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Fun Stuff => BAND => Topic started by: amfr on 27 Jun 2007, 19:48
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I know that Steely Dan would fall outside the categories most people on this forum would be interested in, but I was wondering if anyone else listened to/liked them.
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A friend tried to get me onto them a couple of years ago... can't really remember what it sounded like... but I don't think I liked it much.
Maybe I was missing something? Isn't it just kinda dated sophomore stuff?
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Steely Dan! Thank god! I love Steely Dan!
My dad played me Aja for the first time when I was in 5th grade. It is a brilliant album. I don't have their entire discography, but I love the stuff I have. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are some seriously funny dudes. It makes me sad that they are dismissed as 'soft-rock' etc., because they really aren't. Technically, every one of their songs is perfect. They were an excellently tight studio band. The solos are tasteful and melodic, and the lyrics are intelligent, if not somewhat strange.
Basically what I'm saying is everyone should listen to Aja at least once.
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Steely Dan! Thank god! I love Steely Dan!
My dad played me Aja for the first time when I was in 5th grade. It is a brilliant album. I don't have their entire discography, but I love the stuff I have. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are some seriously funny dudes. It makes me sad that they are dismissed as 'soft-rock' etc., because they really aren't. Technically, every one of their songs is perfect. They were an excellently tight studio band. The solos are tasteful and melodic, and the lyrics are intelligent, if not somewhat strange.
Basically what I'm saying is everyone should listen to Aja at least once.
Were? They are still around, they just came out with a new album (Brain Tap Shuffle, the only album of their discography that I am missing).
Edit: Nevermind, that was a re-release, their newest one is Everything Must Go.
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Aja is the Shiiiiit
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Um, they are unbelievably soft-rock. Steely Dan were essentially two guys with a bunch of session musicians, many of whom went on to form Toto, and they also worked with bloody Michael McDonald (he of the later Doobie Brothers and the concert on repeat in The 40 Year Old Virgin). But yes, lyrically they're pretty heavy on the misanthropy too, not to mention just pretty impenetrable a lot of the time.
Mostly I find their stuff way too fiddly and mannered, as you might expect from a bunch of LA session musos in the 70s, but there are definitely things I like about them, and I actually have 4 of their albums (picked up cheap on 2nd-hand over the years). They've got a couple of songs I do love - e.g. Peg and Hey 19.
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Everybody raves about Aja but I find teir debut album Can't Buy a Thrill is just as good, although it doesn't have Steve Gadd on it.
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Steve Gadd's finest moment is the beat to Paul Simon's 50 Ways To Leave A Lover. Shit that's awesome. But getting excited about studio musicians does leave me feeling a bit Patrick Bateman.
(http://www.tabula-rasa.info/HorrorImages/AmericanPsycho.jpg)
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One of the greatest bands ever.
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WOW. This is deffinitely enough to make me revisit.
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Steely Dan were essentially two guys with a bunch of session musicians, many of whom went on to form Toto,
Now that you said that... I hear it...
hmm.
Anyways, Do It Again is the song that got me liking them, and still defines Steely Dan for me.
What's wrong with studio bands? The Beatles were a studio band from 66 onwards, and uh... yeah.
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Steely Dan started as a "normal" band with actual members, but they kinda self-destructed and the co-founders, Becker and Fagen, carried on from there. They were rockers, but mostly surrounded themselves with top-shelf jazz session guys on their albums, and basically never toured until they "reunited" earlier this millenium. It's hard to call it a reunion when the band was literally just the two guys plus whoever they felt like playing with at the time.
I have their entire discography, and yeah, every song is crafted. When they want a different drum sound on a particular tune, they get a drummer who plays like that. When they want a saxophone solo, they get a sax player whose style fits the song.
I guess the "soft-rock" label fits, but it's really the jazz influence you're hearing, and the style of jazz that infuses Steely Dan is the laid-back kind. Still, there's a sort of quiet intensity in a lot of their songs, and their lyrics are sometimes downright acerbic. Not so much latey, though. The guys are getting kinda old, as are we all.
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My dad loves them. Got him an old copy of aja for fathers day.
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I recently saw Steely Dan at the local Zoo amphitheatre with my Dad. It was a shockingly good show, though what else should one expect from a band with impeccable, flawless musicians?? Aja and The Royal Scam are great.
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i love steely dan one of my all time favourite bands!
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"Aja" and "Gaucho" are my two fave albums from them.
"Aja" especially, cos i can put it on and let it run on repeat since there's not a weak track to be found on it.
that said, i'm not sure i've listened to them in a couple of years now. :roll:
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I'm not a huge Gaucho fan, but I really like Katy Lied. And of course The Royal Scam.
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I'm not a huge Gaucho fan, but I really like Katy Lied. And of course The Royal Scam.
i'll fess up and admit "Hey Nineteen" is the principal reason why that album got my vote. :-D