Music Video Of the Week - May 29, 2026

"Kid Charlemagne" by Steely Dan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - February 16, 2024

 "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" by Steely Dan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - August 11, 2023

"My Old School" by Steely Dan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

A Decade of Steely Dan (1985)

As purveyors of songs about seedy New Yorkers and narcissistic, hedonistic Angelenos arranged with an ironically classy jazz-rock fusion  sound, Steely Dan were a band that could only have been possible in the 1970s, yet their sound was made like a custom suit for the biggest recording technology of the 1980s - the compact disc.  The pristine music composed and arranged by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen sounded even more sparkling and clean on CD, and the unsavory lyrics were even more perverse as a result.  So it made perfect sense that Steely Dan were among the first bands  to be repackaged with a greatest-hits compilation exclusively for CD.

A Decade of Steely Dan collects the obvious hit singles and the most essential album tracks that Becker and Fagen put out with the original band and, then, session musicians from the group's formation in 1972 to its dissolution in 1981 (Becker and Fagen would reunite in the nineties).   In typical Dan quirkiness, the tracks are not in chronological order, though the programming opportunities on a CD player allowed listeners to play the tracks in any order they pleased.   It includes the groundbreaking "Do It Again," a song about a roving gambler, and a straight and almost square "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," an uncharacteristically guileless love song, as well as Becker and Fagen's other tales in all of their sardonic glory - "Black Friday," with its story of a stock market crash,  the loss of innocence of "My Old School," the satire of South Asian cults in "Bodhisattva," and the jaded view of a young starlet in "Peg."  And that's just a partial list.  The laid-back sunny LA cynicism  and the dirty sidewalks of Manhattan that colored and influenced seventies popular culture never sounded more groovy. 

The music is immaculately played with stinging riffs and precise brass embellishments - as well as Pete Christie's brilliant saxophone solo in Deacon Blues" and Elliott Randall's freewheeling guitar solo on Reelin' In the Years," just two of the moments where Becker and Fagen let their supporting players shine.  A Decade of Steely Dan also includes "FM," the cosmopolitan rocker that served as the theme song for the movie of same name that celebrated the cool vibe of FM radio at the time while lamenting the increasing commercialization of the medium.  The CD works as perfectly as a time capsule for a decade that began with great tumult and ended with exhaustion and exasperation.  A Decade of Steely Dan, with its polished music and its digitally purified sound, makes that crystal clear.        

Music Video Of the Week - November 18, 2022

"Reelin' 'In the Years" by Steely Dan  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Steely Dan - Gaucho (1980)

In which the coolest band of the seventies begins a new decade and ends its run on a whimper.

Off the road for years and down to just Walter Becker and Donald Fagen relying on a revolving door of backing musicians, Steely Dan had gotten just a little too comfortable in the studio by 1980, and Gaucho was the result of their complacency.  The album is a set of songs offering clichéd depictions of the same sort of seedy characters they'd so vividly brought to life on earlier albums, and the music on Gaucho shows that Steely Dan's music had calcified into subdued, overproduced "smooth jazz" arrangements.

Conceptually, Gaucho mirrors Aja, with epic songs that allow the session musicians to stretch out but with none of the warmth and intimacy that characterized that earlier album.  The sound is quite antiseptic, and the effect is soporific enough to listen to as an alternative to a Sominex.  "Hey Nineteen,"  Gaucho's hit single about a May-December romance, is interesting mainly thanks to Steve Gadd's drumming, but even with Bernard Purdie's shuffling beat, "Babylon Sisters" actually makes depravity sound boring.   "Glamour Profession," like "Babylon Sisters" a song about the decadence of southern California, has a little more punch to it, but no heart, either.  And you would expect a song like the title track, about a guy being used by a friend to do a favor for his friend's partner, to be edgier than the actual song is.  And the pseudo-blues-rock arrangement for "Time Out of Mind" almost evaporates into thin air.

The problems with Gaucho are largely the sedate keyboards and the relaxed brass sections, and there's no one comparable to a Skunk Baxter or an Elliott Randall to provide a memorable guitar solo.  (Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler played a solo for "Time Out of Mind," but his contribution got edited and mixed down to almost nothing.)  Becker and Fagen certainly didn't do their session players any favors; the basic tracks were subjected to numerous retakes, and the songs underwent countless remixes before the duo were satisfied, though more often than not they settled for whatever they could get.  Steely Dan let the perfect be the enemy of the good on Gaucho, and as a result the album wasn't much of either.  No wonder Becker and Fagen, apart from helping Rosie Vela with her 1986 album ZaZu, wouldn't work together again for over a decade.

(After four album reviews - all of which were downers, more or less - I'm taking another break from reviewing records.  I should be back soon, and at least I got them started on a semi-related basis again.)

Music Video Of the Week - September 22, 2017

"Peg" by Steely Dan (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More

Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker, who died last week at 67, was as vital to that group's success as his partner Donald Fagen was.  While Fagen was the face of Steely Dan, with his cynical voice and his fluid keyboards, Becker's cool jazz guitar and his stellar bass lines gave the group - originally a sextet but later just Becker and Fagen and whatever session musicians they brought into the studio with them - its jazz undercurrents and its soul vibe.  Becker was just as responsible for the band's lyrical fascination with all sorts of seedy and moody characters as Fagen was, and with Fagen he brought a new sophistication and clever cheekiness to pop songwriting.  The best way to describe Steely Dan?  Imagine Chuck Berry hanging out with Charlie Parker in the 52nd Street clubs in New York back in the fifties.

Donald Fagen has vowed to keep the music of Steely Dan alive by continuing to perform it as a solo artist and in different revues like the Dukes of September, but the chemistry that made Steely Dan possible is now gone.  Fagen will no doubt honor their legacy with respect and dignity, and that is gratifying to know.  But if you want to know just what made Steely Dan - whose most popular album, Aja, was released forty years ago this month - so unique, do yourself a favor and listen to Aja . . . or their greatest album, 1974's Pretzel Logic.  RIP.

Music Video Of the Week - January 20, 2017

"Black Friday" by Steely Dan (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)