Monday, February 3, 2025

Fallen Heroes Dept. - Steely Dan Gets Tin Worm

This pitcher is, like, a metaphor. A metaphor is like a simile.

 

Way back in, ooh, seventy-three or whatever, there was nobody cooler on the face of the planet than Steely Dan. Carrying a Dan album around marked you out as one of the hipster elite. Compared to their lawyer-level snark smarts and jazzbo academy chops, Little Feat were a bunch of body shop slackers, filling the back of the project Camaro with bong smoke. And the Doobie Brothers were hillbillies, eternally falling off the same porch. Th' Dan VIP Leisure Lounge was where the smart kids hung out, in our dreams, snorting lines of pure Bolivian snow off the tits of the Latina room maid. Snickering at the Secret Lodge humor that only the initiated understood. The shine of your Japan, the sparkle of your China! Every arcane Dan delight was enriched by the knowledge that their music went wayyy over the heads of the shmuck in the street. Those fugitive melodies? The collegiate use of language qua signs? That indescribable, ineffable, incommunicable Dan-ness hung on you like some mystic glowing lamasery tour laminate. If you knew, you knew. Like New Yorkers believe that a "New York thing" is some private privilege only understood in all its deliciousness by scaly-skinned loft lizards, Dan Man Fans peered out warily at the rest of the world and opted to stay inside, clamped under the headphones.

Case in point: the author [left, and gee fucking whiz - Ed.] - Dan Man Fan, counting down to ecstasy. I bought all the albums. Even after the muse of melody crept away into the night, me and my hip pals carried the sodium torch of th' Dan, basking in its cold glow. Meanwhile, the dumb straights were out partying and pretending to like Motown and getting laid. Hah! Joke's on them, right? Right?

I'm trying to remember the last time I - metaphorically - reached for a Dan album. Not that that's any measure of their worth - I'm also trying to remember what I came into the room for - but their appeal has atrophied to the point where memory drifts into forgetfulness. I still listen, with vein-pulsing pleasure - to Little Feat, and the Brothers Doobie, but if I'm going to have to choose a Dan album I might listen to today, it would be Becker's 18 Tracks Of Whack, which the quick-witted among you will have noted isn't even a Steely Dan record. And that would be because it's sincere and moving and mostly unironic and the jokes don't require a thesaurus to get. And if I chose just one Dan song to carry with me into the gilded eternity, it would be American Lovers, which they didn't even record, th' shmucks.


Today's Freeload™ is the oft-booted and variously-yclept Yellow Peril, as chock full o' good tunes as any album they released. I may even listen to it again. If I remember. And below is their best song, sung by the great Thomas Jefferson Kaye.








 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

48 comments:

  1. To qualify for today's Freeload o' Foam Fun®, simply answer the musical question: th' Feat, or th' Dan?

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    1. Oh - and the embedded YouTube link seems to be fucked. Watcha gonna do?

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    2. The Dan (and the YT link is working for me now)

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    3. Dan... I liked Little Feat, but the jazzy aspects of the Dan appealed more to my natural jazz aesthetic.

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  2. I am Dan, it seems. Feat, I like, but came along just a little late to really get them.

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  3. th' Dan --He Who Is Yclept Muzak McM., local chapter president, Society for Bringing Back Long-Lost Words and Phrases

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  4. Dan is too sterile and cold for my tastes. Give me da Feat up to the Waiting for Columbus lp.

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  5. Hmm.. like 'em both .. but s'pose recently I've listened to da Feats ... (Cold, Cold, Cold!!) ... more ... a.k.a. Surrey Steve!! .. Ooh!!

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  6. The dan, but Little Feat punched their weight, and i really dig "Electric Lycanthrope" and that track, "Day at the Dog Races".

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    1. The latter is only one of 2 or 3 tracks I know by LF, and I took it to be a Return To Forever outtake when given to me on a compilation tape in 1989.

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    2. What's the view like out there on the limb, Grimbo?

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    3. "Deacon Blue" can speak for me and the loneliness of being right:

      "My back to the wall, a victim of laughing chance
      This is for me, the essence of true romance
      Sharing the things we know and love with those of my kind
      Libations, sensations that stagger the mind"

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    4. Deacon Blue is one of their best songs. Day At The Dog Races is perhaps Little Feat's worst. When th' Dan deign to give the impression of having and expressing actual emotion, th' Dan are swell. When th' Feat pretend to be jazzrock I wander off to the bar.

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  7. Replies
    1. Of what? Your anonimity is no excuse for lack of clarity.

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  8. jumpin' in Feat first. Fun fact, Skunk Baxter, he of the Doobies & a Danette, used to show up sometimes at International Studies Association meetings, mingling with the geeks a poppin', mostly, basically, largely white guys in ties talking about missile size...before morphing into white guys in ties talking about China. Who knows how to have fun, huh?

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  9. I was into the Feat from the review of their 1st album in Rolling Stone onward. But I've probably listened to Aja more in the last year than Dixie Chicken.

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  10. That's like asking which child you prefer. Feat for the funk & Dan for the sublime.
    -notBob

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    1. The doctor will see you now. Leave your pants on the hook on the door.

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  12. Dan or Feat? Depends on the day. Today it's Martha and the Vandellas.

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  13. Never got into either of 'em, aside from (some of) the hits, same as the Doobs and the essentially hitless Zappa -- a couple of other home-state* bands that are more popular on th'Isle than they are with me. Having said that, what hits I like by the Dan -- like an above poster, they were too icy sterile for me (same with the Eagles) -- I really like, so I'm intrigued by what you're proffering, especially as it appears to date from their early period.
    *Yes I know Dan wasn't home-grown, but going to L.A. made 'em
    C in California

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    1. I'll do the load-up soon as I get back from my horizon-tilting-down dawn walk along the riverfront. It's a very good pop rock album.

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  14. Barely know LF and know only 'Aja', 'Gaucho' and Fagen's 'Nightfly' from SD stable. yes, I could easily imagine their reputedly super-smart "What the Mad Men's younger siblings did the following decade" schtick coming across as too glossy, glib and self-satisfied to travel well.

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    1. You know those Amazon album comments that advise the noob that this album - whatever the album - is not the best entry point for those interested in the band and that THEIR CHOICE HERE is? Well, you clearly need that kind of authoritative advice with Little Feat. I'm here to help, so hop over there and find out.

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    2. I can't (won't) make up my mind, I really like both bands, a lot.

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    3. Ohhhhh, Fanny, get those headphones on and ejjicate yourself.

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  15. Here's Yellow Peril/The Early Years:
    https://workupload.com/file/5LVPsyH6qer

    Arranged By – Fagen*, Becker*
    Backing Vocals – Donald Fagen (tracks: A1, A4, B1, B5), Keith Thomas* (tracks: A1, A4, B1, B5), Kenny Vance (tracks: A3), Walter Becker (tracks: A1, A3, A4, B1, B5)
    Bass – Walter Becker (tracks: A1 to A5, B1 to B3, B5)
    Bass Guitar – Walter Becker (tracks: B5)
    Drums – John Discepolo (tracks: A1, A4, A5, B1, B2, B5), John Mazzi (tracks: A2, A3, B3), Kenny Vance (tracks: B4)
    Engineer [Re-mix] – Mike Getlin
    Guitar – Denny Dias (tracks: A1 to A4, B1, B3, B5), Elliot Randall* (tracks: A5), Walter Becker (tracks: A2, A3, B4)
    Keyboards – Donald Fagen (tracks: A1, A2, A4, A5, B1, B2, B3, B5)
    Lead Vocals – Donald Fagen (tracks: A1 to A3, A5, B3, B4), Keith Thomas* (tracks: A4, B2, B5), Walter Becker (tracks: A1 to A2, B1, B3)
    Lyrics By – Charles Dodgson (tracks: B1)
    Mastered By – Wally Traugott
    Music By – Donald Fagen (tracks: B1), Walter Becker (tracks: B1)
    Percussion – Denny Dias (tracks: A1, A4, B1)
    Piano – Donald Fagen (tracks: A3, B4)
    Saxophone – Donald Fagen (tracks: B3)
    Written-By – Fagen* (tracks: A1 to A5, B2 to B5), Becker* (tracks: A1 to A5, B2 to B5)

    They oughta of gave this a studio refresh and issued it as part of the lamentable Citizen Dan box, but oh no. As well as the Alternate Gaucho. But no. They was always the meanest most spiteful motheruckers when it came to back catalog.

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    1. Thanky thanky! Here's hoping that the stellar guitar work and arrangements that attract me to what I like about SD are present and accounted for in this early incarnation.
      C in California

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    2. I think if they were up to Dan standard, they would have been released. But the songs, and the playing, are good enough for pop rock, and better than most bands, and with a very little tinkering could have been released. Tinkering was what they did. I think the quest for the Perfect Arrangement is one of the aspects of their albums I fell out of love with. The endless retakes to get the hi-hat sounding exactly like God tapping a hubcap with a chopstick - who cares? Richie Hayward gave the Feat a better drum sound, and was a much more characterful drummer, than anyone they let sit on the stool.

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    3. Now there you have one of the criteria required for being a musician (aside from basic manual skills and talent) that disqualifies me - the ability and willingness to endure the will-to-live sapping abasement of participating in the slow murder of a creative spark through the drudgery of gratuitous repetition and 'perfectionist' OCD caprice.

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    4. It's easy to overlook the sheer (these things are always sheer) amount of studio time these guys put in. Take after take. Little Feat albums still sound loose enough to rock, and that's more of an achievement (to me - IMHO, OOAA etc. etc.) than the fractal waveform surgery the Dan were famous for. Ted Templeman's genius is integral to Sailin' Shoes, and if there's a better rock band album than that, I ain't heard it.

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    5. Just broke my "no daytime TV" vow to watch a 20 minute YT video about the making of 'Gaucho'.

      What a pair of wasteful, obnoxious, anally-retentive idiots.

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    6. Idiots? No. And they wrote some great songs, and then they didn't, and the reliance on polished technique took over.

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  16. Thanx, it was interesting, but glad they got some better musicians for their real albums. Brooklyn drags way too much on this version. (picky picky picky...)
    -notBob

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    1. Brooklyn is clearly a demo, just feeling their way through it, but the others are more finished. The musicians are fine.

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  17. Incidentally, there's a verrry interesting and quite rare guitar hanging on my wall - anyone recognise it? There's a Grand Prize of a lifetime's supply of hanging chads for the lucky winner!

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    1. Nope, don't recognise the guitar, but you sure looked like a 'major dude'.

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    2. How strange, the change, from major to minor ...

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  18. Although th' IoF© is nothing if not a broad church, encouraging a diverse spread of musical opinion and tolerant of even the most eccentric enthusiasms, it is my solemn duty to inform those who chose Steely Dan in this mass debate will be subject to (*Farfisa doom chord*) TH' CURSE O' FOAM©, here manifested as a slight swelling of the right eyeball in its socket, impeding its rotation and causing severe problems with depth of field perception. The effect is temporary but could, under the wrong circumstances, be hazardous. I wash my hands of any responsibility; you made your choice, "karma is a bitch" and so on.

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  19. I love them both but while I appreciate The Dan, I enjoy The Feats.

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    1. A fine distinction. My attention wanders when a Dan album is playing (I'm sure it didn't when my attention span was as long as my hair), but I'm actively involved with the Feat, feel every beat. AND Lowell has possibly the sweetest voice in rock. "Vanilla grits" as Van Dyke Parks put it. I think. Vocals were never the Dan's USP.

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