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Guest 03/04/2011 1:31:00 AM
Milos.....Well put, and THANK YOU: Paul and Linda this is not. It really is *Becker* and Fagen....*Becker* and Fagen ... *Becker* and Fagen. That even an informed listener like Mike either doesn't know this -- or, more likely (like so many), sort of chooses not to believe or acknowledge it -- drives me up a wall.
-guest
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DDB9000 08/18/2009 5:42:00 PM
I'm a bit late to this party, but... Regarding the guy who said "PLAY 'KATY LIED,' - yes, I know the song with that lyric is "Doctor Wu", but maybe the guy wanted them to play the WHOLE ALBUM (after all, they played all of "Aja"). As a big fan of "Katy Lied", I know I would have enjoyed that...
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karen_young 08/11/2009 11:43:00 PM
Mike, I have loved Steely Dan since 1973, when I graduated from high school, and I loved your piece. I think you capture what makes them so special and interesting. It's the tension between their pure-pop happy side, like the sound of "Hey 19," and the "feel bad"/loser side, like the protagonists of so many songs or the guy on the cover of the Royal Scam. Or the tension between pure pop hooks and structure and jazz improvisation. Nobody else embraces these opposites so effortlessly. Plus they create these unforgettable characters and situations in a few perfect words or lines.
People who see your story as negative strike me as being unable to understand nuance - which makes it hard to believe they are true Steely Dan fans. Anyway, thanks. I will never forget the 2 shows I saw this week, 8/4 and 8/10 - this band will never sound dated or useless.
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mike powell 08/10/2009 6:23:00 AM
well, ROB, glad you thought it was funny. i don't want to get too much into "i might not like things the way other people like things"-type talk, but when you say "how can you not just love" steely dan, i'd say that i do! i just... for me, the love/hate/fascination feeling is just as interesting -- if not richer, really -- than just hearing something and saying "yeah, that's great." steely dan is music that challenges and sometimes frustrates me. sometimes, it even repulses me! but there's so much to admire -- the intelligence, the consistency and focus of the vision, etc. -- that i really am just in awe of them. it's just a more complicated relationship than the one i have with my cat.
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Rob_in_MN 08/08/2009 10:28:00 PM
Mike,
Your review made me laugh. I disagree with most of it, but still find your take extremely funny. Great example of a love/hate relationship, you try so hard to prove (to yourself?) that you don't love them. Which I think you do. :)
Not sure how Steely Dan is able to stir such emotions in some, but I always find their music amusing as well as highly entertaining. I can't help but having a huge smile on my face when some of their songs are playing. I like a lot of styles of music, and listen to music a lot. Their 'Royal Scam' record is among my very favorites. How can you not just love it?
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Milos 08/07/2009 10:16:00 AM
Mike, of course, you're right about the true depth of Steely Dan's lyrics, if you bother to look beneath the surface. "Don't Take Me Alive" tears my heart out, even though it's about a guy who's going to blow himself up in a few minutes. "Third World Man," "Any World That I'm Welcome To," your old friend "Deacon Blues," and that gorgeous paean to diversity, "Gaucho," are deeply empathetic songs in that peculiar way that makes us love them so much. Even Becker's solo lyrics have such a deep undertow of longing and wisdom that I admit I shed tears the first few times I listened to "Downtown Canon" and heard pieces of my life story right there. I'm with you all the way, I just felt the need to point out that they're not Fagen's lyrics, they're Fagen and Becker's lyrics, and I believe that a lot of the harder edged stuff comes from Walter.
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mike powell 08/07/2009 7:35:00 AM
first, let me say how glad i am to have some really careful, smart commenters. i'm delighted to know there are fans of this band who have *thought* about them as much as i have -- they're as important as the fans who dance to "my old school." MILOS -- i do think that there's a lot of cynicism in the band's lyrics, but i'm sure you noticed that i mentioned their heart later on, specifically with regard to "deacon blues." frankly, even cynicism requires a certain amount of empathy -- it's why "gaucho," for example, is such a powerful song. or "haitian divorce," which, yes, IS great. "third world man" really brings tears to my eyes -- there's an edge to the perspective, and it's certainly not sentimental, but it's obvious that fagen & becker care a lot about this character. i even think they care about the guy in "hey 19" -- it's what allows them to write a nuanced, interesting portrait of him instead of just condemning/celebrating him!
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Milos 08/07/2009 6:36:00 AM
Mike, just one comment to add, which hopefully isn't redundant (I couldn't get through all that tiny type from the numerous posters -- we Danites tend to be a verbose bunch, as you know)...
You say: �Fagen, whose lyrics had always been cynical�� and �Donald Fagen�s lyrics, for those who care to listen over the licks and fills, are usually about losers redeemed only by other losers, if at all.� But Mike, those lyrics are really the fault of the other guy.
No doubt you've listened to both Fagen�s and Becker�s solo efforts, and putting the music aside for a moment, it's transparently obvious that the romantic in this duo is not Walter Becker. Sure, there's satire and humor on Fagen�s Nightfly, but there's deep feeling too, idealism about love, and depiction of the joys and pleasures of actual intimacy with real women. This theme gets explored a bit more on Kamakiriad but comes up again very strongly on Morph, for instance, on �The Great Pagoda of Funn.� For all his posturing, if it is indeed posturing -- it may just be awkwardness in his public persona -- Fagen is not afraid to explore and reveal his heart. On the other hand, Becker's two excellent solo projects have focused on his obsession with the detritus of addiction, spiced down with depression, remorse, cynicism and just an occasional smidgen of tenderness. The only time he actually refers to love, when he isn't talking to his Junkie Girl (and I don't even think he says it to her), is when he's singing about his son.
Don't get me wrong. Both men individually are great, great musicians and songwriters. But it's clear that the lyrically surly smart-ass that is Steely Dan is more than 50% attributable to Mr. Becker, who makes a point of presenting himself as a rueful, erudite dirty old man with a past.
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David 08/07/2009 1:59:00 AM
Mike: You are right to note the anti-rock, or rather non-rock, elements in their music, and this goes back to their earliest records. The jazz and R&B influences were there right from the start. Show Biz Kids is funky and danceable, and their first single, Do It Again, has a kind of mambo beat (and Showbiz Kids is a pretty caustic tune, but you don�t have to ignore the agreeable music to appreciate that). The lyrics are obviously a big part of their appeal: smart, literary, filled with interesting characters in compromised situations. Vivid enough to draw you in but obscure enough to withstand repeated listening (I�m not sure they are talking over our heads so much as being intriguingly cryptic�Elvis Costello indulged similar tendencies). It was nice to see you cite Haitian Divorce, which I think is one of their more lyrically compelling and underrated tunes. Also, everyone remarks about their �dark sarcasm� but they could write compassionate lyrics long before Aja�listen to Any Major Dude and Charlie Freak from Pretzel Logic. Finally, minor thing, but something I�ve noticed lately is how organically they use otherwise peripheral or gimmicky instruments or effects. For example the talkbox solo on �Haitain Divorce� is brilliant, and miles away from �Do You Feel Like We Do?� I think they also used it to emulate the muted trumpet on their cover of Duke Ellington�s �East St. Louis Toodle-oo.� Or listen to the way they use a policeman�s whistle and farting Moog in Aja. And before you completely write off Chicago (who I'm not about to defend) listen to the studio version of A Hit By Varese. It's sort of their Aja.
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mike powell 08/06/2009 9:25:00 PM
DAVID: agreed that steely dan have come to represent a certain sound of 70s luxury/excess to a lot of people, but hey, we're not dealing with them. as far as "rockism" goes, i'm not sure -- on the one hand, i think steely dan is very much a "70s rock-radio" band. then again, aja and gaucho are almost anti-rock in a way -- so tasteful, so polished, so planned-out. there are songs i love on most of their albums, but i probably like *aja* and *gaucho* best -- those are the ones that, to me, represent what really made the band unique. i love stuff like "my old school," but if i heard two seconds of it on the radio, i might think it was chicago or something. for me, it's the lyrics that really count on some of those songs. anyway, glad we're discussing -- again, i really hope that steely dan fans will post what it is they like about the band in here instead of just getting angry at me.
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David 08/06/2009 7:27:00 PM
Mike: Apologies for meandering, but this issue of the polarizing effect of the band over the last decade has been on my mind a bit lately, so perhaps I blurted out more than was useful. That said, it's precisely the point you make above--that certain qualities of the band make them a natural for "hipster" tastes--that has made the bile directed toward them over the last 10 years a mystery to me. One of the (many) things I liked about your review was that it escaped that tendency. I do think there are a few points of legitimate discussion raised above: what extramusical factors influenced the band's reception, especially since their "comeback" record in 2001? How do the musical prejudices of rockism influence the way certain contemporary listeners hear the band? I actually did check the Christgau reviews (the capsule reviews from the Consumer Guide) and you are spot on about his take on the band, but I don't know that I agree that Aja and Gaucho are inferior to the earlier albums, though I felt they were at the time, especially Gaucho. The more I listen to them, the more I like them, though Pretzel Logic would be my desert island disc.
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mike powell 08/06/2009 6:59:00 PM
oh, and BILL E, thanks for your comments, and thanks for admitting you hadn't finished reading the article at first -- i think most commenters don't. i like what you said here: "Precision is what a lot of people like about this band, and no, don't find that it takes away from the soul, for lack of a better word. It's like, to some small degree, covering a piece by Bach and lamenting that every note is played precisely in the right place, or that there's a mathematical precision about it. That's what makes it beautiful." i agree, in a way -- there's something beautiful about how all the notes fall into place. but a lot of bach's music was "formal" -- like, it was just "music" -- or religious. what's interesting to me about steely dan is that their precision is beautiful, but their stories are often rough and embittered. i mean, as a listener, do you ignore that when their records are on? obviously, it's okay to say yes! it's just... that's what i was trying to get at/figure out. for me as a listener, i can't hear "hey 19" without thinking about how pitiable the narrator is! and that doesn't make me like steely dan less, it makes me like them MORE. it's what makes the band special. i mean, nobody says "i don't like raymond carver because his stories are about the more depressing aspects of life" or "i don't like david lynch's movies because they're dream-like and violent" -- it's like not-liking a dog because it has fur and walks on four legs.
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mike powell 08/06/2009 6:52:00 PM
ERIK, your point about ac/dc is good; my chronology there was bad. the sentence was basically meant to ask "why would a 12-year-old like steely dan more than something that is simple, rocking, immediately humorous -- i.e., what most 12-year-olds respond to." DAVID, your (several) points are a little meandering and don't really facilitate a lot of discussion, but i want to address the one about steely dan not being accepted by "hipsters." i think the case is just the opposite, actually -- i think steely dan is an extremely cool, impenetrable band, and i think that their... sense of superiority is appealing -- or at least unique -- in the minds of listeners. re: christgau: go back and read some of those reviews, i think you'll see that after *the royal scam*, christgau basically thought they were a good bad indulging in their worst tendencies. oh, and re: folk music: i just meant that in early steely dan records, you can sense influences of country, rootsy rock, etc -- "any major dude" and "brooklyn" would have *never* shown up on gaucho.
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David 08/06/2009 5:43:00 PM
For the life of me I just cannot understand how Steely Dan became the most polarizing band in rock. How did these guys become the one 70's supergroup that certain musical tastemakers under 40 have decided are beyond the pale, especially given that there's almost no stigma attached to liking the music of your parents and older siblings anymore. One thing that's been true of hipster musical taste since cds replaced lps (and cassettes), and especially since mp3's displaced cds, is the rise of a more archival, curatorial attitude toward pop music. In the early days of punk it suddenly became illegal to like most of the bands you'd been obsessed with only 2 or 3 years before, but younger bands and listeners today feel free to draw on the whole history of rock (and beyond) when deciding what to listen to and what to play. But for some reason Steely Dan is the one band that can�t be assimilated into contemporary hipster taste. I blame the following:
a) The scene in Knocked Up where Seth Rogen's character trashes the band, declaring �I don�t think you�d get into a Steely Dan concert without wine and cheese. If you ever catch me listening to Steely Dan, you could cut my head off with a Spyro Gyra record.�
b) Pitchfork.com, specifically Brent DiCrescenzo's savaging of Two Against Nature, which was more about hating on an invented caricature of the band's baby boomer fans than an open-eared assessment of the music.
h) The fact that Two Against Nature won the Grammy for album of the year in 2001 over Eminem's Marshall Mather's lp.
c) Michael McDonald�s solo career. McDonald, of course, was in an early incarnation of the band, and sang background vocals on Aja, before going on to pioneer the genre now derided as Yacht Rock.
d) The way the smooth-jazz sheen of Steely Dan�s later work clouds the minds of listeners under 40, fooling them into thinking that the band�s music is just another species of Yacht Rock.
e) Overexposure to the biggest hits from their later records (Peg, Hey Nineteen, FM, Deacon Blues if you are lucky) on classic rock radio.
f) Punk rock and its fetish for (fake) authenticity
g) Rockism in general, and its fetish for (fake) authenticity
h) The poptimistic elements of their music in general: the studio obsessiveness; the super-clean sound; the buffing away of almost all rough edges (though its not like they never played dirty, sort of--see Pretzel Logic's Through With Buzz); the fetishization of musical virtuosity; the way the rock elements are leavened with jazz and R&B inflections. Christgau, who gave Steely Dan high praise over the years, often bitched, in his essays accompanying the Pazz & Jop poll about the subtle racism in the inevitable rockist bias of the poll results. But while the Yacht Rock label thinks its lampooning the kind of soft rock played and enjoyed by laid back wealthy white guys, the kind who ogle jailbait and enjoy Cuervo Gold and fine co-lum-bee-an, the fact is that the Quiet Storm format is a largely R&B format, pioneered in the 70�s by Melvin Lindsey at Washington DC's WHUR-FM. Maybe Steely Dan�s music is the wrong kind of black music for listeners mired in rockism.
In any event, I think the fact that its become fashionable to hate the band is just that, fashion, having as much to do with extra musical factors as with the music itself (not that this isn't always the case when it comes to musical taste).
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Bill E Pilgrim 08/06/2009 1:26:00 PM
Mike: Okay, I confess I didn't finish the article, so I didn't see your mention about how you were a fan.
You wouldn't know it from the first part of the article, I guess is my point, but mea culpa for getting bored and frustrated and not reading the whole thing.
It's just strange, I've seen this many times, people reviewing bands from such an outside perspective that it just seems an odd choice. Precision is what a lot of people like about this band, and no, don't find that it takes away from the soul, for lack of a better word. It's like, to some small degree, covering a piece by Bach and lamenting that every note is played precisely in the right place, or that there's a mathematical precision about it. That's what makes it beautiful.
Anyway next I'll read through before commenting.
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Bill E Pilgrim 08/06/2009 1:19:00 PM
I find myself wondering why the Village Voice would send a reviewer who hates the kind of music that Steely Dan does to review a Steely Dan show.
Odd.
Okay, we get it: You hate jazz, funk, etc, you love folk music-- and how in God's name anyone could describe Steely Dan's early work as "folk" or "almost folk" or "not folk exactly" or whatever it is, is beyond me-- so given that, of course you're going to hate Steely Dan. Anything that others like about it you're going to call "ass-puckering precision" because it's not, you know, "folk music".
This was just a waste of time. I was curious to hear what Steely Dan was up to, but a review saying basically "Eh, it's not folk music" (or indie or grunge or post-punk or whatever it is that turns this critic on the most) tells me nothing I didn't already know.
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Erik 08/06/2009 8:04:00 AM
Mike - have to say I agree with Bob. You may claim you love Steely Dan, but one wouldn't know it from reading this article. Nor did your reply address what seemed to be Bob's main concern...that it's ok to like the band, just don't show it. I'd hate to see what you thought of a mosh pit!
Also - the reason that 12 year old chose Steely Dan over AC/DC in 1976 was that the latter band was barely out of Australia, and hardly the zillion album-selling sensation of Back in Black. He either a) probably wasn't aware they existed or b) just wasn't into hard rock.
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mike powell 08/05/2009 11:54:00 PM
bob,
thanks for your comment. i love steely dan -- that's why i went to see them two nights in a row; that's why i spent a lot of time thinking about how to write this. i appreciate how precise the music is, and i love the thought that goes into their lyrics. it's true that i don't get up and dance for "my old school," but it doesn't mean that i like it any less than the people who do.
i know you've already said what was on your mind, but i wonder if you'd like to share what it is that *you* like about steely dan.
thanks for reading.
mp
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Bob 08/05/2009 11:31:00 PM
Mike,
Reading your rather sour writeup of Steely Dan, I'm not entirely sure that your problem is with the band or its music. Rather, it seems you have contempt for anyone who enjoys the music on any level other than the one from which you (and ostensibly your old man) pontificate. Steely Dan's music (and yes, perhaps great doses of nostalgic fervor) is what drives its aging fans into paroxysms of joy upon hearing the opening chords to "My Old School" or "Don't Take Me Alive." Yes, audience members often behave like braying jackasses. But your criticizing the band for being accomplished musicians and writing misanthropic, intelligent and sometimes inscrutable lyrics is a royal scam, indeed. You might not know why people have loved this band for more than 30 years, but they sure as hell do. If it were just arty pretension and mathematical music, it wouldn't have survived and listeners wouldn't have memorized words and solos and recognized tunes from the opening notes. Your criticism is just an empty echo of previous Rawk Crit tropes that made it fashionable to trash Steely Dan.
