Premier Rock Forum

I just had to hear about twenty seconds of this shit ass band while in line at the bank.

It's the soundtrack to opening your package from Hair Club for Men commercial.

HATE.

Seems to me that current era hipsters are hating the Dan because past era hipsters have polluted the music (the hits are totally fucked-out now after heavy rotation on nearly every cock and balls radio station in the US). You don't hate the Dan hipsters, you hate the same hipster audience that the Dan hated. The Dan broke up because they couldn't stand the impacted assload of hipsters that showed up at their concerts - they didn't like the audience.

So for you hipsters that hate the Dan, you're more like them then you realize. :P

itchy mcgoo wrote:in line at the bank.

Perfect.

Steely Dan. Crap.
The Minutemen covering Dr. Wu. Not Crap.

they be mad crap yo. I am reminded of every "seasoned" engineer who comes to the club i work in to EQ the room with some foolish sounding rhodes jam that goes on for 9 minutes. After 8 listens he will then tell me that my crossover setting is fucked, and that there some high components missing on the left side, and if I have any coke. (not in that order)
Wacky suave rhodes=crap

The Dan are often admired for their "perfectionism." There are several ways to be "perfectionist." One way, the most honorable way, is to actively work on your material and get good at performing it so it becomes a natural extension of your conversational or other expressive skills. You can use it like language.

That's what pretty much all great artists do -- they work relentlessly on the skills and content of their art, get good at it, and work diligently to remain in that state so they can do it almost unthinkingly.

This kind of perfectionist has struggled to perfect the expression of conceptually strong art, with ideas and perspective in place before performance/execution is even considered.

The other way, as exemplified by Steely Dan, Brian Wilson, Prince, Talk Talk, My Bloody Valentine and quite a few others, is to start in on a specific instance of the art, say a recording, to be presented publicly as an ambassador/avatar of genius. The conceptual framework may be quite weak at the outset, and the whole work is expected to be developed in the process of making it.

The cliche about this approach is that the artist doesn't know exactly what he's trying to do, but knows it will be great. He then proceeds to do things (or make other people do things), in a kind of monkey typewriting, rejecting them serially until he is pleased with the progress.

This requires many attempts, much revision and direction of other performers in service of the avatar that is at least exploitative, if not abusive. It is also apparent that such work can go on indefinitely.

This school of "perfectionism" -- let's call it the retard school -- makes for many engrossing tales of obsession and excess, builds mythology and exhausts recording budgets, but I always feel the results are transparent, and I can see the weak conceptual framework underneath.

It is obvious that these artists -- of the retard perfectionist school -- wish to be regarded as having made great art, without being disciplined enough to actually make great art. Their ideas are weak, so they try to compensate by exhausting the possibilities of extraneous details in presentation.

Great ideas can survive crude rendering and be great. Weak ideas remain weak even gussied-up with fake tits and pancake makeup.

Steely Dan are retard perfectionists of the first order, and they make weak music.

ubercat wrote:Seems to me that current era hipsters are hating the Dan because past era hipsters have polluted the music (the hits are totally fucked-out now after heavy rotation on nearly every cock and balls radio station in the US). You don't hate the Dan hipsters, you hate the same hipster audience that the Dan hated. The Dan broke up because they couldn't stand the impacted assload of hipsters that showed up at their concerts - they didn't like the audience.

So for you hipsters that hate the Dan, you're more like them then you realize.

I am a punk rocker, so you are not speaking to me but please trust me when I say I hate this vile shit because it sucks. I have no idea who the audience is and am always surprised that there actually is one. But there is and it consists of plenty of people I like and respect and threaten to punch in the throat when/if they play this ass-leak music around me.

You're never gonna do it without the Faiz on.

ubercat wrote:Seems to me that current era hipsters are hating the Dan because past era hipsters have polluted the music

No. As a current era hipster, I hate it because it is bank music. Grocery store music.

I can't remember the last time I heard, say, Anne Murray at the bank or the DMV. Anne Murray had a run as avatar for the profoundly mundane. She got fifteen years or so in. Now she's effectively gone. Culturally irrelevant.

Steely Dan, on the other hand, they are still holding the torch. Itchy just heard them in the bank. Today. They've managed to tap into the essence of the most universal and routine aspects of human existence.

You could take a time machine to 1200 BC, post up next to some Hittites waiting in line to pay tribute to their city's patron god, and you're holding some instruments appropriate to the era, cover "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" and nobody would fucking blink.

Sharkfinnedshitgrenade wrote:The Minutemen covering Dr. Wu. Not Crap.

I would actually really like to hear this.