Odd-beat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> The subject of Steely Dan is not so OT after all
> when one considers the cynicism of their lyrics,
> reminiscent of some of the Stone's own lyrics from
> the "classic era".

Seems that way to me too, but I'll never forget a music professor I had circa 1978-79 who told me the Stones were offensive crap while Steely Dan was pure class and elegance. He thought Stones lyrics were offensive to women and were a "guy thing" while the Dan could be enjoyed by both sexes. I wonder if he ever really listened to Steely Dan's lyrics. If anything, they are even more scornful towards women than Stones lyrics. Which doesn't mean they aren't great, of course. A particular favourite of mine: Here At The Western World, with Don as a sensitive pimp.

I have listened to the album (Horace Silver's) on Amazon.com to check this out. It's so obviously a quote I would never call this one ("Ricky Don't Lose That Number") a borrow or a steal.

The "Gaucho" song case I was never so sure about though...

Anyone knows the exact title of the Keith Jarrett piece he faught in court and got co-writer credit for? I need to check that one out once and for all in my life!

You are so right tatters!

Just thought I'd chime in here. Steely Dan is great. Saw them in the late 90s and they were pretty good except for a few solo songs they did, which were pretty bad. Haitian Divorce is one of my favorites. Their album from 2000, can't think of the name of the top of my head was a very solid effort, very similar sound to their older stuff. Love Steely Dan's sound in general, great jazz influenced rock n roll.

If you are interested in hearing a good bootleg of theirs, check out the show LA 1974, great sound board show of theirs, sounds like you are listening to them live at your local pub.

Hound Dog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just thought I'd chime in here. Steely Dan is
> great. Saw them in the late 90s and they were
> pretty good except for a few solo songs they did,
> which were pretty bad. Haitian Divorce is one of
> my favorites. Their album from 2000, can't think
> of the name of the top of my head was a very solid
> effort, very similar sound to their older stuff.
> Love Steely Dan's sound in general, great jazz
> influenced rock n roll.
>
> If you are interested in hearing a good bootleg of
> theirs, check out the show LA 1974, great sound
> board show of theirs, sounds like you are
> listening to them live at your local pub.

Yeah, that Becker solo stuff was terrible.

I think the 2000 album was "Two Against Nature". Their latest one, though it didn't get as much attention, I think was even better, it was called "Everything Must Go".

Two Against Nature that's the one. Great album. When they were promoting it they played for the Today's Show on the street on New York and I was lucky enough to catch them play two songs while on my way walking to work.

It would of been great if Mick Taylor added his vibrato on some of their records since they always hired the best musicians to fit the music fagen and becker were writing.

Odd-Beat, I don't recall Becker doing that, if he did it may have been more subtle than what you're describing! That sounds ANNOYING as HELL!

Debra, I was referring to the Two Against Nature album, as well as the live album with the mummy on the front. It seems less of a problem on Everything Must Go (although I find this one to be a lot more "out-of-breath" than TAN, which I like a lot).

Glad to know this is not a constant problem (...anymore?).

Reelin' In The Years, live 1978








Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-05-01 23:33 by Hairball.

Thanks for the clip. Had never seen it!
But I don't know why it says "1978" there. This is the early Dan touring line-up, with that lead singer that never sang after that witht them... can't remember his name... Probably '72 instead. They actually stopped touring in '74, for something like 20 years!

OpenG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It would of been great if Mick Taylor added his
> vibrato on some of their records since they always
> hired the best musicians to fit the music fagen
> and becker were writing.

The one time I can think of where they DID hire a British rocker to play on a session was when Mark Knopfler was brought in to play the solo on Time Out Of Mind from Gaucho. It didn't really work out. Great song, though, all about smoking Heroin. That's what "chase the dragon" means, in case you didn't know. I also like the title track on that album, but the rest of it was pretty much DOA upon its release in December 1980. I seem to remember it came out the day after Lennon got shot. What a bummer. We had all been waiting three and a half years or some shit for a new Steely Dan album, thinking that with all that time that they had to work on it, it HAD to be the best one ever. And then, just when I'm all numb from the Lennon thing, here comes this surprisingly lame Steely Dan album. I was like "I can't listen to this shit! I'm too busy crying all over my Beatles albums!

I might have feel the same had I been aware of that release the day after Lennon got shot... I was really mourning him and the ten-years gone Beatles, like you.

But I discovered Gaucho only several years later, and well into the New Wave misery as I was, I guess, I loved the infamous Dan album right away! It remains today one of my favourites!

Odd-beat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks for the clip. Had never seen it!
> But I don't know why it says "1978" there. This is
> the early Dan touring line-up, with that lead
> singer that never sang after that witht them...
> can't remember his name... Probably '72 instead.

Thanks for clearing that up. I wonder why the video says 1978?
Hmmm...strange...

Odd-beat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I might have feel the same had I been aware of
> that release the day after Lennon got shot... I
> was really mourning him and the ten-years gone
> Beatles, like you.
>
> But I discovered Gaucho only several years later,
> and well into the New Wave misery as I was, I
> guess, I loved the infamous Dan album right away!
> It remains today one of my favourites!

There was a story going around at the time of Gaucho's release about how they LOST a track. Supposedly, a track that would have been the best thing on the album got ERASED and they couldn't pull themselves together enough, or didn't have the time, or whatever, to attempt to remake it. Sounds like a bull shit "The dog ate my homework" story to me. If it were true, wouldn't Don have remade it for Nightfly? Some good stuff on Nightfly, but nothing that would have been the best cut on Gaucho.

Odd-beat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > They actually stopped touring in '74, for
> something like 20 years!

Right. No live shows from 1974-1993. Their record company BEGGED them to tour behind Aja in '77, and tried to use a little reverse pyschology on them ("Whatever you do, DON'T tour!"). It almost worked. They actually did have a few rehearsals, but backed out before any dates were scheduled when their musicians started making all kinds of unreasonable demands about getting paid. A Steely Dan tour in '77 would have been huge, a monster. By '93 I really kind of lost interest, not in their music, but in the idea of seeing them play it. Steely Dan music had been such an intimate listening experience for such a long time, just you and your headphones, for 20 years, that the idea of standing in a big, sweaty ballroom like Roseland, and hearing that voice come out of this rather homely middle-aged man, it just didn't appeal to me. I've still never seen them live.

I couldn't agree more, tatters (relevance of hearing them live, in those particular years at least).

The "lost Gaucho track" story, I believe, is testified SOMEWHERE on their official Web site. Or perhaps in the liner notes of their remastered CDs, also available on the Web. ...Used to be anyway. Yes, a real heartbreaker this story!

Steely Dan were favorites of mine in college in the late 70s
It was great to finally get to see Walter & Donald return to the stage together in the last dozen or so years...

They use crazy chords with crazy changes!

I remember reading an interview with the guitarist (forget his name but the guy that plays the solo on Do It Again). He said that before they went on stage the guitarists would make an agreement eg, that night no matter what they would only play augmented scales and nothing else.

They were very talented guitarists. Reelin' In The Years and Do It Again are classics.

That was either Denny Dias or Jeff Baxter on the electric sitar (Do It Again). But tell me what is an augmented scale? (simple answer if possible, if not too arcane!)

It was Jeff Baxter. This is an example of an augmented scale on the guitar:

Key of C

C - Eb (this is a 3 fret interval)

Move up one semitone

E - G (this is a 3 fret interval)

Move up one semitone again

G# - B (this is a 3 fret interval again

Move up one semitone

C (ie, start all over again)

Therefore, augmented scales use a pattern of repeated intervals (in this case 3 fret intervals)

To improvise using augmented scales means you really have to know your fretboard. Jazz fusion players use them.

Back to the original point of this thread...[I know nothing about augmented scales]. I think Deacon Blues is a masterpiece. The closing song of an LP side - side One of Aja - [I'm definitely dating myself here] that ranks with the greatest in modern music history. The song itself is a meditative, elliptical short story. The first two songs on Side One, Black Cow and Aja, are of the same superb level and could be described in a similar manner. One can really look at these 3 songs as a cycle...a cinematic mini-series of Romantic dissipation; full of cynicism, regret, self-absorption and languorous melancholy. "I crawl like a viper through these suburban streets...make love to these women, languid and bittersweet" ... words like that would make Chekhov or Updike envious.

Diamond rings, Vaseline, you gave me disease, well, I lost a lot of love over you.

as a slight aside; some hysterical stuff from the steely dan website re: the dissection of studio process communications:
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
~EXPRESSIONS TO AVOID During A Recording Session~
(From Steely Dan's Web Site)


1.Ready, Freddie (pronounced red-eye fred-eye)
2.Bingo, gringo
3.Uno, Bruno
4.The phones sound O.K. but I need more of myself
5.We won't need a click
6.I like what you're trying to do but not the way you're doing it
7.An excellent first attempt
8.Was that the sound you had on the demo?
9.Make the click louder
10.That was a pretty good take for this time of night
11.If you want the tempo any brighter than that, we better wait for a sunny day
12.No dynamics? We're playing as loud as we can
13.I think that's a pretty good sounding take for what were getting paid..
14.That was great, let's do it again
15.Is that about as tight as you boys want to get it?
16.Is it possible the click is speeding up?
17.I'm at the point where I'm making dumb mistakes - before I was making much smarter mistakes
18.So many drummers, so little time
19.Why don't we do the double first and the lead will be easier to get once we've got the double
20.I never had this problem when I was being produced by Lenny and Russ
21.We got some things, we need some things
22.Fabulous
23.Punch in at the section
24.You can't make ice cream out of shit
25.You can't polish a turd
26.Just let your spirit soar
27.My spirit's already sore from the last thirty takes...
28.Close
29.Less is more
30.Less is Paul
31.Less is Brown
32.Less is less
33.That's the way I've been playing it all along
34.I just wish I could get a whole band that sounds as good as I do
35.This will be a great opportunity for me to show off my chop
36.Let's hear the bass, if you can call it that
37.Play something Paul would tell Linda to play
38.Does your amp have an underdrive channel?
39.You can erase that one, I remember exactly what I played
40.We'll catch that in the mix
41.You guys can fix that in Soundtools, right?
42.I brought my kid along, he's never been in a recording studio before
43.My girlfriend sings great background vocals
44.I know a great drummer
45.You guys want to try some heroin?
46.Your girlfriend's been in the bathroom a long time
47.Please, man, stay away from my faxes, okay?
48.I'm not going to be any more dishonest with you than I am with Donald
49.I'd like a little more of a live feeling on this tune.
50.I also play eleven other instruments
51.Sorry I'm late, I just got through with my blood test (or CAT scan)
52.That vocal's not a keeper is it?
53.That's how I wrote it but that's not how I like to play it
54.I can't think of any improvements that won't make it worse
55.That ground loop is a trademark thing for me
56.That's the new old comp from today - I want to hear the new old comp from last Tuesday
57.That reverb would sound a lot better if it were coming out of a piece of MY GEAR
58.How bout we get rid of these 3M machines and get ourselves a frozen yogurt machine
59.Roz Shrank on line one for you
60.Skunk called, he's on his way down
61.The frozen yogurt machine is broken
62.When was the last time we worked together? Tonight.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2007-05-03 20:50 by Beelyboy.