Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 02:19:13 PM

Login with username, password and session length

I'm Really Going To Get Into Steely Dan During This Lockdown

Started by SteveDave, November 05, 2020, 10:46:10 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Head Gardener


bgmnts

Always loved a bit of Steely! Hey Nineteen, Gaucho and Deacon Blue are choons!

SteveDave

I've now bought both the first two LPs despite having owned them previously. I remember taking the piss out of the state of them on the back cover of "Countdown To Ecstasy"


You can download the stems from quite a few Steely Dan tracks here.


SteveDave

It appears that I only like the first two LPs. Everything after that gets a bit clean and clinical.

lazyhour

Quote from: SteveDave on November 18, 2020, 02:00:11 PM
It appears that I only like the first two LPs. Everything after that gets a bit clean and clinical.

Their later stuff rewards multiple listens in a way that few bands do. I found them too slick and polished at first but now they're one of my favourite bands and have been for about ten years. What made them really click for me was probably the lyrics on the later stuff. Some of the best cryptic storytelling I have ever heard in music.

shagatha crustie

^ Yeah, I remember first working through their discography and finding each new album a bit too slick, but perseverance revealing it to be just as good as or better than the last.

Famous Mortimer

At 6pm UK time, my favourite local radio station KSHE 95 is doing their "Vinyl Exam" show about "Can't Buy A Thrill". You can listen online, it's pretty good.

Psmith

Quote from: SteveDave on November 18, 2020, 02:00:11 PM
It appears that I only like the first two LPs. Everything after that gets a bit clean and clinical.

Me too.I think it's because they are not a real band anymore,Skunk's gone,and they just use any available session people.


Annie Labuntur

Quote from: SteveDave on November 18, 2020, 02:00:11 PM
It appears that I only like the first two LPs. Everything after that gets a bit clean and clinical.

Quote from: Psmith on November 23, 2020, 02:08:26 AM
Me too.I think it's because they are not a real band anymore,Skunk's gone,and they just use any available session people.

Small point, but he was still there for the third album - eg playing the steel solo on East St Louis and the main solo on Rikki.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Annie Labuntur on November 23, 2020, 01:26:40 PM
Small point, but he was still there for the third album - eg playing the steel solo on East St Louis and the main solo on Rikki.
And then he went off to sail the waves of smooth grooves with the Doobie Brothers...

I think the other guitarist, the chap with the hillbilly beard, popped up once or twice on the later albums.


jake thunder

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on November 23, 2020, 01:45:53 PM
And then he went off to sail the waves of smooth grooves with the Doobie Brothers...

I think the other guitarist, the chap with the hillbilly beard, popped up once or twice on the later albums.

Yes Denny Dias pops up on Aja on the tracks Aja and Home At Last I think. You can normally tell it's a Denny solo as he never uses bends or vibrato.

Rizla

Quote from: lazyhour on November 19, 2020, 11:01:02 AM
Their later stuff rewards multiple listens in a way that few bands do. I found them too slick and polished at first but now they're one of my favourite bands and have been for about ten years. What made them really click for me was probably the lyrics on the later stuff. Some of the best cryptic storytelling I have ever heard in music.
Absolutely. "Deacon Blues" is the pinnacle, he shoulda won the nobel prize for literature with those lyrics. Just incredible narrative.

I love the sarky stuff too though, or at least the stuff I read as sarky. "Charlie Freak" for example. It feels like he's taking the piss out of his own earnestness, I love it.

Has anyone mentioned the unreleased (except on the Greatest Hits, weirdly)  Here at the Western World? That's pretty funny. I think it's Katy Lied-era, it certainly seems to be of a piece with "Daddy Don't Live" and "Rose Darling" (another of my favourites, weird lyric which I took to be about his schooldays jazz-pamphlet collection.  Lovely demo version here.

EDIT Western World is in fact from the Royal Scam sessions, oops.

Head Gardener