I’ve been where you are now and I can tell you from experience that the more you hear the more you will want to hear. Even the stuff you don’t particularly care for at first will grow and grow on you, and after awhile you will find it hard to say which ones you like best. It just becomes their entire oeuvre that becomes your favorite.
I will admit, however, that their latest album Everything Must Go, while musically good and tight and sounding like Steely Dan, doesn’t break any new ground. It’s basically good just for listening to more of what you’ve already heard from them. Still good though.
Ok, I would love to buy every album they have done but my budget won’t stretch to more than maybe one or two albums a month so which should I start with? I want ‘Aja’ so can you recommend another?
Well, this is just my opinion, but if I were you I’d start out with their crown jewel Aja. After that I would go with Katy Lied or Gaucho. After that, just pick up any of them at random. You can’t go wrong.
This is the path I followed after finally “getting” them. I liked Steely Dan’s music from the beginning but I didn’t really “get” them until some years later when I happened to hear *Deacon Blues * at about 3:00 in the morning while driving on a largely deserted boulevard in Dallas and it suddenly hit me: “Damn! These guys are *really * good!” After that I bought Aja, and then just started buying whatever I found whenever I found it. Steely Dan was in their 20 year hiatus at that time and their music wasn’t as readily available as it is now, so I just had to take what I could get when I could get it. In hindsight this seems to have been an excellent way to go about it. I didn’t get hung up over whether this song or this album was better or worse than the one that preceeded it, I just experienced everything in a hopscotch manner and it all just seemed to meld into one giant collection of supremely excellent music.
An alternative would be to start with their first album Can’t Buy A Thrill, and work your way up chronologically from there. In this way you could experience their growth and progression in the same way they (and we) did. Your advantage would be that you would only have to wait weeks or months between albums whereas we sometimes had to wait years.
One other thing, too. Since money is scarce, you can go to their website and link to their latest album Everything Must Go, which you can listen to for free and over and over. I’m listening to it now, as a matter of fact.
I’ll have to check their website out some other time as I’m at work and can’t use audio but I look forward to listening to it. Thanks for the suggestions, I may get ‘Aja’ and ‘Green Earings’.
The lyrics are all over the place. I think King Of the World and Sign in Stranger are science fiction(!) A a heck of a lot are about drugs.
Charlie Freak is about a cursed ring (I hope I’ve read that right otherwise someone please straighten me out). But theres a drug reference: “by the blackend wall he does it all - he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven”
Everyone’s Gone to the Movies is about showing porn flicks (to kids?)
I’d thought Chain Lightning was (yet) another drug song. It isn’t it’s about a Nazi rally, “some turnout - a hundred grand” now it makes sense.
All the discussion on Steely Dan lyric meanings you could ever want.
BTW, there is no album called Green Earrings. That song is on The Royal Scam. You could do a compilation album but I don’t recommend it. Steely Dan, pre-Gaucho, doesn’t have a single bad tune. Not one.
Personally, I would start with their first album, Can’t Buy a Thrill, and move up from there so you can see their style and mood change over time. If you didn’t care for that one, and you’d be nuts if you didn’t, and were constrained by cash to buy only one more, I’d probably go with Katy Lied or Countdown to Ectasy. Don’t forget the album that birthed the song of my eponymous username (The Royal Scam).
I also recommend Donald Fagen’s “The Nightfly” and “Becker and Fagen: The Early Years.”
Easily the finest modern music ever recorded. Just curious, how old are you?
I’m twenty four, the guy who got me into Steely Dan is twenty one and is a highly talented musician (he played at Prince Williams twenty first birthday party and is doing a gig for a Louis Vuitton launch party and also backing Lionel Richie that night as well) and he reckons that ‘The Dan’ is possibley the finest band (music skills wise) ever. I really dig them, they groove so well and are so tight it hurts. Can anyone recomend any Michael MacDonald stuff? I imagine he must have some pretty class stuff out as well, I think Ben (aforementioned friend) has played me some of his stuff but I’m not sure. Ben always cracks me up by singing a really funny impression of ‘The M Mac’ doing the backing on ‘Peg’
Much as I love the Dan, many of their lyrics strike me as too clever by half- sardonic in a deliberate, even condescending way. The hip obscurity of the references seems to connote two guys forever winking at each other (never their audience) via craftily worded in-jokes.
The interesting thing is listening to Dan records in comparsion to Fagen and Becker’s solo work. One of the things that struck me hearing The Nightfly for the first time was just how free it was of Steely’s derisive wit. I know the album’s meant to carry a very upbeat 1950’s feel as part of its theme, but I wouldn’t have dreamed either Fagen or Becker capable of sounding so damn happy. Kamakiriad is similarly straightforward and (relatively) sarcasm-free.
On the other hand, Becker’s 11 Tracks of Whack is positively lousy with irony and gum-cracking zingers. Which led me to the conclusion that “Steely Dan” is likely the balance derived between Happy, Smiling Donald and Winking, Leering Walter.
Fagen is far from happy but Becker flames the annoyingly excessive ironic side in him.
I agree that there is a touch of deliberate obscurity that smacks of condescension. Fagen is the musical genius while Becker roughens up the sound a bit and probably inspires, or perhaps conspires with, Donald as well.
Oh and as for Michael McDonald, I’m sure he’s done good solo work (Shine Sweet Freedom?), but check out The Doobie Brother’s greatest hits as well. As a bonus, you get to hear Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, a session guitarist for some of SD’s great solos.
(My Old School, Outro to Bodhisattva, etc…)
All these years I’ve never realized Gaucho was about a gay love triangle. :smack: It all makes sense now.
OP, I reccomend Royal Scam. I guess mainly because it appealed to the anarchist side of me during my college years, but it’s still a good listen today.
On another note, does anyone else think Becker is easily as good a singer as Fagen, if not better? I was amazed at what a capable, semi-soulful vocalist he is. They should have been splitting the singing since Can’t Buy!
I ain’t talkin about that turnip! You’ve heard “Book of Liars” from Becker’s solo cd (Steely version on Alive in America)? “Slang of Ages” from Everything Must Go?
Walt can sing, man.