly at 8:37 PM on June 17, 2023
Maybe this will make it a little easier…
posted by Mchelly at 8:37 PM on June 17, 2023
Any version of Peg without Michael McDonald is OK in my book.
EDIT: OF course any song without Michael McDonald is OK in my book.
posted by Windopaene at 8:51 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
EDIT: OF course any song without Michael McDonald is OK in my book.
posted by Windopaene at 8:51 PM on June 17, 2023 [2 favorites]
I think it's useful to acknowledge that at a certain point Steely Dan made good use of acoustic guitars - Pearl of the Quarter, The Boston Rag, Any Major Dude Will Tell You, etc. And then it just disappeared, starting with Katy Lied. That's when the more overt jazz sounds started to happen. Acoustic guitar still points (however distantly) back to folk music, the 60s, a rougher sound as compared to the sheen that Steely Dan came to personify later in their career. And so if you can't get with Aja or Gaucho, maybe Through With Buzz (from Pretzel Logic) will do something for you?
Or not. Honestly, I love it all.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 9:13 PM on June 17, 2023
Or not. Honestly, I love it all.
posted by fingers_of_fire at 9:13 PM on June 17, 2023
are we talking about Michael McDonald now
posted by pxe2000 at 4:06 AM on June 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by pxe2000 at 4:06 AM on June 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
We don't all have to like the same things, but I love Steely Dan.
posted by freakazoid at 8:16 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by freakazoid at 8:16 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
(If you want the ultimate in over-engineered ear-candy for hifi demos, that's totally devoid of soul... Mannheim Steamroller)
Shadowfax has entered the chat.
posted by loquacious at 9:11 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Shadowfax has entered the chat.
posted by loquacious at 9:11 AM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
If you're checking for quality of reproduction, you want a connection to real instruments.
Sure, but the opposite is also true if you're sound checking a PA that is going to be playing nothing but electronic music, which was kind of the point of my comment about using Steely Dan even though there's not going to be live instruments at all involved in the actual show. You'd be better off using test tones and oscillator sweeps.
And this is why I have a folder full of lowrider and bass comp tracks and test tones. (Not that I'm tuning sound systems lately but I used to.)
Granted this is all kind of a moot point with modern linear array PAs with advanced DSP controls and tech like cardioid bass arrays. You can accurately model venues and PA setups in software long before you arrive at avenue, and systems practically tune themselves with DSP-driven test tones and feedback controls.
posted by loquacious at 9:29 AM on June 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
Sure, but the opposite is also true if you're sound checking a PA that is going to be playing nothing but electronic music, which was kind of the point of my comment about using Steely Dan even though there's not going to be live instruments at all involved in the actual show. You'd be better off using test tones and oscillator sweeps.
And this is why I have a folder full of lowrider and bass comp tracks and test tones. (Not that I'm tuning sound systems lately but I used to.)
Granted this is all kind of a moot point with modern linear array PAs with advanced DSP controls and tech like cardioid bass arrays. You can accurately model venues and PA setups in software long before you arrive at avenue, and systems practically tune themselves with DSP-driven test tones and feedback controls.
posted by loquacious at 9:29 AM on June 18, 2023 [5 favorites]
I swear we've had this conversation before, I'm having deja vu. Came of age in the late 70s, always liked Steely Dan well enough but never bought any albums, and tbh I always thought they were slightly too old for me. I'm always happy to listen to their songs all the way through without complaining.
Then last year the algorithms put Walter Becker's 11 Tracks of Whack (1994) into my life and I became obsessed. I'm sure that in 1994 I would have thought myself too cool to listen to a Walter Becker album but it became everything to me to the point where I was pushing it on friends. "Is that... Steely Dan???"
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:36 AM on June 18, 2023
Then last year the algorithms put Walter Becker's 11 Tracks of Whack (1994) into my life and I became obsessed. I'm sure that in 1994 I would have thought myself too cool to listen to a Walter Becker album but it became everything to me to the point where I was pushing it on friends. "Is that... Steely Dan???"
posted by maggiemaggie at 10:36 AM on June 18, 2023
things took a prolonged slide from there until Aja's overall jazzfulness absolutely bounced off of me. I saw (heard) nothing in it to like or grab onto.
so I'm listening to Aja right now because every now and then, I like to prove myself wrong. And I'm really enjoying it. It really is a rich meal prepared by a couple of master chefs -- no gratuitous ingredients, everything present for a reason.
But I still can't fucking stand Peg. Maybe if they stuck it at the end like a dessert. Then I could just skip dessert.
posted by philip-random at 10:52 AM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
so I'm listening to Aja right now because every now and then, I like to prove myself wrong. And I'm really enjoying it. It really is a rich meal prepared by a couple of master chefs -- no gratuitous ingredients, everything present for a reason.
But I still can't fucking stand Peg. Maybe if they stuck it at the end like a dessert. Then I could just skip dessert.
posted by philip-random at 10:52 AM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Geez - Flim & the BB's, Shadowfax...so many unexpected 40-year-old memories...
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:55 AM on June 18, 2023
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:55 AM on June 18, 2023
Mannheim Steamroller?
Fresh Aire I-IV were pretty fucking awesome. They were just as good live the one time I saw them. Harpsichords FFS.
But agreed, their production values were pretty slick. But I think they had soul
posted by Windopaene at 11:24 AM on June 18, 2023
Fresh Aire I-IV were pretty fucking awesome. They were just as good live the one time I saw them. Harpsichords FFS.
But agreed, their production values were pretty slick. But I think they had soul
posted by Windopaene at 11:24 AM on June 18, 2023
Here's where I trot out one of my all time favorite quotes:
"There's only two kinds of music: the kind you like, and the kind you don't" - Lemmy
My first boyfriend loved Steely Dan. As such, I have always had a soft spot for them and "Do It Again" is a freaking fabulous song, no matter what "genre" you prefer.
posted by biscotti at 12:04 PM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
"There's only two kinds of music: the kind you like, and the kind you don't" - Lemmy
My first boyfriend loved Steely Dan. As such, I have always had a soft spot for them and "Do It Again" is a freaking fabulous song, no matter what "genre" you prefer.
posted by biscotti at 12:04 PM on June 18, 2023 [3 favorites]
Thanks to this discussion I went on a Flim & the BB's jag (link to the YouTube topic if anyone's interested), which reminded me why I hadn't listened to them in 30-odd years. The skills and technique are certainly top-notch and the production is flawless, as was mentioned up-thread. But almost all their compositions ended up sounding like disjointed soundtrack music for extremely-80's movies. Anyway it got tiresome to listen to after skimming through the first 3 albums. Maybe I'll come back at some point and try the later ones, but then again maybe I won't. In the meantime it's time for some Steely Dan to cleanse my brain.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:10 PM on June 18, 2023
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:10 PM on June 18, 2023
Before there was Aja, before there was the Gaucho, before there was Reelin' In The Years, and before there was even My Old School, there was Fagen & Becker.
And The Leather Canary, featuring drummer/college classmate Chevy Chase. Until Chase was expelled for keeping a cow in his dorm room.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:02 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
And The Leather Canary, featuring drummer/college classmate Chevy Chase. Until Chase was expelled for keeping a cow in his dorm room.
posted by kirkaracha at 5:02 PM on June 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Flim and the BB's sounds like a compilation of themes from iconic 80s dramadies of a parallel dimension.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:27 PM on June 18, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:27 PM on June 18, 2023
I must confess, I'm always very curious about which Steely track DJGoldfinger plays at the end of his first set on Sunday nite...
Often sparing in his praise, Fagen said that Chevy was a pretty good drummer.
I can't cite the source, but I recall a music producer quip that Steely Dan was pre-creating "Pro Tools" in the studio before Avid Pro Tools was a thing.
I think they're great because in their Creem Magazine interview they only talked about marketing their own brand of dog food, which would be grey like their music
Anybody got a link to this? I’m having a hard time finding it.
I don't see it on the internets. It was a rather brief interview from mid-70s Creem when their writers were on a long leash to snipe at 70s rock pretensions. I got the sense that there was maybe some implied hostility between the interviewer and the subjects, who around that time started to get more picky about their interactions with the media.
(I listen to them more now. Regret not checking them out when they toured.)
posted by ovvl at 6:33 PM on June 18, 2023
Often sparing in his praise, Fagen said that Chevy was a pretty good drummer.
I can't cite the source, but I recall a music producer quip that Steely Dan was pre-creating "Pro Tools" in the studio before Avid Pro Tools was a thing.
I think they're great because in their Creem Magazine interview they only talked about marketing their own brand of dog food, which would be grey like their music
Anybody got a link to this? I’m having a hard time finding it.
I don't see it on the internets. It was a rather brief interview from mid-70s Creem when their writers were on a long leash to snipe at 70s rock pretensions. I got the sense that there was maybe some implied hostility between the interviewer and the subjects, who around that time started to get more picky about their interactions with the media.
(I listen to them more now. Regret not checking them out when they toured.)
posted by ovvl at 6:33 PM on June 18, 2023
Including this from August 1976, "The True Inside Story of the Steely Dan Review."
(paywalled, it would seem)
revisited in 2022 with obligatory irony/overthinking.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:54 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
(paywalled, it would seem)
revisited in 2022 with obligatory irony/overthinking.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:54 PM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
systems practically tune themselves with DSP-driven test tones and feedback controls.
There's a waves plugin now that takes SMAART's output and builds the EQ curve for you.
posted by mikelieman at 5:50 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's a waves plugin now that takes SMAART's output and builds the EQ curve for you.
posted by mikelieman at 5:50 AM on June 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have ran through all the recommended new bands walking in SD's footsteps. They seem committed to the smooth yacht rock aesthetic and there's a few instances of musical complexity (but not that many) but I have yet to hear from my sampling anything approaching the lyrics of the original. Hell, I'll go back to listening to Snarky Puppy and imagining tales of debauched losers seizing one last chance.
posted by Ber at 6:04 AM on June 19, 2023
posted by Ber at 6:04 AM on June 19, 2023
I don't like Steely Dan. I don't get it. I will own that. And I will also say that there's a lot of White Dudes in the 1970s music that I don't like either (in general Southern Rock, Prog, Jam Bands and whatever the Eagles are also have never done it for me, either). Some of this I take as contextual. My first memory of pop music (when I was a very small child) at the tail end of the 1970s was mostly disco, which I loved, and the very early edge of New Wave. My parents were jazz/soul/funk/reggae fans with an affection for Elvis Costello and a lot of singer-songwriter adjacent stuff. They didn't listen to much classic rock and I never really heard a lot of the music people of my generation grew up around until I was a coming into adolescence in my own right because if it wasn't on Mtv (which I had entirely too much access to as a child), I wasn't around it. My parents were plenty open-minded about what I listened to. But my early, early childhood tastes were basically the tail end of disco, the Go-Gos, and, like, Broadway show tunes.
I mention this because I feel like, for a lot of people in my wider ager group (late Xer/early Millennial), there is a lot of affection for Steely Dan et. al that comes out of nostalgia. It reminds them of car trips with their dad or like cookouts in their neighborhood. And my memories just have different soundtracks (Isaac Hayes on Dad trips, James Brown at cookouts), not necessarily better, but just different. My own Steely Dan memories, those that exist at all, come much later, when I was a teenager, and my newly divorced mother dated a series of sleazy dudes, at least one of whom was an enormous Steely Dan fan. I cannot hear Aja without smelling his fucking cologne and remembering how much I'd hate it when Mom would occasionally send him to school to pick me up. Nothing bad happened. Just the creep vibe was next level.
This is the kind of thing you don't really write about when you write about music though. And I think that was always part of what was so hard for me back in the days when I did write about music. I tend to think, above almost all other art forms, music is so personal and the way we love it or don't love it is so contextual or emotional or experiential. A couple of nights ago I was over at a friend's house and all six of us actually got into this whole exact conversation about Steely Dan (and Albini) and then about the Grateful Dead. Most of us have/had lives that have been, in part, defined by music (one of us was touring musician, one of us worked at a record label for a while, I did whatever bullshit writing/record store-ing I did, etc), so we had opinions, and we also accepted at the outset that we were going to end at an impasse ( though for what it is worth, it is completely possible to be a big fan of both Steely Dan and Steve Albini at the same time). It's hard to change someone's mind about liking a song at this point in the game. Maybe you come around to it, you come to appreciate the artistry, but the thing that's going to get you, that turns a "I respect what this artist is trying to accomplish" to "This is one of my favorite songs" is ineffable, it's indescribable, it's like romantic chemistry. Realizing that you love a song or an album of whatever is kind of like (and you'll forgive me) falling in love, or maybe just that electrical jolt that comes when you realize how easily you could. The touring musician at my friends house that night noted that we're all coming up on 50 years old and if we've learned anything it's that music and music taste is, at its heart, so personal, and because it's so personal, it's harder not to take offense when people disagree with you about it. On the other hand, you don't like what you don't like. That's fine, and I often find just as interesting to find out why you don't as much as much as why you do.
Anyway, even my closest friends and I do not agree on music. That's what makes it so great. It would be so fucking boring if we all liked the same things.
posted by thivaia at 8:21 AM on June 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
I mention this because I feel like, for a lot of people in my wider ager group (late Xer/early Millennial), there is a lot of affection for Steely Dan et. al that comes out of nostalgia. It reminds them of car trips with their dad or like cookouts in their neighborhood. And my memories just have different soundtracks (Isaac Hayes on Dad trips, James Brown at cookouts), not necessarily better, but just different. My own Steely Dan memories, those that exist at all, come much later, when I was a teenager, and my newly divorced mother dated a series of sleazy dudes, at least one of whom was an enormous Steely Dan fan. I cannot hear Aja without smelling his fucking cologne and remembering how much I'd hate it when Mom would occasionally send him to school to pick me up. Nothing bad happened. Just the creep vibe was next level.
This is the kind of thing you don't really write about when you write about music though. And I think that was always part of what was so hard for me back in the days when I did write about music. I tend to think, above almost all other art forms, music is so personal and the way we love it or don't love it is so contextual or emotional or experiential. A couple of nights ago I was over at a friend's house and all six of us actually got into this whole exact conversation about Steely Dan (and Albini) and then about the Grateful Dead. Most of us have/had lives that have been, in part, defined by music (one of us was touring musician, one of us worked at a record label for a while, I did whatever bullshit writing/record store-ing I did, etc), so we had opinions, and we also accepted at the outset that we were going to end at an impasse ( though for what it is worth, it is completely possible to be a big fan of both Steely Dan and Steve Albini at the same time). It's hard to change someone's mind about liking a song at this point in the game. Maybe you come around to it, you come to appreciate the artistry, but the thing that's going to get you, that turns a "I respect what this artist is trying to accomplish" to "This is one of my favorite songs" is ineffable, it's indescribable, it's like romantic chemistry. Realizing that you love a song or an album of whatever is kind of like (and you'll forgive me) falling in love, or maybe just that electrical jolt that comes when you realize how easily you could. The touring musician at my friends house that night noted that we're all coming up on 50 years old and if we've learned anything it's that music and music taste is, at its heart, so personal, and because it's so personal, it's harder not to take offense when people disagree with you about it. On the other hand, you don't like what you don't like. That's fine, and I often find just as interesting to find out why you don't as much as much as why you do.
Anyway, even my closest friends and I do not agree on music. That's what makes it so great. It would be so fucking boring if we all liked the same things.
posted by thivaia at 8:21 AM on June 19, 2023 [9 favorites]
Anyway, even my closest friends and I do not agree on music. That's what makes it so great. It would be so fucking boring if we all liked the same things.
post high school when I rather consciously started re-thinking who I wanted for friends, one of the top criteria was their taste in music. I mean, how could someone who loved [insert a few band/artist names] as much as me not be an amazing person?
It took me better part of five years (and all manner of dramas and soap operas) to realize how wrongheaded this was -- that assholes and fools and bores and problem drinkers and druggers come in all forms, and some of them have great taste in music. Long story short, by the time I was twenty-two (or three) I had again reconfigured my friend network. I was a radio DJ by now (local community station) so it's not as if I'd jettisoned music as a frame for things. It's just that now I didn't so much care what somebody liked or loved -- it was how they discussed it, the joy I got out of arguing this-vs-that, the learning that was going on.
To this day (four decades on), if there's any overall nucleus to my network, it's that crowd, the people I connected with way back when in and around radioland, and learned to respect in spite of what they felt was good-bad-ugly in the realm of music-culture-aesthetics in general. You might say, I learned to fall in love with the disagreeing, or certainly accept it as an essential ingredient in what made the overall stew that was life-the-universe-everything taste so damned good (sometimes anyway).
And now, latest example of this, direct result of this discussion and few others that have gone down elsewhere recently, I'm really digging into the Steely Dan back catalogue, all the stuff I found so easy to shrug off for the past getting on fifty years now. And yeah, I'm digging it.
Thanks, friends.
posted by philip-random at 9:34 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
post high school when I rather consciously started re-thinking who I wanted for friends, one of the top criteria was their taste in music. I mean, how could someone who loved [insert a few band/artist names] as much as me not be an amazing person?
It took me better part of five years (and all manner of dramas and soap operas) to realize how wrongheaded this was -- that assholes and fools and bores and problem drinkers and druggers come in all forms, and some of them have great taste in music. Long story short, by the time I was twenty-two (or three) I had again reconfigured my friend network. I was a radio DJ by now (local community station) so it's not as if I'd jettisoned music as a frame for things. It's just that now I didn't so much care what somebody liked or loved -- it was how they discussed it, the joy I got out of arguing this-vs-that, the learning that was going on.
To this day (four decades on), if there's any overall nucleus to my network, it's that crowd, the people I connected with way back when in and around radioland, and learned to respect in spite of what they felt was good-bad-ugly in the realm of music-culture-aesthetics in general. You might say, I learned to fall in love with the disagreeing, or certainly accept it as an essential ingredient in what made the overall stew that was life-the-universe-everything taste so damned good (sometimes anyway).
And now, latest example of this, direct result of this discussion and few others that have gone down elsewhere recently, I'm really digging into the Steely Dan back catalogue, all the stuff I found so easy to shrug off for the past getting on fifty years now. And yeah, I'm digging it.
Thanks, friends.
posted by philip-random at 9:34 AM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was referring mainly to aesthetics and targeting of ads; ie the suitability of the ad to the user and to the publication. You're referring to morality. Moral advertising is an oxymoron. "Values" if any, are as directed by the client.
Yep, I learned this lesson the hard way, too, especially after pigeon-holing myself into the alternative/darkwave genres and realms and effectively denying myself being open to a lot more and different kinds of music and being a hipster dirtbag.
Granted, the 80s and 90s were a totally different era and there were definitely reliable indicators or cultural touchstones, like if you were in to New Order, Depeche Mode and Bauhaus or whatever it was a pretty likely indicator that you're also LGBTQ friendly or maybe more empathic.
And it was also a thing where the jocks and bullies of my childhood were much more likely to listen to other things because the alt/darkwave stuff was too gay or weird or whatever and they only listened to Van Halen or Metallica or hair metal, pop or even classic/vintage hard rock.
But it's not a concrete or useful thing. Even back then there was a huge cross over and blurry line where alt/darkwave fans and the jocks and preps all could find common ground in, say, Pink Floyd or even alt-rock like Jane's Addiction, Oingo Boingo or Red Hot Chili Peppers or whatever.
Like it's totally fine that I have my own weird tastes in electronic and experimental music but it also took me like 6+ years of being involved in community/college radio and having access to a huge music library in a non-figurative 200,000+ albums and CDs that there was a whole lot of music I was missing out on.
If I had a time machine or a do-over I would make a point to say yes to a lot more things I originally turned my nose up at as not being sufficiently aligned with what I thought were my values.
I distinctly remember turning down free tickets and invites to shows for all kinds of things large and small that I should have said yes to but I didn't.
posted by loquacious at 1:47 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yep, I learned this lesson the hard way, too, especially after pigeon-holing myself into the alternative/darkwave genres and realms and effectively denying myself being open to a lot more and different kinds of music and being a hipster dirtbag.
Granted, the 80s and 90s were a totally different era and there were definitely reliable indicators or cultural touchstones, like if you were in to New Order, Depeche Mode and Bauhaus or whatever it was a pretty likely indicator that you're also LGBTQ friendly or maybe more empathic.
And it was also a thing where the jocks and bullies of my childhood were much more likely to listen to other things because the alt/darkwave stuff was too gay or weird or whatever and they only listened to Van Halen or Metallica or hair metal, pop or even classic/vintage hard rock.
But it's not a concrete or useful thing. Even back then there was a huge cross over and blurry line where alt/darkwave fans and the jocks and preps all could find common ground in, say, Pink Floyd or even alt-rock like Jane's Addiction, Oingo Boingo or Red Hot Chili Peppers or whatever.
Like it's totally fine that I have my own weird tastes in electronic and experimental music but it also took me like 6+ years of being involved in community/college radio and having access to a huge music library in a non-figurative 200,000+ albums and CDs that there was a whole lot of music I was missing out on.
If I had a time machine or a do-over I would make a point to say yes to a lot more things I originally turned my nose up at as not being sufficiently aligned with what I thought were my values.
I distinctly remember turning down free tickets and invites to shows for all kinds of things large and small that I should have said yes to but I didn't.
posted by loquacious at 1:47 PM on June 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Their lyrics are very self-aware, even if perhaps not by today's standards.
I think it's hard to judge lyrics, and that song writers can write songs about people they personally are not and would never want to be, but Steely Dan certainly did write some questionable stuff. Like "I would love to tour the Southland
In a traveling minstrel show " from Pretzel Logic with the kicker being the narrator can't because it was 'over a long time ago'. Yikes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:18 PM on June 20, 2023
I think it's hard to judge lyrics, and that song writers can write songs about people they personally are not and would never want to be, but Steely Dan certainly did write some questionable stuff. Like "I would love to tour the Southland
In a traveling minstrel show " from Pretzel Logic with the kicker being the narrator can't because it was 'over a long time ago'. Yikes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:18 PM on June 20, 2023
you forgot the one about pedophilia, nazis, incest, cuckolding, safe sex, interplanetary organized crime, cults, illicit drug manufacture and procurement, deicide, and whatever 'your gold teeth II' is about
posted by logicpunk at 12:35 PM on June 20, 2023
posted by logicpunk at 12:35 PM on June 20, 2023
Yikes.
I can only repeat myself...and the comparison to Randy Newman. If the perspective in My Life is Good didn't make the point, try Christmas in Capetown.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:56 PM on June 20, 2023
I can only repeat myself...and the comparison to Randy Newman. If the perspective in My Life is Good didn't make the point, try Christmas in Capetown.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:56 PM on June 20, 2023
you forgot the one about pedophilia, nazis, incest, cuckolding, safe sex, interplanetary organized crime, cults, illicit drug manufacture and procurement, deicide, and whatever 'your gold teeth II' is about
posted by logicpunk at 3:35 PM on June 20 [+] [!]
Let me try to guess:
Everyone's gone to the movies
? Nazis?
Cousin Dupree
Everything You Did
The Fez
Sign In Stranger
?Cults?
Kid Charlemagne
Godwhacker
Becker and Fagen made it pretty clear that they liked writing "subversive" music about not-discussed-in-polite-society themes and relied on smooth music and being a little cryptic to sneak it into mainstream radio play. They were clearly writing songs from perspectives other than their own.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 6:38 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by logicpunk at 3:35 PM on June 20 [+] [!]
Let me try to guess:
Everyone's gone to the movies
? Nazis?
Cousin Dupree
Everything You Did
The Fez
Sign In Stranger
?Cults?
Kid Charlemagne
Godwhacker
Becker and Fagen made it pretty clear that they liked writing "subversive" music about not-discussed-in-polite-society themes and relied on smooth music and being a little cryptic to sneak it into mainstream radio play. They were clearly writing songs from perspectives other than their own.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 6:38 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
METAFILTER: I can only repeat myself...and the comparison to Randy Newman.
[I really am enjoying this thread]
posted by philip-random at 10:13 PM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
[I really am enjoying this thread]
posted by philip-random at 10:13 PM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Becker and Fagen made it pretty clear that they liked writing "subversive" music about not-discussed-in-polite-society themes and relied on smooth music and being a little cryptic to sneak it into mainstream radio play. They were clearly writing songs from perspectives other than their own.
...which happens in literature and film all the time, and those instances don't seem to garner backlash against the creators in the ways we are talking about. I find that interesting. And... wrong? Even problematic films/books that "don't age well" often get a pass "because it was another time" etc.
And I acknowledge that is not even the best comparison, because there was a level of self-awareness in their lyrics that keeps it from fully aligning with this analogy.
Do reactions like this come from people feeling like they were tricked by the style and smoothness? Yes, sometimes lyrics are cryptic, but lots of times, they are clear as day; you just have to be paying attention.
I don't know, I just don't like what seems to be a sense of a more targeted barb aimed at B&F when they are far from the first team of creators whose art fell outside established parameters, yet get an odd amount (and oddly specific type) of negative reactions to it.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:05 AM on June 26, 2023
...which happens in literature and film all the time, and those instances don't seem to garner backlash against the creators in the ways we are talking about. I find that interesting. And... wrong? Even problematic films/books that "don't age well" often get a pass "because it was another time" etc.
And I acknowledge that is not even the best comparison, because there was a level of self-awareness in their lyrics that keeps it from fully aligning with this analogy.
Do reactions like this come from people feeling like they were tricked by the style and smoothness? Yes, sometimes lyrics are cryptic, but lots of times, they are clear as day; you just have to be paying attention.
I don't know, I just don't like what seems to be a sense of a more targeted barb aimed at B&F when they are far from the first team of creators whose art fell outside established parameters, yet get an odd amount (and oddly specific type) of negative reactions to it.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 8:05 AM on June 26, 2023
Do reactions like this come from people feeling like they were tricked by the style and smoothness? Yes, sometimes lyrics are cryptic, but lots of times, they are clear as day; you just have to be paying attention.
I saw Bruce Springsteen play the first public show at the Staples Center. He commented that there were too many luxury boxes and too many of the rows were above them. Then he played "Born in the USA" as though it were a dirge on Tom Joad, some of it facing the back, away from most of the audience and towards the cheapest seats.
People were confused. Most just listened. Some booed. Some started belting it out in the style of the album. The applause afterwards was a little restrained.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:36 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I saw Bruce Springsteen play the first public show at the Staples Center. He commented that there were too many luxury boxes and too many of the rows were above them. Then he played "Born in the USA" as though it were a dirge on Tom Joad, some of it facing the back, away from most of the audience and towards the cheapest seats.
People were confused. Most just listened. Some booed. Some started belting it out in the style of the album. The applause afterwards was a little restrained.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:36 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I didn't know this book was coming out so I was delighted when I finally got around to reading the article.
When I was a wee epigram, I think on either my tenth birthday or the following Christmas, I received my first turntable. It was the year Aja came out and when my dad (I know it was my dad; music was my dad's thing) asked the record store clerk for a couple of albums of new music that would be appropriate for his daughter, the clerk recommended Aja. Possibly because my dad was into jazz and it sounded right? Anyway, anonymous record store clerk, thanks so much for bringing the Dan into my life. You changed my life in a good way.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:52 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
When I was a wee epigram, I think on either my tenth birthday or the following Christmas, I received my first turntable. It was the year Aja came out and when my dad (I know it was my dad; music was my dad's thing) asked the record store clerk for a couple of albums of new music that would be appropriate for his daughter, the clerk recommended Aja. Possibly because my dad was into jazz and it sounded right? Anyway, anonymous record store clerk, thanks so much for bringing the Dan into my life. You changed my life in a good way.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:52 AM on June 26, 2023 [4 favorites]
start listening to Steely Dan tunes on Youtube and inevitably something like this comes up:
129: Donald Fagen
recorded in 2019, from the Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran. Great stuff.
posted by philip-random at 1:30 PM on June 26, 2023
129: Donald Fagen
recorded in 2019, from the Third Story Podcast with Leo Sidran. Great stuff.
posted by philip-random at 1:30 PM on June 26, 2023
(Also, if Freaks and Geeks got a second season, there would have been an episode where someone doesn’t like Steely Dan and someone else changes their mind. That’s my canon and you can’t talk me out of it.)
posted by box at 6:03 PM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by box at 6:03 PM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am a musical omnivore, for real though. I like lots and lots of different types of music.
I got into Steely Dan in the 90s, at the time I mostly listened to hip-hop, punk rock, metal, and reggae.
I had just started listening to jazz, and a friend of mine who played standup bass gave me his Aja CD to borrow, he described it as "fusion", which it isn't, but that intrigued me and I have been a huge fan ever since.
The Dan hatred is real, I tried to put on "Glamour Profession" at a party where the soundtrack was almost all classic rock, and people were big mad. Living hard will take its toll it's I guess.
posted by chaz at 6:50 PM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
I got into Steely Dan in the 90s, at the time I mostly listened to hip-hop, punk rock, metal, and reggae.
I had just started listening to jazz, and a friend of mine who played standup bass gave me his Aja CD to borrow, he described it as "fusion", which it isn't, but that intrigued me and I have been a huge fan ever since.
The Dan hatred is real, I tried to put on "Glamour Profession" at a party where the soundtrack was almost all classic rock, and people were big mad. Living hard will take its toll it's I guess.
posted by chaz at 6:50 PM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Steely Dan certainly did write some questionable stuff. Like "I would love to tour the Southland In a traveling minstrel show " from Pretzel Logic with the kicker being the narrator can't because it was 'over a long time ago'. Yikes.
That whole song reads to me as pretty clearly anti-nostalgic. The main character may look back fondly on those things, but the point being made by the author(s) seems to be that what's in the past should be left in the past.
In other words, nostalgia for minstrel shows, or Napoleon (and by extension, other creepy authoritarian loners of history) in the second verse, or flamboyantly weird shoes that you saw in an old movie in the third verse, is an affectation and a trap.
It seems pretty important not to take the "I" in these songs as representing the actual views of the band.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:27 PM on June 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
That whole song reads to me as pretty clearly anti-nostalgic. The main character may look back fondly on those things, but the point being made by the author(s) seems to be that what's in the past should be left in the past.
In other words, nostalgia for minstrel shows, or Napoleon (and by extension, other creepy authoritarian loners of history) in the second verse, or flamboyantly weird shoes that you saw in an old movie in the third verse, is an affectation and a trap.
It seems pretty important not to take the "I" in these songs as representing the actual views of the band.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:27 PM on June 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
I will say, as an Xer who has basically ignored Steely Dan all my life, and not cared one way or the other, so much of the received opinion, pro and con, about them now seems ridiculously dated.
I can see how younger people listening to this music would not really pick up on the idea of it being incredibly polished (or the related critique of its supposed soullessness), now that it's a snap to make equally or more polished (and certainly more soulless) music in a bedroom with a DAW.
(That's no knock on bedroom DAW producers -- I am one!)
I also feel like all the fuss about their "ironic" and "subversive" lyrics, and all the pages and pages of commentary about what they "really" mean, probably completely misses younger folks... in some cases because a lot of mainstream contemporary music has, let's face it, incredibly dumbed down lyrics, leaving some younger listeners completely unequipped to even begin to connect with SD's material, and in some cases because we've since had 40 years of intellectual and "alternative" bands that have created their own knotty, layered, ironic, mysterious, and allusive lyrics that play all the games that SD played and more.
A lot of the arguments about SD are just hopelessly rooted in a 1970s music culture that has been irrelevant for a very long time. It's like jazz fans arguing about swing vs. bebop. Only a tiny set of older fans, or younger fans with an obsessively anachronistic mindset, can even understand the debate, much less care about it.
That doesn't mean younger listeners can't connect with SD in their own way. But it probably won't be on the terms familiar to older fans (or haters).
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:38 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
I can see how younger people listening to this music would not really pick up on the idea of it being incredibly polished (or the related critique of its supposed soullessness), now that it's a snap to make equally or more polished (and certainly more soulless) music in a bedroom with a DAW.
(That's no knock on bedroom DAW producers -- I am one!)
I also feel like all the fuss about their "ironic" and "subversive" lyrics, and all the pages and pages of commentary about what they "really" mean, probably completely misses younger folks... in some cases because a lot of mainstream contemporary music has, let's face it, incredibly dumbed down lyrics, leaving some younger listeners completely unequipped to even begin to connect with SD's material, and in some cases because we've since had 40 years of intellectual and "alternative" bands that have created their own knotty, layered, ironic, mysterious, and allusive lyrics that play all the games that SD played and more.
A lot of the arguments about SD are just hopelessly rooted in a 1970s music culture that has been irrelevant for a very long time. It's like jazz fans arguing about swing vs. bebop. Only a tiny set of older fans, or younger fans with an obsessively anachronistic mindset, can even understand the debate, much less care about it.
That doesn't mean younger listeners can't connect with SD in their own way. But it probably won't be on the terms familiar to older fans (or haters).
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:38 PM on June 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
I also feel like all the fuss about their "ironic" and "subversive" lyrics, and all the pages and pages of commentary about what they "really" mean, probably completely misses younger folks... i in some cases because a lot of mainstream contemporary music has, let's face it, incredibly dumbed down lyrics, leaving some younger listeners completely unequipped to even begin to connect with SD's material, and in some cases because we've since had 40 years of intellectual and "alternative" bands that have created their own knotty, layered, ironic, mysterious, and allusive lyrics that play all the games that SD played and more.
yes, that must be it; music has both become really dumbed down, but also knotty layered and ironic and that's why wold-spanning fandoms don't churn out volumes of text about it on platforms you aren't seeing because X'ers are Old now.
On a hunch, JSTOR results for "Steely Dan" — first result:
yes, that must be it; music has both become really dumbed down, but also knotty layered and ironic and that's why wold-spanning fandoms don't churn out volumes of text about it on platforms you aren't seeing because X'ers are Old now.
On a hunch, JSTOR results for "Steely Dan" — first result:
A Royal Scam: The Abstruse and Ironic Bop-Rock Harmony of Steely Danposted by snuffleupagus at 1:57 PM on June 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Steely Dan is nominally a rock band, but their melodic idiosyncracies, rhythmic surfaces, and harmonic and voice-leading techniques are direct descendants of early modern jazz, making theirs arguably the most tonally complex of any rock music with broad popularity. This article illustrates how the group's sophisticated and enigmatic chord constructions, along with a mix of feigned, oblique, and incongruous turns of harmony, intensify the linear aspect of voice-leading connections in the experimental manner of the great bop musicians, and convey the band's penchant for the recondite and the ironic.
Mod note: several deleted. Folks, these threads are not the place to get into a back and forth with each other. Don’t comment at each other and please consider the space you’re taking up and how it impacts the rest of the user base.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 6:00 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 6:00 PM on June 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I feel like my response to an unwarranted and negative criticism/misreading of my comment has been deleted, but the unwarranted criticism has been allowed to stand. That kinda sucks.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:43 PM on June 30, 2023
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:43 PM on June 30, 2023
I'm going to repost the essence of my response, because I was making some substantive points.
Yes, I do in fact think both that some mainstream music (as I was careful to specify) has gotten more dumbed down, while some alternative/indie music has continued to grow more complex and layered. There's no contradiction there.
Also, I don't have any generalized animus toward The Kids Today, as seemed to be inferred. I am, on the whole, pro-The Kids Today!
When I said that I figured that the ancient critical debates over Steely Dan were irrelevant to many of them, I was saying it sympathetically. I'm older, but those debates are freaking irrelevant to me as well.
People can and should enjoy and experience music on whatever terms are meaningful to them in the time period and context in which they receive it. Art finds each of us where we are. There's nothing superior about my generation or time period. I never claimed there was. My whole argument was against privileging a particular generational perspective.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:56 PM on June 30, 2023
Yes, I do in fact think both that some mainstream music (as I was careful to specify) has gotten more dumbed down, while some alternative/indie music has continued to grow more complex and layered. There's no contradiction there.
Also, I don't have any generalized animus toward The Kids Today, as seemed to be inferred. I am, on the whole, pro-The Kids Today!
When I said that I figured that the ancient critical debates over Steely Dan were irrelevant to many of them, I was saying it sympathetically. I'm older, but those debates are freaking irrelevant to me as well.
People can and should enjoy and experience music on whatever terms are meaningful to them in the time period and context in which they receive it. Art finds each of us where we are. There's nothing superior about my generation or time period. I never claimed there was. My whole argument was against privileging a particular generational perspective.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 12:56 PM on June 30, 2023
I am not going to reengage with this except to point out that TFA is basically a reaction to a Pitchfork review (of all things) about the content's surprising relevancy and young people being drawn to it for all the reasons you're presumptively claiming they're not. Also, the shitty music of the 70s and 80s was no less shitty than the shitty music of today, and BTS or mumble rap or whatever you had in mind is maybe not the crap you think it is, and people are fans of music like that and weird indie folk at the same time and analyze all of it in detail on social media and in Discords and etc. Tastes are less siloed than they've ever been.
Meh, whatever. Do the High Fidelity thing if it makes you happy.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:03 PM on June 30, 2023
Meh, whatever. Do the High Fidelity thing if it makes you happy.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:03 PM on June 30, 2023
Just popping back in to say that I appreciate SD now more that I'm an old than I did when I was young. Not least because things like Hey 19 make a lot more sense when you're in your 50s than they did to me when it was released (I was 12). See also: Janie Runaway for a later version of that kind of creep.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:12 PM on June 30, 2023
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:12 PM on June 30, 2023
Nazis: Um, dunno.
Cults: Bodhisattva? Glamour Profession?
And. . . OMG the Second Arrangement. :)
posted by luckynerd at 1:40 PM on July 5, 2023
Cults: Bodhisattva? Glamour Profession?
And. . . OMG the Second Arrangement. :)
posted by luckynerd at 1:40 PM on July 5, 2023
nazis: 'chain lightning,' sourced from brian sweet's book and the erstwhile steely dan interpretation site Fever Dreams
cults: also from fever dreams, an idiosyncratic read of 'time out of mind' but if we're being honest that one's probably just about drugs as well. possibly a drug cult if you're in a generous mood
posted by logicpunk at 7:35 PM on July 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
cults: also from fever dreams, an idiosyncratic read of 'time out of mind' but if we're being honest that one's probably just about drugs as well. possibly a drug cult if you're in a generous mood
posted by logicpunk at 7:35 PM on July 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
(time out of mind)
now I'm thinking about the Dylan album.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:46 PM on July 5, 2023
now I'm thinking about the Dylan album.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:46 PM on July 5, 2023
Coming very late to this particular party, but music writer Caryn Rose just published this essay on her Substack: Thoughts on ... Steely Dan. A choice excerpt:
The one thing that always, always happened was that eventually at least one dude would pipe up, “Well if you know so much about Steely Dan [a thing I never asserted btw], then where did they get their name from?” The end game here was to get me to say the word “dildo” which at that age was absolutely not happening in public (or in private, let’s be honest). At one point I practiced saying, “From William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch,” which was a whole other minefield because saying at the age of 14 or 15 that you knew who William Burroughs was meant that you might as well have worn a sandwich board saying I’M ON DRUGS. I was not, but these assholes lived near me and so their mothers knew someone who knew my mother and then I’d come home from school and discover that my mom had decided that day that she needed to clean my room from top to bottom and the most she’d find is that I took one of her cans of Tab or that I had a very overdue library book. That did not prevent this event from occurring regularly throughout my time in high school for similar reasons, although sometimes those reasons were that I was a teenager and I was obnoxious and because I was the oldest my parents had not yet gone through this experience, and the War On Drugs was a thing, so if I was sassy or petulant it must be because of DRUGS.posted by mykescipark at 9:00 AM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Anyway, fuck Steely Dan, now and forever. "
hmmm. a sober and considered opinion. may i rebut: fuck that essay.
posted by logicpunk at 11:24 AM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
hmmm. a sober and considered opinion. may i rebut: fuck that essay.
posted by logicpunk at 11:24 AM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Wow. That is one of the worst things like this I've ever read that wasn't published in a long closed alt-weekly mostly funded by 900 number ads. It's like it went back in time to 1997 so it could write in this particular version of bad.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:26 PM on July 6, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:26 PM on July 6, 2023
I like Caryn Rose’s writing a lot, and I can see where her essay would rub people the wrong way…. But seeing it in the context of her career as a music critic who started in the 1970s, I understand why she wrote it. I’m not going to say “Steely Dan are for dudes,” but there is a pretty large subset of cis white guy Steely Fans whose internalized sexism and homophobia can come through in a snide, dismissive attitude, and as someone who’s written about music for almost five decades, she’s been on the receiving end of it.
I don’t have the same animus towards the Dandom—there aren’t enough hours in the day—but I will say their music isn’t fun and fulfilling for me in the way that it is for others, and some of the perfectionism and (not endorsed, but still) toxic masculinity of their lyrics puts me off a bit. So I get it.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:27 PM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don’t have the same animus towards the Dandom—there aren’t enough hours in the day—but I will say their music isn’t fun and fulfilling for me in the way that it is for others, and some of the perfectionism and (not endorsed, but still) toxic masculinity of their lyrics puts me off a bit. So I get it.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:27 PM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
I very much enjoy shitty dude taste and behavior getting dunked on, done well, including that kind of shitty dude, specifically. I mean, I think the Yacht Rock series is hilarious, including the host character. I just didn't think that was very successful here. I don't think the authors professional tormentors were conspiring to taunt poor Ricki on the preschool playground; and I'm not sure those lyrics stand up to a close reading as an attack on agency, unless that's going to apply to every lyric in the imperative mood.
It's unfortunate that she had uncaring parents. Sucking secondhand smoke in the back of a station wagon was gross, I remember it too. Doesn't have much to do with Steely Dan, though.
It just really vividly took me back to reading pop culture column rants on newsprint, in high school and college, that were really just Proust-lite + disaffection solipsism about the author's very personal slings and arrows. And that didn't do the music or art any kind of justice, in a way I didn't realize then, because I was entertained. And then let prejudice my taste.
(Those columns were likely mostly written by that kind of shitty dude, too.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:45 PM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's unfortunate that she had uncaring parents. Sucking secondhand smoke in the back of a station wagon was gross, I remember it too. Doesn't have much to do with Steely Dan, though.
It just really vividly took me back to reading pop culture column rants on newsprint, in high school and college, that were really just Proust-lite + disaffection solipsism about the author's very personal slings and arrows. And that didn't do the music or art any kind of justice, in a way I didn't realize then, because I was entertained. And then let prejudice my taste.
(Those columns were likely mostly written by that kind of shitty dude, too.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:45 PM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
That Caryn Rose piece also rubbed me the wrong way, it has the tone of a person who hasn't yet realized that a world exists beyond their lived experiences. Most of her issues seem to be with the culture of the town she grew up in and her parents, not Steely Dan per se. That she couldn't admit to being familiar with the works of William Burroughs was not a Steely Dan problem...
I do have to agree with her that "Rikki" does take a bit of a patronizing tone... particularly the "you might use it [the number] if you feel better when you get home." That's more or less saying "when you come to your senses you'll see what a catch I am and boyo, will you be consumed with regret if you have lost my number." There's also perhaps the implication that RIkki is too flaky to keep track of a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it.
I find the smugness in the lyrics amusing (and not necessarily revealing anything about Becker and Fagen's worldviews. It's just a song they wrote) but I can see how it might be pretty irksome to a woman who may have received patronizing approaches IRL.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 7:15 PM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I do have to agree with her that "Rikki" does take a bit of a patronizing tone... particularly the "you might use it [the number] if you feel better when you get home." That's more or less saying "when you come to your senses you'll see what a catch I am and boyo, will you be consumed with regret if you have lost my number." There's also perhaps the implication that RIkki is too flaky to keep track of a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it.
I find the smugness in the lyrics amusing (and not necessarily revealing anything about Becker and Fagen's worldviews. It's just a song they wrote) but I can see how it might be pretty irksome to a woman who may have received patronizing approaches IRL.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 7:15 PM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Be My Baby Now? Pack up your infantilizing non-consensual kisses and take a hike, I'll be your baby when and if I damn well please. Love Me Tender? How bout you... /s
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:21 PM on July 8, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:21 PM on July 8, 2023
I do have to agree with her that "Rikki" does take a bit of a patronizing tone... particularly the "you might use it [the number] if you feel better when you get home." That's more or less saying "when you come to your senses you'll see what a catch I am and boyo, will you be consumed with regret if you have lost my number." There's also perhaps the implication that RIkki is too flaky to keep track of a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it.I like Steely Dan, mainly for the music. I haven't deep-dived into their lyrics much, but in that song, I don't hear patronizing or narcissism, I hear pleading, sadness and desperation, rationalizing why the breakup is wrong. Y falls for X, X breaks it off, Y is hurting and wants X to reconsider.
posted by Artful Codger at 6:54 AM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
After reading your interpretation, Artful Codger, I'm persuaded. I was overly focused on that one line and wasn't placing it in the overall context of the rest of the lyrics. It's an existing relationship gone sour, not a one off pass being rejected.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 11:23 AM on July 9, 2023
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 11:23 AM on July 9, 2023
I do have to agree with her that "Rikki" does take a bit of a patronizing tone... particularly the "you might use it [the number] if you feel better when you get home." That's more or less saying "when you come to your senses you'll see what a catch I am and boyo, will you be consumed with regret if you have lost my number."
Yeah, but that line comes across differently when it's coming from an inexperienced younger man (like Donald Fagen was at the time); it's the kind of "yeah, you'll be sorry" that a very hurt guy says when he's been rejected and he hasn't learned how to handle it yet. It's a sour-grapes kind of thing that he'll kick himself over later.
And even when you're 53 and the guy you've been crushing on finally surfaces to say "oh hey, long time no talk! I just met this great girl yesterday and it's exciting, sorry I haven't been in touch, how are you?" you may not SAY this kind of thing but you do THINK it kinda loud for a few minutes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:30 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, but that line comes across differently when it's coming from an inexperienced younger man (like Donald Fagen was at the time); it's the kind of "yeah, you'll be sorry" that a very hurt guy says when he's been rejected and he hasn't learned how to handle it yet. It's a sour-grapes kind of thing that he'll kick himself over later.
And even when you're 53 and the guy you've been crushing on finally surfaces to say "oh hey, long time no talk! I just met this great girl yesterday and it's exciting, sorry I haven't been in touch, how are you?" you may not SAY this kind of thing but you do THINK it kinda loud for a few minutes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:30 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I've always interpreted it as Ricki being long gone after an unsatisfying tryst, entirely over this dude; who is talking to himself and wallowing in (as those Danaissance kids would call it) cope, imagining she must be unhappy without him and will come back sorry. Like most spurned lover songs.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:47 PM on July 9, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:47 PM on July 9, 2023
I don't know if it's mentioned up above (couldn't see it), but Rikki, Don't Lose That Number has long had a reputation as a secret gay anthem (I saw it mentioned recently, but it was also discussed when Tom Robinson did his version in 1984). And I've never thought of "lose" meaning "mislay, incompetently" so much as "discard in anger".
posted by Grangousier at 1:40 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 1:40 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
You folks are harsh. But not wrong.
One-nighter or not, I read the "you'll be sorry" vibe just as initial desperation/denial/hurt. (which passes). Often felt by infatuated young guys who get dumped. YMMV.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:48 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
One-nighter or not, I read the "you'll be sorry" vibe just as initial desperation/denial/hurt. (which passes). Often felt by infatuated young guys who get dumped. YMMV.
posted by Artful Codger at 1:48 PM on July 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
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