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Steely Dan..

#81
Every year, just like the turn of the seasons and the birds migrate, a deeply-ingrained suggestion rears it head, and it's time to break out Citizen Steely Dan, Two Against Nature, Everything Must Go, 12 Tracks of Whack, The Nightfly, The New York Rock + Soul Review, the entire SD fleet casts off and sets sail into the practice rotation for JW. It's an annual and unavoidable tectonic shift internally.

It's very sophisticated music that has taught me a lot. Doubt my redneck roots would ever allow me to be a hipster, but I have my moments.

And I'm always dumbstruck by how WB could double so amazingly well on guitar and bass. It's hard for me to imagine anyone else who could sub for Larry Carlton AND Fast Freddie W. Unbelievable.

Always a fave, 'Time Out of Mind'.

 
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#82
roccobass said:
Just to backtrack a bit...

During an old interview with Walter Becker. He said as soon as Chuck Rainey started showing at the studio, he saw no reason to bring his own bass in. Chuck being phenomenal as he is. AND HE IS !!

However, I always thought Walt had own style which I really liked. Hark back to Rikki Don't Lose that Number, Any Major Dude, Do it Again, Midnite Cruiser, Reeling in the Years to name a few. He just kicks it bass wise.
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I know for a fact that Chuck Rainey played bass on Any Major Dude, because when I was learning it I realized the lines were just so Chuck and I had to look it up to verify my hunch. I don't remember who played the others you name but Walt was certainly more than capable as a bassist.

Walt also played Deacon Blues, which was the only track he played on the Aja album. Super talented guy, and sorely missed.
 
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#83
Y’all are hilarious, trying to deny that Steely Dan is yacht rock. Look, I don’t consider yacht rock a pejorative label any more than I consider country music or EDM a pejorative label. It’s just a descriptor.

And it is definitely a descriptor that applies to Steely Dan. The term was first coined in 2005 in an online video series, and Steely Dan was one of the bands explicitly identified. The creator of the series said “getting into Steely Dan really started this for me.” How can you with a straight face say the label that was inspired by Steely Dan doesn’t apply to Steely Dan? That’s crazy talk.

Some 17 years later, every single music service that has a yacht rock category (which includes Spotify, Amazon, Sirius XM, Apple Music, etc.—it might even be all of them) includes Steely Dan in this category.

If you throw a yacht rock theme party literally nobody at the party will go “hey, that’s not yacht rock” when Steely Dan comes on. In the mid 2000s the group I played poker with used to do a themed playlist for each night we played, with everyone contributing a few songs. One of the nights was yacht rock, and multiple people contributed Steely Dan songs.

Claiming Steely Dan is not yacht rock is like saying Yes isn’t prog rock. You can be in denial all you want, but when you say “yacht rock” to almost anybody, including the people who actually invented the label, Steely Dan doesn’t merely qualify—SD is one of the core bands of the genre.

I’ll happily give that Steely Dan is better-executed than most of, maybe even all of, the other things that are classified as yacht rock, but that doesn’t make it any less a member of the category. SD is absolutely yacht rock.
 
#84
LBS-bass said:
I know for a fact that Chuck Rainey played bass on Any Major Dude, because when I was learning it I realized the lines were just so Chuck and I had to look it up. I don't remember who played the others you name but Walt was certainly more than capable as a bassist.

Walt also played Deacon Blues, which was the only track he played on the Aja album. Super talented guy, and sorely missed.
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Oops. Just going by the info I had at the time. ;)
 
#86
SunByrne said:
And it is definitely a descriptor that applies to Steely Dan.
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So says one guy who doesn't care for them. People who like and understand their music seem to disagree.

I'd say there are two or three songs that might categorize that way. Did the video you cite use "Hey Nineteen" as the example? Yeah, I'd give you that.

But it's trendy to dismiss this music in this way. Enjoy your evening!
 
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#90
roccobass said:
Bad info again I got. Thought Royal
Scam was the one…Just corrected my
earlier post. Thanks.
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No worries. Freddie did do some stellar work with them, just not in the studio. I don't think they recorded with anyone other than Walt and Chuck on bass but there might be something in the mix that I'm not aware of. I'm not like an expert on their stuff or anything. Just geeky enough to look some things up :)
 
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#91
I have always loved them. They basically are a genre of their own. Last 2 albums were their weakest, IMO, but still very listenable. Saw them live twice in the mid 2000's. Watching how they created their music is mind blowing, masters of their craft.
 
#93
LBS-bass said:
So says one guy who doesn't care for them.
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No, says the person who invented the term. The term was expressly invented for Steely Dan and bands with a similar sound. Did you even read the rest of my post?

And how is it in any way relevant to the applicability of this label that I don’t care for them? That somehow makes my argument less valid, because I disagree with your taste? That’s almost an an ad hominem. This argument isn’t personal—I don’t think any less of anybody because they like SD, so don’t disparage me simply because I don’t.

Come on, LBS, you’re one of the people on this site I really respect—you’re better than that.
 
#94
SunByrne said:
No, says the person who invented the term. The term was expressly invented for Steely Dan and bands with a similar sound. Did you even read the rest of my post?
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I read your post. What it says to me is that the person who invented the term really has little understanding of music and lumped a bunch of stuff together that's really quite different on the basis of some of it being mellow and keyboard heavy, perhaps.

You can point to specific songs and say that they fall roughly into this category. You can point to the presence of people like Michael McDonald and hear some crossover between this music and some of the stuff he did on his own or with the Doobies. But you really can't categorize the bulk of SD's music this way. The person who made up this term, if this is in fact the history, doesn't really know much about their music if he's tossing it all into that boat (pun intended). And a lot of people think they know this music when they've only really heard a few hits.

I'll let other people argue the difference between jazz influence and pop influence, etc. etc.
 
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