Ok, and if they realized it at the time and decided not to release it, I’d think that it’d be unfair to pick on it. But they not only released it, but released it as a single. Plus I only mentioned it myself because it was neck and neck for being as didactic as “Closer to the Heart”.
You guys need to puit aside the alienation and get on with the fascination, the real relation, the underlying theme.
Another great Peart lyric.
Rush. (Borderline…I don’t actually appreciate them at all, especially Peart’s “drumming”).
Yes. No. Great musicians, though, to a man.
Neil Young. An inept cowboy chord guitar strummer with a despicable voice who nevertheless made a few memorable sides.
The Grateful Dead. Robert Hunter never wrote one lyric that wasn’t an abomination, and yet the musicianship of certain members of the band, over the years, was at times impeccable. No acceptable vocalists in the group.
Bob Dylan. A man without taste, except when he took up with The Band and helped ignite their career.
Elvis Presley. Very good at making Raffi-style music for children.
The Counting Crows. A vanity project for some rando that nonetheless spawned some worthwhile imitators.
Any so-called “hip-hop” that includes singing of any kind. If I can hear a melody at any point that isn’t sampled, it makes me want to puke, no matter how deftly a record is produced/mixed.
I don’t care for many things, apparently.
Not a band or artist, but a tv commercial has two guys hanging out in one’s room. I don’t know the product, or the plot of the commercial. I only notice the guy with a guitar starts doing some super fast (I guess) two handed tapping. I appreciate that that sort of playing I would never be able to do, even if I put in the time. But I really don’t know what it’s for- how it would fit into a piece. Obviously I don’t know modern music. I surely wouldn’t want to hear a whole song consisting of that stuff.
Counting Crows. I really liked August And Everything After when it first came out. Then I made the mistake of seeing them live at a general outdoor concert, featuring several similar level bands, a few years later.
The crowd (who generally liked them and knew their hits, but were not diehard fans) wanted them to play Round Here, Omaha, Mr. Jones and similar hits. They wanted to play more experimental stuff from their newest album. They kept pausing, trying to get the audience to finish singing the words to brand new songs they did not know or like. The audience couldn’t. The band just kept getting madder and madder. They started swearing at the crowd, then just quit playing in unmerited disgust. They didn’t play their hits. Now nor do I.
@B.Serum’s post in another thread reminded me that Regina Spektor is an artist that I can appreciate/respect but don’t like. I’ve tried to like her, but something about her voice or singing style rubs me the wrong way.
Yeah, I don’t appreciate Steely Dan as much as I think I should, perhaps, but “Peg” is the one song I can listen on infinite loop (almost.) Rick Marotta’s cool and easy groove on that is just impeccable and Chuck Rainey’s bass makes me so happy. A rhythm section for the gods, of the gods. Plus – and I didn’t even really notice it the first dozen times or so I heard it – the verses are just a regular ol’ blues progression Fagan’ed up.
Steely Dan’s an interesting choice. No, many times I don’t care for the overall slick production/mixing, nor the lyrics.
However, despite all that yacht-rock veneer, I just can’t help but love many of their records. Chuck Rainey, Larry Carlton, Steve Gadd, you name it, the list could go on forever. The playing is most times just too…not impeccable, not the word, but so full of groove and taste…too much of that to not pay attention to every aspect. Even Fagen’s pedestrian piano playing is tolerable, since he usually just stays in the background as an instrumentalist IIRC: he was wise enough to bring in specialists to play anything heavy on the keyboards.
To me, the title track of Aja is a masterpiece. All of those brilliant musicians you mentioned, AND Wayne Shorter.
Oh man, that’s me with Natalie Merchant. I recognize the talent, but there’s just something about the way she sings that I find incredibly irritating.
Steely Dan was a band I HATED when I was young. Thought it was total Muzak. At some point that idea all changed and I now love it. I even went so far as to see them at Red Rocks 10 years ago or so when I was on a moto trip and that concert aligned with my route (along with a couple Rockies games).
I just listened to Peg on my good stereo setup and that bass 
My contribution: Nickelback.
Just kidding!
Yeah isn’t it great. Chuck Rainey’s got a fun story on YouTube about how Fagan didn’t want him to play any slap on that song, because everybody was doing slap or something like that, and Rainey just felt he had to slap it in the chorus for that extra oomph, so during the chorus, he would turn away to hide the fact he was slapping. I don’t know how actually true that anecdote is, but that’s the way Chuck tells it.
And, like I said before, Rick’s drums are such effortless pocket. I’ve watched so many drum covers of it and nobody has the cool and the subtleties of Rick’s playing on that. There’s a video or two of him explaining the part and the way it grooves and has air is a thing of beauty.
I have a very nice copy of The Grateful Dead’s Europe '72. It’s nice. It’s pleasant to have playing in the background. I wouldn’t drop everything and follow the band around for a year, though.
Except for Rand Paul, who used to start his stump speech quoting it. Enough said, I think.
I did a Monster of the Week campaign a while back, and my character was a math professor at a unaccredited online university and host of the third most popular Rush podcast on iTunes. It had 257 episodes, each about three hours long. (He also sold weed.) It was fun to play a character that irritating.
My answer for this is Tool, or really all of MJK’s projects. I appreciate the artistry, there’s nothing I dislike about it on paper, and I even went to see Puscifer a few months ago and quite enjoyed it, but it just doesn’t engage my brain in any real or lasting way.
Very cool video! Becker and Fagen are interesting dudes…very interesting to see the making of the sausage and the different guitar soloists they tried as well as McDonald’s multi-layered vocals.
For whatever reason, Billy Joel. I appreciate his longevity and his songwriting prowess, but I just can’t get into it.
Phish. However, truth be told probably just about any ‘jam band’ would fall into this category for me.
Growing up in the Sixties, I loved Simon & Garfunkel.
But I cannot tolerate Paul Simon.
I just posted a couple up that in my younger years I saw Steely Dan is bland music but now like. There are others in that same camp like Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison (always liked Them), Rod Stewart/Faces and Neil Diamond. Billy Joel is one that I still can’t get into.