Replies

Agreed. Those backup singers on the TvN tour were great. (I can't keep track of all the musicians they've used - although on this one, surprisingly, its the exact same band on every song, which is a first for SD)

Actually though, "Dirty Work" is the one and only Steely Dan song I really hate. "Do It Again" is next. But other than those 2 everything is great, as are Donald's solo albums. Walter Becker would be best serves not putting out any other singles albums, although "Slag of Ages" is a good song.

And let's face it, even SD's mediocre stuff is better than most anything else out there today.

I'll be honest: If I never heard Walter Becker sing again, I'd be okay with that. (He strikes me as a bit of a wannabe in that regard.) I much prefer Donald Fagen's strained, reaching-for-the-top-of-his-range-with-hardly-any-control thing, for some reason. Maybe it's the tension. Maybe it's the way the delivery sort of betrays the lyrics - you can sort of be sucked in, listening casually along and then you realize later what the subject matter is.

Case in point: The bit about "face time" in the "service elevator". That's a pretty wild lyric but he expresses everything so smoothly, so seemlessly, that I didn't even catch it until the third or fourth listen to "Everything Must Go".

There are a lot of examples like that. There are just so many cool things going on musically...then lyrically, it's like being around somebody with a really dry sense of humor.

Man, I love those guys.