# what's your favorite Steely Dan song?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 13, 2012, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553 "2012-09-13T00:10:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2012, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/81 "2012-09-14T23:35:22Z")
Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number
East St Louis Toodle-oo
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### Author:  [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/82 "2012-09-15T01:15:11Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> _Do It Again_ is the only Steely Dan that I’m familiar with. It’s a great song. I didn’t know Rikki Don’t Lose that Number was a Steely Dan song. I like it too.
I’m guessing you know a few others without associating then with Steely Dan. Check out Deacon Blues, Josie or Hey 19, Peg…
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### Author:  [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/83 "2012-09-15T01:41:01Z")
The last time I saw them live (late 20th Century. AD):
1. One of the people in our group was a friend named Peg. Awesome!!
2. I was so “happy” (where “happy” is a euphemism for stoned outa my fucking gourd) that when I made a beer run and saw a sign reading “4 beer max” I thought it was per person per night, not per purchase. I later asked a random dude to buy me a beer (and he did) because I thought I had hit the limit by buying four [COLOR=“black”][COLOR=“Blue”]at a different vendor [/COLOR][/COLOR]earlier that night.
ETA: good times.
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### Author:  [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/84 "2012-09-15T02:46:28Z")
> [@WordMan](#):
>
> Interesting. Not quite the same as Lynyrd Skynyrd “versus” Neil Young, but there ya go…
Yeah, that one was hard to miss. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/85 "2012-09-15T02:55:18Z")
Do It Again
Aja
FM
Hey Nineteen
Hard to pick, tho, since (as others have noted) the band really never wrote a bad song and any album usually had at least 3 spectacular songs in addition to the merely fantastic ones.
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### Author:  [@PoorMarie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorMarie)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/86 "2012-09-15T05:30:11Z")
Jebflast…I just went to hear Home At Last after reading your post. There is a great live version on YouTube…Recent, of course…What a treat! I had forgotten this great song…
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### Author:  [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/87 "2012-09-15T09:25:36Z")
> [@PoorMarie](#):
>
> Come to think of it, it is Friday evening and I have had one rotten day…I wonder if I could get away with it now…Sounds like that would fix what ails me!
Libations
Sensations
That stagger the mind
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### Author:  [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/88 "2012-09-15T11:12:45Z")
Even though I said Donald fagen kind of annoys me, I have to give a plug for his homespun instructional video, with warren Bernhardt backing him up. The two of them kind of switch between a Rhodes and an acoustic piano. They break down quite a few of the big tunes and it’s quite…instructional, as I recall.
I think they do chain lightning, peg, Josie, and some others.
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### Author:  [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/89 "2012-09-15T11:34:12Z")
Oh, it’s like thirty or twenty bucks and you get some little transcriptions with the set. I can’t remember how much it was, but for a hard steely Dan fAn, it’s got to be a bargain what with concert prices. Plus happy traum at homespun is by all accounts a cool guy, so it’s not like your money’s going to some coke head a and r guy.
And I don’t really hate Donald fagen – he just has a massive ego, and is not as good a piano picker as he claims. But that describes a whole lot of people, including me. He is a good singer, and has a great sense of how to arrange medium sized groups.
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### Author:  [@dinahmoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dinahmoe)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/90 "2012-09-15T17:11:32Z")
Your Gold Teeth II. Probably my favorite guitar solo of all time.
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2012, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/91 "2012-09-15T23:19:59Z")
> [@WordMan](#):
>
> ETA: \*\*cochrane \*\*- do you have any evidence that the Eagles used the word Steeley in Hotel California to name-check Donald and Walter? I have never heard of that, and the lyrics don’t seem to need a reference to SD to make sense…
> [@Starving\_Artist](#):
>
> I’m not **cochrane** but I remembered the story from years ago but I couldn’t recall if it was Don Henley or Glenn Frey who mentioned it. So I looked up the Wiki article on _Hotel California_, and it turns out to have been Frey.
Also from the Wiki article on [Everything you did:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_You_Did#Eagles_reference)
> [@](#):
>
> In the song, a lyric says to “turn up The Eagles, the neighbors are listening.” Glenn Frey of the Eagles said, “Apparently Walter Becker’s girlfriend loved the Eagles, and she played them all the time. I think it drove him nuts. So, the story goes that they were having a fight one day and that was the genesis of the line.” Given that the two bands shared a manager (Irving Azoff) and that the Eagles proclaimed their admiration for Steely Dan, this was more friendly rivalry than feud.
>
> Later that year in a nod back to Steely Dan for the free publicity, and inspired by Steely Dan’s lyric style, the Eagles penned the lyrics, “They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast” in their hit “Hotel California”. Frey commented, “We just wanted to allude to Steely Dan rather than mentioning them outright, so ‘Dan’ got changed to ‘knives,’ which is still, you know, a penile metaphor.”
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### Author:  [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2012, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/92 "2012-09-16T03:09:22Z")
Interesting both to hear the genesis of the line and that the Eagles wanted to reference the phallic metaphor (although knives aren’t all that obvious) inherent in Steely Dan’s name. Thanks for the additional info.
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### Author:  [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2012, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/93 "2012-09-17T23:08:19Z")
> [@kayaker](#):
>
> …I later asked a random dude to buy me a beer…
Any major random dude will tell you…
mmm
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### Author:  [@ashtayk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashtayk)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2012, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/94 "2012-09-19T04:04:08Z")
I am trying hard to recall an instrumental that was at the end of one of their greatest hit albums. I lost that tape years ago. It starts off with a wah wah guitar…that’s the only way I can describe it.
Any help?
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### Author:  [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2012, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/95 "2012-09-19T08:23:39Z")
[QUOTE=ashtayk]
I am trying hard to recall an instrumental that was at the end of one of their greatest hit albums. I lost that tape years ago. It starts off with a wah wah guitar…that’s the only way I can describe it.
Any help?
[/QUOTE]
Sounds like **East St Louis Toodle-oo** Which I think strictly speaking is a Duke Ellington ‘song’ 🙂 It’s the only Steely Dan instrumental I can think of except for the B-side of FM, which is definitely not what you’re thinking of.
And IIRC it’s a voice-box not a wah-wah, like they used for Hiatian Divorce.
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### Author:  [@Chicagojeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicagojeff)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/96 "2012-09-19T16:04:11Z")
Like a gangster… on the run… you will stagger home… to your precious one…
Is their gas in the car… yes theirs gas in car… i think the people down the hall know who you are…
Sometimes i just have SD day… 1) Kid Charlmagne… 2) Black cow… 3) Pretzel logic…
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### Author:  [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/97 "2012-09-19T16:35:55Z")
Must be some sort of Steely Dan synergy going on. I walked into a Walgreen’s last night and danged if _Green Earrings_ wasn’t playing on the oldies station they were tuned into. Sort of odd browsing the cough drops and candy aisle while listening to _GR’s_ driving rhythm, crashing cymbals and saxophone.
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### Author:  [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)
#### Post date: [September 19, 2012, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-steely-dan-song/634553/98 "2012-09-19T17:41:06Z")
**My Old School** or **Deacon Blues** , but I ain’t turning anything else off.
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