Why do people rag on Steely Dan's "Gaucho" so much?

Who exactly are these so-called "people" referred to in the original post? Everyone *I* know thinks Gaucho kicks ass.

xpost

ok to satisfy a weird curiosity. was donald fagen ever considered a hottie? or atleast a hipster/scenester back in the day? just surprised to find nothing of old pics online with him cavorting with models types (what i'd expect for some reason) or even just out in NY scene.

As for the Dan's jazz element -- and the haters can tell the "pseudo" part to Phil Woods, Wayne Shorter, or for that matter, Fagen's piano playing -- has anyone else heard the Warne Marsh/Pete Christlieb album Becker and Fagen produced in the late '70s? Really fine postbop stuff.

Well, this review from the AMG, for example (again, a not uncommon take that I've seen in reviews of this album):

"Aja was cool, relaxed, and controlled; it sounded deceptively easy. Its follow-up, Gaucho, while sonically similar, is its polar opposite: a precise and studied record, where all of the seams show. Gaucho essentially replicates the smooth jazz-pop of Aja, but with none of that record's dark, seductive romance or elegant aura. Instead, it's meticulous and exacting; each performance has been rehearsed so many times that it no longer has any emotional resonance. Furthermore, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's songs are generally labored, only occasionally reaching their past heights, like on the suave "Babylon Sisters," "Time Out of Mind," and "Hey Nineteen." Still, those three songs are barely enough to make the remainder of the album's glossy, meandering fusion worthwhile."

How one could call this "meticulous, exacting, and rehearsed" in an especially negative way that does not apply to any of their other albums (again, especially Aja) is beyond me.

The aforementioned Christgau (Gaucho gets the lowest rating of all the Dan albums):

"With Walter Becker down to composer credits and very occasional bass, Donald Fagen progresses toward the intellectual cocktail rock he's sought for almost a decade--followed, of course, by a cadre of top-drawer El Lay studio hacks, the only musicians in the world smart enough to play his shit. Even the song with Aretha in it lends credence to rumors that the LP was originally entitled Countdown to Lethargy. After half a dozen hearings, the most arcane harmonies and unlikely hooks sound comforting, like one of those electromassagers that relax the muscles with a low-voltage shock. Craftsmen this obsessive don't want to rule the world--they just want to make sure it doesn't get them. B-"

1993 Rating of Steely Dan's albums (Rolling Stone, I believe?)
4 Can't Buy a Thrill
4.5 Countdown
5 Pretzel Logic (somewhere, my dad is smiling)
4 Katy Lied
3 Royal Scam
4 Aja
2.5 Gaucho

Before that, one of the early editions of the Rolling Stone Record Guide (IIRC, Gaucho got a

That said, I can hear the sinister subtexts beneath the steely glint of the soporific music. For sure.

(There had to be some dissent here...)

By contrast, I've never connected as much with Aja for some reason -- possibly because the great Roger Nichols didn't engineer it (and you can tell) or maybe because they continue down the Royal Scam road but try to humanize it with songs like "Deacon Blues". Either way it doesn't really work -- by this point, they're just too hardened and SoCal'd out to pull it off.

Gaucho is just sort of the culmination of what started with Scam -- the soundtrack to hitting on the chick who works at the bank at the local Ramada bar. Yes, all the love has gone out of it -- every character's a total piece of shit, and relationships are all transactions of some kind. Yet it's also perfect in its way -- the singles are career highlights, sure. But at its core are "The Glamour Profession" and "Gaucho", with their soaring Tom Scott saxes and lyricons, brittle guitar parts and more than a touch of Broadway in the vocals and song construction. And then it all ends, yeah, on "Third World Man", which is just disturbing, slow and vague. It's hard to feel "satisfied" by it all, but an appropriate note to go out on for sure.

gahhhhh

Johnny's playroom
Is a bunker filled with sand
He's become a third world man

Smoky Sunday
He's been mobilized since dawn
Now he's crouching on the lawn
He's a third world man

Soon you'll throw down your disguise
We'll see behind those bright eyes
By and by
When the sidewalks are safe
For the little guy

I saw the fireworks
I believed that I was dreaming
Till the neighbors came out screaming
He's a third world man

Soon you'll throw down your disguise
We'll see behind those bright eyes
By and by
When the sidewalks are safe
For the little guys

When he's crying out
I just sing that Ghana Rondo
E l'era del terzo mondo
He's a third world man

OTMFM - about 'Aja,' that is.

Gaucho was the record where Fagen and sound engineer Roger Nichols wrestled endlessly with the drum machine that Nichols had developed. The strain between Fagen and Becker was starting to show, as well.

Despite all that, Gaucho has Babylon Sisters, one of the most harmonically advanced pop songs I can think of. And it gets stuck in your head! Must hear now...

there, I said it

OTM. I bought it when it came out and have tried to get into it about 15 times — and aside from the lecherous "Who has a friend named Melanie?/Who's not afraid to try new things?" couplet in "Janie Runaway" and a little bit of "West of Hollywood", absolutely nothing has stuck with me. It's actually hard to listen to...

You can thank Keith Jarrett for that.

Is it "What Makes You Think You're the One" that I'm thinking of? The smashes right at the end of the song?

That's a review of Katy Lied, not Gaucho. And it does go somewhere, to this insightful place: "The music lets us know that their cynicism is no more a celebration of cynicism than their smack references are a celebration of smack, lets us know we can break the habit."

Gaucho is pretty devastating, actually. It's their most bitter album. I like that about it, but then again, I'm not entirely healthy.

Though not as lively as "Chain Lightning" or "King of the World," from back when they masqueraded as a rock and roll band rather than a "sophisticated pop/jazz group."

Masqueraded? What did they ever masquerade as? That's huge, fat bullshit.

My father actually dated a nineteen-year old in 1980. She took my sister and I horseback riding. Weird to think that she'd be 45 this year.

does anyone have the unreleased version of it? the mp3s aren't on this site anymore but the story seems interesting.
http://www.bigomagazine.com/archive/ARrarities/ARsdgaucho.html

The Nightfly was a nice comeback.

anyway, I rank their LPs thusly: Countdown>Pretzel>Can't Buy>Katy>Aja>Gaucho>Scam. "Scam" is just too fucking dried out for me, even though "Kid Charlemagne" and "Haitian Divorce" are ace. But "Haitian" sure pales beside August Darnell's "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy," while "Kid" ain't as good a bye-bye-counterculture song as the one they wrote for Thomas Jefferson Kaye, "American Lovers." that's ze rub, to my mind.

and their last two, I can't get into them at all, although they're certainly well-done and nastily funny, sexist, middle-aged lust and its discontents, whatever. maybe some day I'll change my mind about them too.

I didn't hear Gaucho until much later, because I thought (wrongly I now suspect) that my problem with Aja and Nightfly was their too glossy production; Gaucho had the reputation of being more of the same but with weaker songs, so I avoided it. Something must have persuaded me to give it a try, and while there are jazz-fusion-lite meanderings I don't care for, I do like a lot of the album. Babylon Sister especially is one of those rare tracks that when the track finishes I just want to hear it again.

thanks "friend"

www.megaupload.com/?d=794BE365

mine in order: Aja just barely edging out Countdown to Ecstasy, then Katy Lied, then Gaucho though I can go back & forth on the order there - then Pretzel Logic, Royal Scam & Can't Buy a Thrill

admittedly I've listened less to Scam since my first big I-only-wanna-listen-to-SD phase circa 1989 so I should probably go look at it again...I seriously can't imagine ranking it higher than Katy Lied though, c'mon, that thing is the mid-period monster

Ha ha, never seen those, but great minds, jaxon...

kid charmalagne is the achilles last stand of steely dan!

i do like prescense and royal scam alot though....i even like two against nature...sort of...but there's something wierd about the melodies and chord changes that grates on me....i'm not musically knowledgable enough to tell you what that is...

Apt comparison!

Countdown to Ecstasy and Katy Lied seem like their masterworks.

I can't listen to "Third World Man" without tearing up - the only song in their vast catalogue that unnerves me.

The whole album is awesome!

The only thing that would make it better would be making it a double album with Aja.

But that's what's so hellish about it. It's Los Fucking Angeles.

A thought I had on another thread:

T/S: The best album about LA

Guns n' Roses Appetite for Destruction or Steely Dan Gaucho? Two sides of the same coin, I think.

Story:
http://www.bigomagazine.com/archive/ARrarities/ARsdgaucho.html

'Second arrangement' is probably my most listened to Steely Dan song. 'The Bear' is also good. If they had been finished and included, I think Gaucho would be an easy consensus for best Steely Dan album

READ THE FUCKING THREAD

however i had "deacon blues" stuck in my head this afternoon. i usually hate songs with long choruses (and repeating long choruses, at that), but "deacon blues" is just perfect. something about how assuredly bewildered fagen's delivery seems supersedes any possible klutziness.

And am I just imagining that Streisand covered "Barrytown"? I know she did the early-Becker/Fagen "I Mean to Shine," but I love the idea of her sticking it to the Archie Bunker type of "Barrytown."

It's funny reading this sentiment toward these two albums. Having grown up in a very Dan-friendly house, I've always loved their music, and The Royal Scam and Gaucho are my favorite albums. Scam is certainly not their greatest album, but, more so with Steely Dan than with most bands, certain songs tend to make indelible marks on your memory and hold such strong connections. Whenever I hear "Kid Charlemagne" or "Caves of Altamira" I'm instantly reminded of a rather fond period of my life. Whether it is because of how often I listened to that record then or some meaning within those songs I do not know.

Also, on the talk of Scam upthread as neo-hippie favorite I can attest, as me and my friends were deep into our Phish phase and spun the album hundreds of times (I was 16....). Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the album seems to be the only one where they focused mroe on texture and groove and funk (in some places) than on their usual character sketches and dark contemporary commentary. It's easy to listen to "The Fez" when you've taken 8 bong hits.

Gaucho on the other hand is no guilty pleasure. It is a work of pure yet restrained genius, with loads of sleaze, contempt, antipathy... over the most sophisticated, glossy, presicse sounds...it's a gripping album.

Alright, last time I read it (admittedly a while ago) nobody had, and a text search for 'bootleg' came up empty. Sorry for ruining your day.

That being said:

the lost gaucho album >>>>>> gaucho

is very true.

is it safe to like "since u been gone" yet?

You can find the source for the title track in 'Long as You Know You're Living Yours' from the Keith Jarrett and co album Belonging. Jarrett noticed this as well, sued and now receives a co-writing credit on the track.

AMG:

Themes:
Night Driving
At the Office!!!!
Late Night

I just ordered a cheap used copy of this.

In an advance copy of Marooned[ that a friend managed to snag, Phil Freeman devotes a third of his Motorhead essay to Gaucho; it's mostly an excellent encapsulation of this discussion.

This is great (from the Stylus piece):

Consummate critics in their own right, Walter Becker himself nails Gaucho above. It wasn’t the peak of their sound, it was more like its implosion: a spotless album not only portraying and mocking, but literally embodying the shellacked vapidity of their Los Angeles lifestyles and the escape—a fantasy of breezy opulence—that their music offered to their fans.

It says exactly what I've always felt about them - that while satirizing a scene, they also create a perfect picture of it, so that I can feel like I'm in on the jokes even though they're about a lifestyle and time I never knew.

yeah that's a good piece.

phish's golden age (imo) is 97 when they were deep in funk

stop it.

"Brut and charisma poured from the shadow where he stood"

really, these guys were The Best.

"Szechuan dumplings, now that the deal has been done. I'm the one."

My favorite Dan album.

In an advance copy of Marooned that a friend managed to snag, Phil Freeman devotes a third of his Motorhead essay to Gaucho; it's mostly an excellent encapsulation of this discussion.

Well, as I said in the piece, I had originally thought long and hard about making Gaucho my album pick for the book. It's still absolutely my favorite SD album; for me it works like a short story collection, something like Bret Easton Ellis's The Informers (a very underrated book, btw).

for me it works like a short story collection

absolutely OTM. The fullest flowering of their weird lyrical specificity.

Apologies for using the word "specificity".

I finally picked up a copy and I think it's great.

I had never caught one of the best lines in "Hey Nineteen" before:

The Cuervo Gold
The fine Colombian
Make tonight a wonderful thing

The way he phrases it is so spot-on -- he really sounds drunk and depressed, as though the tequila and coke are the only things propping him up.

I think "Columbian" at the time meant weed - not that there isn't plenty of coke on the album, but "Columbian" was a common designator for weed at the time

Ah, ok. Actually drunk/stoned fits that line better than drunk/coked-up.

And the whole mood of the song too - resigned rather than grandiose.

I made myself coffee and read the OTHER Steely Dan thread again; it really is the most amazing thing on ILM.

Please take me along when you slide on down

So what the hell is the "Custerdome?"

Becker: 'It's, ah, one of the largest buildings in the world. You know, an extravagant structure with a rotating restaurant on top.'

Fagen: 'It exists only in our collective imagination. In the Steely Dan lexicon it serves as an archetype of a building that houses great corporations...' "

from Reeling in the Years

i was kinda hoping it would be here. no luck.

I was just in chat with a certain Alex-in-NYC-type (it's all good, hate on what you wanna hate on), and somehow Dan came up, and I found myself defending them at length (well, length for chat anyway) even though I know it's not like I'm going to create converts that way. But it helped me put a couple of ideas into words that apply well to Gaucho:

I feel like this album gets the same criticism as books that cause people to say things like, "I don't want to read another book about the problems of middle aged white guys." "Oh boo hoo. You're tired of taking young girls home for meaningless cocaine-fueled sex. Poor you." But that criticism doesn't see the forest for the white guys, so to speak.

And of course the haters with the bigger record collections don't like the over-perfect sound, but over-perfect is much more the point than perfect in this case -- it's an intentional counterpoint to how crusty with filth the characters are on the inside. The record is filled with singularly bloodless studio performances, and oh how people love to point that out, but once you get inside the album's point of view, the sound is an uncomfortable defense mechanism, like an overzealous tendency toward gallows humor (which Fagen also has, is the rightful owner of, and is very good at). The songs have the same kind of "mellow" as a violent prisoner on a huge dose of tranquilizers -- lookin' pretty chill right now, but still at high risk for hurting himself or someone else. Oh my god, what happens when all that shit wears off?

There are a lot of SD songs that deal with the same basic theme, but on this album it's distilled: this is a world where everyone wants nothing more than to be presentable, but that's been taken care of, and no one has any good ideas about what to want next. Instead they have some very bad ideas, ideas that victimize young women in the first two tracks, encourage the cycle of drug addiction in another two, foster poisonous and/or jealous relationships throughout, and then in "Third World Man" the coup de grace: giving up the whole game, total retreat, holing up in your house and engaging in some (undefined by the song) solitary, obsessive nuttiness until one day you accidentally blow up the neighborhood. (Of all the scary people on this record, that's the one I'm most afraid of becoming.)

I get grandiose with praise too often, but when will this album get its due as the breezily scathing, horrifyingly easy-going little masterpiece that it is?

See above thread.

Yeah, I know, it was just on my mind, is all. Shrug.

I made myself coffee and read the OTHER Steely Dan thread again; it really is the most amazing thing on ILM.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Sunday, June 10, 2007 4:06 PM

Which thread in particular?

This one.

I've come to think there is no album more perfect and brilliant all the way through.

Glamour Profession might be the most underrated Dan song

I'm gonna join sw00ds and Vic Perry's podcast next week during which they'll interrogate me about sharing your feelings.

awesome, looking forward to it, please post links when it is up

I have been trying to burn out on this album by playing it nonstop for a week, but it's not working

Is "Gaucho" the song a thinly-veiled letter from Donald to Walter about the latter's junk habit?

Is "Gaucho" the song a thinly-veiled letter from Donald to Walter about the latter's junk habit?

I only just got the little "joke" in the bridge of Gaucho (it sounds like a mariachi band)

There are some drum phrases in this song that are so good that they're like a second set of lyrics

That wanker Mark Knopfler plays on “time out of mind”

this was the first proper Dan album i bought on vinyl, and it has always, always gotten more play than their other records. i *adore* the title track particularly because it is so mean and brutal and pressed up against this shiny veneer. brilliant shit.

yeah, barely xp

I assume it’s him on the opening bend lick

Anyway the drums own that track anyway

how many songs mention cherry wine besides "time out of mind" & "we don't have to take our clothes off (to have a good time)"?

i guess "babylon sisters" mentions kirschwasser...

I think Knopfler's part is that pretty simple part that comes in later on in the song, I remember reading about how they had him play for hours and hours and what made it onto the song was maybe a few bars, of a very simple phrase

not sure what version you jabronis are listening to but MKnopfler does all the leads over almost the entire of the version I have:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgNbNfO_O8

check the left channel then he hits the phaser on the instrumental chorus then back to the left channel.

fuck wrong video, this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgNbNfO_O8

3rd times a charm?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJW2NH-CTJ8

whew, yeah click that one. left channel, then phasor for the instru-chorus, then back to the left channel. stop listening to mp3s you jabronis.

I have been trying to burn out on this album by playing it nonstop for a week, but it's not working

― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, March 10, 2015 9:59 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is where I am right now. I have been immersing myself in the world this album builds--its numb depravity and decadence--for the past three days, and I don't think I can stop.

Someone on hipinion said the title track sounds like "a compilation of unusually well-produced local station IDs" which is spot-on and partly why I love that song so much

People who "rag" on Gaucho should be taken away and destroyed.

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Saturday, June 11, 2005 1:11 AM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

The title track and "Third World Man" compete for best SD song.

40 years ago today

Mass Romantic yesterday, Gaucho today....what's next in line for the excellent album birthday celebration?

Seeing the Gaucho show in Morristown, NJ tonight. Has anyone seen them yet on this tour? They haven't done a Gaucho night yet, so I'm not sure exactly what to expect from the second set, but I'm crossing my fingers for "Bad Sneakers" and/or "Deacon Blues" which both seem like realistic possibilities...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bf7Dr7CzmM

Morris Mobley cover of Glamour Profession

fun cover, i like how he says "hoops mccain" instead of "hoops mccann," which makes me think he's talking about a black sheep member of that annoying family

We're double-bumping the Gaucho threads tonight.

Seeing the Gaucho show in Morristown, NJ tonight. Has anyone seen them yet on this tour? They haven't done a Gaucho night yet, so I'm not sure exactly what to expect from the second set, but I'm crossing my fingers for "Bad Sneakers" and/or "Deacon Blues" which both seem like realistic possibilities...

― J. Sam, Thursday, November 4, 2021 5:02 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

In retrospect I was foolish to hope for "Deacon Blues." Looks like they only play it in the Aja shows :(

fantastic descriptions from the man himself

Donald explains Gaucho

new liner notes from the man himself for the upcoming reissue from Analogue Productions pic.twitter.com/dBlaEsYyZn

— Good Steely Dan Takes (@baddantakes) April 12, 2024

new Mulaney Steely Dan bit just dropped pic.twitter.com/gV1dDAhu44

— Good Steely Dan Takes (@baddantakes) December 11, 2024

my baby loves "daddy don't live in that new york city no more." idk why you would try to play gaucho for a baby!

Ahahahaha that story

Also he should have played “Peg” or “Kid Charlemagne”

Has Mulaney been working out or something? He looks more like a Dude than he used to.

He got a chin implant recently (discussed over in the SNL thread), plus I imagine between sobriety and locking down Olivia Munn he has incentive towards being fit.