"You Wear That White Tuxedo How You Gonna Beat The Heat?"

“You wear that white tuxedo, how you gonna beat the heat?”

“What’s up with Steely Dan?”

“What’s up with Steely Dan, Matt?” A friend asked me this when I revealed I had been listening to a lot of The Dan’s 1974 album Katie Lied. It’s a question worthy of a book-length response, unfortunately I don’t have the drive or determination required to write a book. People assume I’m a staunch indie rock purist who only listens to bands that pass a battery of tests I’ve developed to assess their credibility, or lack thereof.

It would likely surprise, even shock, a lot of my friends and acquaintances to learn that over the past few years I have bought CDs by Steely Dan, Thin Lizzy, The Kinks, Neil Young, and a whole ass-load of Motorhead. For the sake of full disclosure I’ll also admit entertaining the notion, if only briefly, of delving into the catalogs of T. Rex, Elton John, Mountain, and early ZZ Top (but, that momentary lapse of reason was solely due to the fact that Motorhead covered ZZ Top’s “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers” on an early recording). And then there are the current bands I’ve been enjoying that make no effort to hide the considerable influence of classic rock in their music, like White Whale, The Long Winters, Rhett Miller, Mary Lorson & Saint Low, The Minus 5, and The Broken West.

Maybe it’s the natural effects of aging. Maybe it’s inevitable that you’ll end up being that guy you swore up and down you never would. Or, maybe it was just boredom, the need for something outside of my sphere of routine experience that lead me to check out classic bands already enshrined in the rock pantheon. I was no stranger to Steely Dan when I bought the remastered CD of Countdown To Ecstasy, its second album, released in 1973, a few months ago. For many years I’ve had an on-again, off-again fascination with Steely Dan.

“Who Else Was Going To Do That?”

I’m not about to lay some ridiculous theory on you about Steely Dan embodying the core ethos and ideals of punk rock, or go on about how they have as much in common with Stiv Bators and Iggy Pop as they do with Pat Metheny and Winton Marsalis. Overzealous record nerds and critics have attempted that type of subterfuge way too often with way too many artists. You know, like when people say that Frank Sinatra is “rock n’ roll” because he embraced the same essential spirit of rebellion and exuded a similar up-yours attitude as early rockers? That’s just fucking bullshit, an absolute load of crap.

Frank Sinatra is, was, and always will be music for old people. And Sinatra was a sworn enemy of rock n’ roll. It’s well documented that he openly detested and disparaged it, basically called it garbage, an abomination. Fuck Frank Sinatra. Because of nonsense like that - people painting Sinatra as “rock n’ roll” - I’m not going to try and sell you any bill of goods about Steely Dan; they have no connection to indie rock whatsoever.

Some people might perceive the recent rekindling of my interest in Steely Dan as a flip, ironic gesture. A hipster championing some old band only because he’s confident nobody else in his circle of friends ever would. It might appear to be whimsical posturing; picking a band that most people would expect me to hate, and becoming its vocal proponent. That is not the case. Over the years, I’ve often realized that the song caught in my head at a given time is a Steely Dan song, mostly “My Old School,” “Bodhisattva,” “Bad Sneakers,” and “Reeling In The Years.”

Now I’ll admit it would be a hoot to convince the style-conscious indie snobs that Steely Dan is the seminal, quintessentially overlooked band they have to have on their i-pod. Make them think that without Steely Dan there’d be no Death Cab For Cutie, Spoon, Camera Obscura, or Broken Social Scene, even though it’s not true. I thought about pulling this ruse with the Allman Brothers after I first heard The Black Keys. I don’t even like the Allmans, but there is absolutely no reason anyone who digs The Black Keys should ever scoff at Eat A Peach. Point being, oftentimes the chasm separating “credible” bands in the indie world from their ridiculed ancestors isn’t as wide as imagined.

But convincing indie rockers to embrace Steely Dan would probably be an extremely tough sell. I can’t think of any band, indie or otherwise, past or present, that sounds like Steely Dan. And maybe that’s why I like them. Like my friend James said, “Just the idea of the band is cool…I mean, who else was going to do that?”

He’s got a point. What other 1970s hit-makers and major label staples were writing lounge-jazz tunes about pedophiles, like “Everyone’s Gone To The Movies” from Steely Dan’s 1974 album Katy Lied? Now, I am by no means endorsing or condoning the practice of pedophilia, nor am I suggesting that every band should venture into such tricky, potentially sickening lyrical territory. But here’s the thing, a lot of seedy, creepy shit goes on in this depraved world, and ignoring it won’t make it go away. And to their credit, Dan songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen never let things get too graphic; a lot is implied.

And what’s up with that saxophone on “Everyone’s Gone To The Movies”? It bores into your skull like a hallucinogenic drug. Much of the time it was just subtle skewing of pop music conventions that lent Steely Dan an aura of unsettling strangeness, like the trippy backward guitar tracks on Countdown To Ecstasy’s final song, “King Of The World.” As often as not Becker and Fagen’s songs didn’t assault you with their quirks or subject matter culled from society’s underbelly, their weirdness just hung in the air, like a haze of opium smoke.





“Any World That I’m Welcome To Is Better Than The One I Come From.”

My recollection of the 1970s is vague at best; I was born in 1973. But based on scraps of memory that sporadically surface from my subconscious, and impressions of the decade I’ve taken away from movies, books, and television shows, it seems the ‘70s were a time when many people used their personal freedom to experiment with sex and drugs, among other things, frequently to an extent that was self-abusive. Perhaps I’m totally misguided in my theorizing, but there seems to be ample historical precedent to explain why people would feel lost, adrift, and willing to throw caution to the wind during the ‘70s.

The hell that Viet Nam became, its graphic brutality brought into people’s living rooms by the news media, the enduring mental toll on Veterans, and the way that war tore America in two was enough to disillusion many who grew up in the peace and prosperity of the ‘50s, then subscribed to the hopefulness of the free-love hippies in the ‘60s. In addition, witnessing the Cuban Missile Crises, the Kennedy (John and Bobby) and King assassinations, Watergate, and the rise of international terrorism could certainly crush the idealism of an entire generation. All things considered, it would be easy to understand why some people believed the human race was on the brink of its demise. Many of them probably became fatalists and nihilists, or at least embraced hedonism, figuring there might not be a tomorrow, so do everything today, and enjoy it to the fullest.

Steely Dan’s music seems to capture the excess, experimentation, self-absorption, and darkness that underscored the ‘70s. The lyrical component was always slightly warped. Even one of the group’s first and biggest hits, “Do It Again,” has some of the bleakest words to ever be wed to a pop song. Certainly, not every one of the band’s songs was dismal and defeatist, but a lot of Steely Dan’s catalog has something unmistakably deviant and cynical lurking beneath its placid smooth jazz surface. Even relatively straightforward, nostalgic tunes like “My Old School” and “Reeling In The Years” pack a knowing resignation and bitter aftertaste.

This juxtaposition of dark, realistic lyrical content with some of the mellowest, most innocuous music imaginable, a lounge influenced jazz-pop hybrid, is one of the main reasons Steely Dan is so damn intriguing. Some would argue that I’m attracted to the gritty, subversive aspects of Steely Dan’s music because I am an eternal pessimist with a predisposition to be negative. They would have a point, but I have a different explanation.

I believe the most interesting music combines elements that are seemingly completely at odds with each other, things that aren’t expected to go together. A perfect example of this can be found on records by one of my all-time favorite bands, The Muffs. Inside their tight, concise, sing-along pop songs, modeled after ‘50s and ‘60s rock n’ roll pioneers as much as pop-punk bands that followed, singer/guitarist Kim Shattuck punctuates her vocals with lung-busting screams and primal growls. Long gone, and greatly missed, Buffalo group milf covered their hooky power pop tunes and soulful grooves with a thick layer of noisy, churning, swirling guitar that drove some casual listeners away from what were otherwise extremely accessible songs, but came out with intense, textured, infinitely interesting records.

“And Somebody Else’s Favorite Songs”

A simpler way of explaining Steely Dan’s appeal is Becker and Fagen’s knack for writing melodically centered, effortlessly memorable songs. I call this Abba’s Law. It explains why so many people I’ve known with otherwise impeccable musical taste and extensive knowledge love Abba…or The Spice Girls, or Madonna…you get the idea. They simply cannot resist the magnetic pull of the catchy, candy-sweet pop melodies designed with one purpose, to set up permanent residence in your head. Even at its most brazenly commercial moments, on its most grotesquely over-produced tracks, like “Peg,” “FM,” “Josie,” and “Babylon Sisters,” Steely Dan is maddeningly catchy, and several of Becker and Fagen’s tunes have haunted my memory for so long I doubt any exorcism could rid me of them.

Steely Dan will surely never replace Versus, Superchunk, Shudder To Think, Fugazi, or any number of other indie rock bands in my heart or CD collection, but I cannot deny I like them. I won’t stand behind them unconditionally however. The amount of wanking on any Steely Dan album is off the charts. These guys are trained and technically proficient musicians, and they were eager to show off their chops. Plus, their musical background, listening interests, philosophy, and approach to playing differ radically from my own.

Still, their form of expression is no less valid than any punk band. And in fact, I’m at a point in my life where I see very little difference between extended solos on a Steely Dan album and the noisy guitar experimentation of Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo; it’s all wanking to me. At least Steely Dan comes back to a chorus I can sing along with. I guess I really am losing my edge, huh?

In the liner notes of the 1998 reissue of Countdown To Ecstasy (MCA), Donald Fagen and Walter Becker wrote, “…There is a substantial body of opinion which holds that Countdown was the best Steely Dan album, bar none. Generally speaking, the type of person who typically holds this position is not the sort of individual you want sitting across the table from you at a dinner party, especially one where alcoholic beverages are being served.” I am one who holds the aforementioned opinion, so perhaps it’s not quite time to put me out to pasture. I can cling to that tiny remnant of rebellion, as derogatory as it may seem. We all do what we must to continue living with ourselves.