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Shades of Billie Eilish

#82
BassFishingInAmerica said:
When I was growing up in the 70s, I knew about:
Abbott and Costello
The little rascals
Jimmy Stewart
Red Skelton
Roy Rodgers
The members of The Rat Pack
The Andrews Sisters ... etc.
... without help from the Internet.
Okay ... now give me the "okay boomer."
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Actually, you'd be post-boomer. Had to be a kid in the 50's, with high-school in the 60's to be a boomer - been there, done that!:);):thumbsup:
 
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#84
At 36 I'm probably a couple years younger than most Steely Dan fans but have always been aware of the band. I've been impressed with how many people will come up to the band on gigs to compliment us anytime we do SD tunes. They're still very popular among a certain demographic. I usually wince when I hear someone talk about putting together a tribute band but if you're in the right market a Steely Dan group would do very well.
 
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#85
Hey, Nineteen is the song I play through the p.a. when setting up. It takes me about two minutes to fully balance the sound. Great song, too.

When the Beatles Anthology (vol 1) came out, my kids bought it for me. Then, all three of the kids stole it at various times, and two have purchased several Beatle cd's since. They had "heard" of the Beatles, but they had never listened to the music until the Anthologies came out.
 
#86
Steely Dan is one of my favorite bands ever, even if it consisted mostly of two guys most of the time. There were some low spots like Gaucho, but 'Aja' is, in my view, in the top few albums ever made by anyone. And jeez this is TalkBass - Chuck Rainey totally KILLS IT on Aja, he's amazing. He plays bass on all the tracks except Deacon Blues, and his parts are just iconic. Walter Becker (one of the two guys comprising the Dan) played bass on Deacon Blues, and he was quite a good bass player in his own right - does most of the bass playing on their last couple of albums.

Also - Steely Dan got a lot of airplay in NYC and the Hudson Valley, and still do in the Hudson Valley. They met at Bard (near where I am up there) and Fagen lived in Woodstock for a long time, I think he still has a place up there.

Just my $.02. I would love to play in a Steely Dan tribute band.
 
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#88
Mugre said:
Right you are. Bodisattva was the first song I remember knowing that is was a band called Steely Dan. it was a long time ago. Most everyone above were naming later songs as radio hits so I added my small tid-bit.

Be well,

mugre
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Bodhisattva is one of those songs I cherish for a variety of reasons. In the 80's I was in a band with a fantastic guitarist who could play that whole thing by himself, all the harmonies on one guitar. We would do that song at the end of a set and people would be standing on their chairs by the end.

Recently resurrected it with the band I'm currently in; there's a video of us out there somewhere playing it. Our current guitarist is extremely talented but even he can only play two of the harmonies, and the other guitarist we had for a while didn't practice enough so he always botched the third line. So we put it on the back burner for a bit. If we ever bring in a second guitar again, we'll play it.
 
#91
I'm 50, so GenX. I know very well who SD are, and remember some of their stuff being on the radio when I was a kid. Never really clicked for me. There's music you like and music you respect for one reason or another, and those things aren't always the same. Steely Dan is probably the most respectable of the genre (definitely strong technical ability), but personally I can't stand yacht rock. Not bashing people who do, it's just not for me. Most of us probably have genres we don't care for, even if we respect some of the artists in that genre.

I guess I can see why people who are a little older than me might be distressed that people a little younger than me don't know who Steely Dan are, but frankly, if you weren't around when those things were on the radio the first time out, it's not surprising people missed them. The shelf life for that stuff being popular wasn't very long, or at least not that I remember. Much more surprising to me that someone wouldn't know Van Halen than Steely Dan. And who cares that SD sold, what, 40 million records? How many since 1985? (That's the last 35 years.) Aja was 43 years ago. Van Halen has sold more than double that 40m, and I'm guessing a lot more of those sales are more recent. Heck, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell sold 50 million all by itself and I'd be shocked to find any non-musician under 40 who's even heard of Meat Loaf at all (unless they had a parent who was a huge fan or something).
 
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#92
BassFishingInAmerica said:
You're right about that. For some kids, it's become anyone over 40.
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Depends how you define the Boomer era. I was born at the tail end of it. I didn't go to school in the 50's, and I came of age in the mid 70's. The older kids who were teens when I was in grade school had Cream and the British Invasion with the Beatles and Stones. We all heard that stuff, but it was all old music by then. We got the tail end of those bands and things like Houses of the Holy, but New Wave and Punk sort of defined much of my young adult life, musically speaking.

But, technically, the baby boom started at the end of WWII and continued through 1963, which puts me in that category rather than Gen X. In many ways I relate more with Gen X, though.
 
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#93
Michedelic said:
When was the last time they put an album
out? Had a hit single on the radio? Oh, by the way, what's an album? What's radio? I'm sure there are college students who don't know(or care)who the Foo Fighters are(where). Or Jack White, Coldplay, Radiohead, The Killers, Green Day, Kings of Leon, Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons, etc. Britney Spears, even. BTW, the answer to the first question is 2003. That's almost 20 years ago.
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This makes me feel old.
 
#95
BassFishingInAmerica said:
When I was growing up in the 70s, I knew about:
Abbott and Costello
The little rascals
Jimmy Stewart
Red Skelton
Roy Rodgers
The members of The Rat Pack
The Andrews Sisters ... etc.
... without help from the Internet.
Okay ... now give me the "okay boomer."
Click to expand...

Lol! I grew up in the 80s and 90s... I knew all those things as well.
In fact, I remember buying this "album" of cassettes called "History of Radio" - it predated Time Life, and had all the A&C radio shows and "The Shadow" on tape! "The Shadow knows..."

My parents had us in their 40s and weren't technically "Boomers" ... But everything, I mean EVERYTHING on TV and Radio was geared to Baby Boomers. I once got turned down for a bank loan because I was too young and "risky" - a true "ok boomer" moment. Most of those banking people have retired. lol!

In all fairness to the OP's experience, I know a lot of Baby Boomers who don't really know any Steeley Dan songs - but if they hear one, with that sterile, middle-of-the-road production, they recognize it instantly as something they have heard before. Surprisingly, many of them like Springsteen! Go figure!

Have you ever watched a Steeley Dan concert? It's hilarious. I've never seen so many post-middle-aged men air-drumming in one room before!
 
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#96
Michedelic said:
"Do It Again", quickly followed by "Reeling..."(or was it the other way around?)off the first album were substantial hits right off the bat, on a national level. The second album, "Countdown", where you'll find 'Bodhisattva', was a bit of a sophomore slump, but they were back on track with "Rikki" and 'Pretzel Logic'.
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Do It Again, was the first hit, and then Reelin' in the Years. I was managing a record store at the time. The album, "Can't Buy A Thrill" was released in '72 and got no airplay at all for about 6 months. In fact, I was supposed to be sending back most of my copies to our distributor when all of a sudden Do It Again got airplay. I knew it was going to be hit, so I didn't send back any of my albums. Sure enough, about two weeks later I was just about the only shop in LA who had any of their albums. IMHO, that whole first album is filled with great songs. I don't think they ever put out another album with so many good songs on it. And, they put out a lot of good albums and a lot of good songs.

A fun thing about their sudden rise to fame after years of playing is that they had a heck of a time getting the guitarist back who did that great lead work on Reelin' In the Years and Do It Again. Evidently he had moved on to another project when the album took off and they got a gig playing on the Midnight Special.


 
#97
Rip Van Dan said:
A fun thing about their sudden rise to fame after years of playing is that they had a heck of a time getting the guitarist back who did that great lead work on Reelin' In the Years and Do It Again. Evidently he had moved on to another project when the album took off and they got a gig playing on the Midnight Special.


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I think they made a big mistake getting rid of that singer they poached from The Myddle Class. His voice lent a musicality to the tunes that otherwise kinda sounded like Muzak.

Then they began spending much more time on each album, and just the same, each subsequent album became less and less interesting for anyone but the cult-followers of the band. Fagan's "The Night Fly" was a smidge more interesting, though.
 
#99
Nobody batted an eyelash (Eilish?) when "Your Mother Should Know" came out... and that was basically the boomer version of "Ok boomer..." to the so-called "Silent Generation"

In some cases, younger folk are being forced to experience artists that had hits long before they were born for all the wrong reasons.

But now, with virtually every new release, some old fart is sitting in an office waiting to copyright troll a new artist. So much so now that virtually all new music is vetted doubly-so by lawyers to be sure that if it tramples on a prior song, it's only going to pass muster if it's an absolute blockbuster of a revenue generator for the label.
 

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