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Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 9:21 pm
by that damned fly_Archive
about time someone stepped up to say what's good about steely dan.
salut, tim.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:05 am
by mackro_Archive
haha, guys, my comments about ac/dc and ccr were, you know, jokes.
I can't speak for m. koren and ozzy lee harvwald, but I'm guessing they were joking too.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:00 am
by that damned fly_Archive
mackro wrote:haha, guys, my comments about ac/dc and ccr were, you know, jokes.
I can't speak for m. koren and ozzy lee harvwald, but I'm guessing they were joking too.
i didn't get it. i think i missed something.
or you suck at jokes.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 9:34 am
by MRoyce_Archive
I'll grant Steely Dan that they sound singular. I'll grant them the Great Musician's title. Whatever.
Their actual music though, is so bland that I immediately fail to actually bother listening. I'm sure there's some great creepy lyrics there. I won't ever hear them, because I've been conditioned to not listen to background music.
They seem to be the reverse of Throbbing Gristle. Instead of getting my attention with jarring/painful sounds, they sound utterly bland. Because of this they don't register and that always gets a CRAP from me.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 12:00 pm
by FuzzBob_Archive
tmidgett wrote:gmilner wrote:According to Wikipedia (I think that's where I saw it), one of Jimmy Page's favorite guitar solos is the one on "Reelin' In the Years." Actually, I guess there's about three guitar solos on that song. Great drumming, too, I think courtesy of an uncredited Jim Gordon, who later killed his mom when he went off his schizophrenic meds.
I just looked up that guy [Jim Hodder!] a few months ago, after hearing that song on the radio.
Fantastic drumming.
Fantastic guitar playing. I remember all three of the solos. I can hum them from memory.
I find the "[fill in the blank] FOR FAGS" or "gay-ass pedophile jazz" kind of criticisms to be telling.
One thing Steely Dan does supremely well is make people uncomfortable.
You might think "well, they make me uncomfortable because the music drives me up the fucking wall," and that's fine.
But they have a way of essaying various creepy subjects casually, amorally, and in great detail.
It's that particular combination that is unsettling.
It gives you nowhere to go with it. At least when William Bennett is going on about coming up your ass etc., there's nothing casual about it. You feel OK being kind of amped up about it to some degree.
But these guys will write about rough trade or whiling away one's life drunk and drugged or pedophilia or whatever, and take no position on it whatsoever. Yet they are tremendously invested in it--they detail it obsessively, and they keep going into the same wells, the same way someone who was feeding a perversion or had some ax to grind would.
The music is jarring for exactly the same reasons. The sounds are rounded off and the arrangements are just-so, but it's so impeccably played that it attains a sharpness that other music 'like this' (no one else has ever sounded like them) never ever gets. There's a malicious glint to it that is unexpected.
And what they do is resolutely in its own space. It never, ever comes out to get you--you have to go to it. It gets under your skin real quick if you don't take to it.
I love Steely Dan because I take to it for whatever reason, and I always have. But a nice side effect is the fact that, despite its round edges and professionalism, it inspires such venom. It's not forgettable music, in any case.
Well put.
Steely Dan can’t be said not to have shock value, and in all honesty, their yin-yang music-to-lyrics juxtaposition really isn’t that conceptually different than the effect Steve Shelley or Bob Mould go for by singing angsty lyrics dripping with existential dread to peppy punk-rock tunes in major keys. Steely Dan’s approaches to both music and lyrics are far more literate, so the effect is much more jarring between the lyrics with antihero protagonists, from counterculture icons such as Owsley to pedophiles to random losers, and the smoothest possible yacht-rock to which they’re set. Between that and being named after a steam-powered dildo, this is probably the most murder any band has gotten away with in public. Or at least classic rock radio.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:28 pm
by world of pee_Archive
re: the gay comments... the dan's perviness is hetero. there's a lot of great gay music out there, but steely dan isn't it. they are frumpy jazz geeks, not foppish or fabulous.
gotta love fagen's quote when he's talking about being influenced by tv scores, something like "we love real jazz, but we also love fake jazz, and fake fake jazz."
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:50 pm
by The MayorofRockNRoll_Archive
m.koren wrote:Thin-Lizzy for fags.
What's kinda funny about this is I've often kinda thought that Steely Dan were either a soft rock Thin Lizzy or that Thin Lizzy were a hard rock Steely Dan.
One interesting juxtaposition on this is that Dan had the darker, more fucked up lyrics under the soft sonic wash while Lizzy were wistful and nostalgic under all the riffs.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 10:07 pm
by mkoren_Archive
mackro wrote:I can't speak for m. koren and ozzy lee harvwald, but I'm guessing they were joking too.
You are correct. I actually think that Steely Dan sounds like Thin Lizzy PLAYED by fags.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 12:03 am
by glynnisjohns_Archive
Citizen Steely Dan
playing in the background (the whole boxset!)
"turn up the melvins the neighbors are listening!"
I lurv me some Dan.
Band: Steely Dan
Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:30 am
by Minotaur029_Archive
I'm pretty sure I voted NOT CRAP on this band a while ago. Some of the songs are bland, some of the songs are awesome. Some of my love for this band might stem strictly from nostalgia, though. Thanks, Dad!
"Eat bat, prick!"