Katie Lied is my favorite, with Aja a close second. I, too, have been listening to SD since the early 70s. They’ve got the most refreshing sound around! Sophisticated, humourous, and just different! They are one of my all-time favorites!
Does anyone remember the days before MTV when record companies used to run commercials for an artist’s newly released albums?
The year was 1977, I was a 10 years old brat whose musical interests were limited to the lastest K-tel compilation.
But even so, to this day, I can clearly recall two such commercials. The first being the Kiss album Love Gun and the second was Steely Dan’s “Aja”. It was probably a 30 second spot and featured a beautiful oriental woman kneeling aside a pond. It was very blurry, almost dreamlike. Being that I remember it all these years later, my guess is it must have had a positive effect on sales.
Aja, as well as some of the others listed, truly are great albums. The one thing I don’t quite get, perfectionists or not…is it really necessary to give police whistle instrumental credits ?
I think he played drums.
Yup, the Dan is my favorite “artistic” band. (artistic in the sense of using different points of view than the writer’s to express another person’s feelings.) And the most intelligent band i’m aware of, after the Floyd.
I have the double tape Aja/Gaucho, and while I rarely play it sober, when i do i am truly amazed at its complexity and sublimnity.
Gaucho is highly recomended on sound quality alone. Katy Lied is my favorite as well, mainly for ‘Doctor Wu’.
I must add that I also like Pretzel Logic. Jim Gordon’s performance on that album was nothing less than sharp, and it is sad that such a tragedy happened. I guess you could say that while I celebrate the whole catalogue, I tend to hang around the mid-period albums at this point in time. “Home At Last” from Ajacannot be forgotten, however, as well as “Peg”.
My favorite Steely Dan song is “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)”. Okay, I’m sappy.
I’ve been into the Dan since I heard “Do It Again” on the radio for the first time. “Holy shit! What is that!?! A Danelectro Coral Sitar???” I immediately went out and bought the album. Bought every album since on the day it was released. Haven’t been disappointed yet.
Once in the 80’s when we got a new phone and didn’t want to pay to have an unlisted number, we had them put it in our “roommate’s” name, “Dan Steely.” We thought that was pretty clever until we started getting calls from drunks in bars at 2am, stumbling across the number, wanting to know if it was really Steely Dan.
I’d have to say Aja is my favorite, with Royal Scam not far behind.
The B side of the Hey Nineteen single was a live Bodhisattva with the greatest drunken introduction ever recorded. I think it’s included on Steely Dan Gold and the box set.
The Goodbye Look on The Nightfly is a wonderful history lesson.
I highly recommend checking out the Rock Classics DVD of Aja. It really shows how complex their music really is.
Also, they have a pretty good website wherein the Steely Dan attitude is much in evidence.
Hearing any track from “Aja” puts me right back in college back in '77. The album’s still one of my favorites.
Donald Fagan also wrote some pretty good stuff on his own, like “I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)” and “New Frontier.” Well worth hearing (the videos are pretty cool too) if you want to cop an early '60s buzz.
I’m 29. I always knew of them but I didn’t really start listening until the mid 90s. It was by accident. I always thought they did “Evil Ways” so I went to the store and bought a greatest hits CD. it wasn’t on there. I finally asked and they said it was Santana. What a dope! Anyway, I started listening and loved it. It was constantly: “Hey, I know that song!”
Deacon Blues is my favorite.
Daddy Don’t Live (in that New York City No More).
Listened to 'em for a zillion years, and then saw them live for the first time on thier recent tour and was completely blown away with how good they sound live. The performance and sound was so spot-on, you’d think you were listening to a carefully prepared mixed CD. Just perfect. well, until Becker starting singing
And Fagan’s facial grimacing whilst singing is quite hilarious to see in person.
As a guy in his mid-30’s, who grew up during the 1970’s, their music really saturated the culture. I don’t mean that in a pejorative “I-Can’t-Get-Away-From-Them, God help me”, kind of way. I mean that you always heard their songs and even if you didn’t pay all that much attention, their sophistication and quality shaped your view of the musical landscape, whether you were really consciously aware of it or not.
I started listening to them in a close, measured fashion when I got more into music in the mid-80’s. They were always a band I respected more than loved. (Somehow I think that would suit them better…) I now own the Citizen Steely Dan set, and it’s truly wonderful. (The booklet’s excerpted reviews are fall-on-the-floor hilarious. I though Robert Fripp was the only guy who collected all his negtive notices and put them in liner notes.) Fagan and Becker address the issue that Exapno raises, about how Rockcrits usually (and a lot of them are aping Lester Bangs, consciously or not), abhor any sort of musical sophistication as being antithetical to Rock N’ Roll and still worship that whole “3 chords means you’re closer to the spirit of the music” motif. They have some interesting things to say about it.
It’s hard to pick an individual album, and there are so many songs, but I think (like da_pope) Doctor Wu is my personal fave.
I’ve been a Steely Dan fan since the seventies. I never got to see them live during their first incarnation but got to see them twice in Phoenix. They are the only group I know who can be perfect but keep from being dead and sterile at the same time. The only original bandmember I met was Jeff “Skunk” Baxter a few years backstage at a Comdex show in Vegas. It’s so hard to pick a favorite song of so many but I’d have to say Pearl of the Quarter from Countdown to Ecstacy because of Skunk’s very C&W flavored steel guitar which doesn’t seem out of place at all. It’s going on the playlist at my wedding.
Pesch, the IGY (International Geophysical Year) was 1957, not the sixties 
Also one of my favorite albums.
Where’s KidCharlemagne? I certainly expected to hear from him in this thread.
So many favorites. I can’t argue with anything that anybody has mentioned, so I’ll bring up a few more.
Dirty Work is special cause it’s one of the wife’s very favorite songs of all time, and it reminds me of when we first met.
East St. Louis Toodleoo is cool because it’s a Duke Ellington song, and because the courtship mentioned above took place in St Louis.
Kid Charlemagne is possibly the best song evar about dealing drugs.
I lost this album years ago, but I’m pretty sure B & F made an excellent contribution to That’s the Way I Feel Now, a tribute album composed of Theolonius Monk covers. Can’t remember what they played. Excellent album tho… need to replace it.
Unfortunately, about half of my Steely Dan collection is on 8-track. Of course, I still have all my 8-tracks (who’d steal 'em?). I just don’t have any way to play them. I’d love to burn them on the CD’s. Oh well.
I, too, discovered them via Aja, in my cousin’s house. She and one of her brothers absolutely adore them.
“Hey Nineteen, that’s 'Retha Franklin…”
That song and Black Friday have always sort of reminded me of one another.
Got my first stereo in the 70’s. The first album I ever owned/played was Aja. I played it until you could hear the “A” side on the “B” side. Love those guys, in all their iterations. No other group consistently puts together albums which I can listen to clear through without skipping a track.
Favorite song? No. There are several favorites, depending on my mood, but I love “The Fez” (who else writes songs about safe sex, even years before AIDS) Kid Charlemagne, Your Gold Teeth II, Chain Lightning, Tomorrow’s girls, Kamakiriad, crap, the list just goes on and on.
Saw the Dan in concert a couple of times, memories jammed in my head for ever. Donald and Walter rock.
b.
Doh! Can’t believe I missed this one.
It would be really hard to come up with a favorite anything - There is not a bad song on any album up to their most recent.
Some of their greatest songs off the top of my head:
Kid Charlemagne
Peg
Josie
I Got the News
My Old School
King of the World
Any World (That I’m Welcome To) - so sad
Bad Sneakers
Babylon Sisters
Hey Nineteen
Any Major Dude
Parker’s Band
Only a Fool Would Say That
Oh how could I forget, Bodhisattva (best bebop solo ever)
I remember I was once going through a bargain cassette bin at some record bin and nearly shite myself when I found “Becker and Fagen, The Early Years.” This was not released with permission. It had really bad production values but great tunes. About 10 years later they released most of the songs on CD.
Jimmy Page once said in Rolling Stone magazine that Larry Carlton’s solo in “Kid Charlemagne” is the best in the history of rock. I agree.