Steely Dan and I go back a long way. From the days when I pestered my older brothers to bring me to gigs, crashed their parties and stole their albums, the Dan's music has been an essential background to some of my highs and lows.
From the earliest time, Steely Dan have had a rather fractious reputation amongst the musical fraternity. Famous for their high standards (they famously sacked Mark Knopfler) they would worry their way through each album. None of that angst is apparent on the immaculate songs they’ve crafted and although there are many favourites of mine, Don't Take Me Alive, Only a Fool Would Say That, My Old School; Pretzel Logic; Dr Wu (to name but a few) I can’t with all honesty say there’s a weak track on any album.
My first “legit” album was Gaucho, given to me by a two-timing son of a bitch for whom I was a last fling before he got married (hope she fleeced you in what must only have been the inevitable divorce), and was the only good thing to come out of that mistake. Thereafter, the first question on meeting a prospective lover was “do you like Steely Dan?”. Ignorance could be forgiven and soon corrected, but a “not really” saw the fool kicked out the door, I can tell you. It’s not a bad tester ladies, I never met a man who liked the Dan who wasn’t one of the good guys.
The 20 year hiatus between Aja and Two Against Nature marked a busy solo career for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, with Fagen being the more productive. Now we were back to typical Steely Dan, punchy tunes, witty lyrics and production values from heaven (or hell if you’re into punk) Shame About Me and Jack of Speed and being the punchiest and wittiest.
They've done a couple more and re-visited some of their old stuff and I could go through every album and note each one but the above is a good flavour of what to expect.
As for the Dan being the soundtrack to my life, at a time when I had lost someone very dear to me and thought that life was over, I listened to Any Major Dude and there was Don, comforting me and telling me everything was okay in his usual laid back way.
In recent years, Steely Dan have finally received the recognition they deserve with a Grammy and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Awards (by which they were suitably unimpressed, cool dudes that they are). .
They are particularly well represented by a tribute band called Nearly Dan (a great bunch of people and a very tight band) who have the distinction of being permitted to release their live set on CD and DVD. Do check them out if you can.
