Your Gold Teeth poll

1 but it's close

even cathy berberian knows there's one roulade she can't sing

II is a more sophisticated song, it's really B&F ascending to the place they wanna be, but I is so raw -- I'm a Countdown fiend although Katy Lied was the first SD album I fell for hard. But "torture is the main attraction / I don't need that kind of action," I mean I can still smell the steam heater in the studio apartment I lived in when that song wrecked me all summer long.

Your Gold Teeth - good but maybe the weakest song on my favourite Steely Dan album. I feel like I hear Becker and Fagen trying to show how clever and edgy they are more than conveying cleverness and edginess. The keyboard and guitar solos are again good but playing the bridge twice is heavy underlining. Also the fast coda feels pasted in.

Your Gold Teeth II - I feel like there's more at stake here emotionally. "I cried when I wrote this song", though it's probably their most inscrutable set of lyrics(next to maybe "Throw Back the Little Ones"). The intro does in less than a minute everything they tried so effortfully to do on Aja, and it's essential to preview the chord progression of their most perfect guitar solo. Plus I love when they feel confident enough to strip most of the song down to piano/bass/drums with a little guitar commentary.
I'm sure my LP copy had an obvious tape splice after the drum fill in the middle of the guitar solo, but I can't hear it on the digital version.

The next Fagen album will feature "Your Gold Teeth III", about grave-robbing Walter Becker; a sequel inspired by Don's perennial songwriting mentors, Hetfield and Ulrich.

your gold teeth II is one of the most beautiful, disarming songs i've ever heard. inscrutable like you say--what emotion is it even trying to convey? there's just nothing like it.

youtube comments truly deliver

@IsaiahStewartJazz
2 weeks ago
Awesome dreamy opening ... and then the song turns to crap

@IronMan-tk8uc
11 days ago
I hope this is sarcasm on your part...

@benchracerX2
8 days ago
Are you serious? Go to the Louvre, complain about the paint.

@danielkolesnick9417
4 days ago
You probably think the garbage that is gold teeth 1 is any good

Cathy Berberian voted for the second one after coming by my place for a negroni.

"Your Gold Teeth" is longer and therefore gets the vote, just kidding. I had to check but I did vote for "Your Gold Teeth" in our poll as I do like it better II didn't make the cut.

what emotion is it even trying to convey?

"Life is unreal".

the vocal harmonies on 2 are insane.
otm about its oblique emotional quality. I love the rolling rhythm, it’s like being held and gently rocked, or rolling down a river

1 totally rules too, super swaggery, great percussion. I like the whacked out prog shit on part 1 more than the intro to 2. Sort of feel like 1 should have a vibes solo like “razor boy”

number ii, others have commented on the oblique lyrics and the absurdly complicated chord progression. it’s always a little faster than you think, and when it switches to halftime and the solo hits—euphoric. dias glides so effortlessly over those changes, whoever said it’s their best ever solo is probably otm

playing the bridge twice is heavy underlining.

but imagine only hearing that bridge once, it would drive me crazy.

#1 feels like the apotheosis of their early Latin rhythm kink, and the e.piano solo is a career highlight. "You don't have to dance for me, I've seen your dance before" makes me smile more often than just about any lyric.

But #2 is the one that would provoke an argument with my S.O. because I would shush her when the drums first come in, I would immediately apologize and then do it again when the guitar solo starts.

ii - one of the best things they recorded, ever. Solo alone is a contender for the best to ever grace a Steely Dan record, up there with "Rikki"'s guitar solo.

i assumed i like II better so i sat and listened to them this morning and right now i'm feeling the first one more

same

also it does not take much to send me on a Dan listening spree

II sounds like it has no beginning or end, that it could go on forever, yet is the shorter song. go figure!

has anyone actually tried throwing out their gold teeth to see how they roll? what answer did they reveal??

I think in Brian Sweet's book on Steely Dan he suggests that throwing out your gold teeth and seeing how they roll is an oblique reference to the shedding of band members, which sort of makes sense with Katy Lied being their first alb without Baxter and Hodder, although the rest of the lyrics don't really support this 'theory'. See also: 'Throw Back the Little Ones'.

they were talking about discarding band members while they were still in the band?

I really don't know which I like better, they are both great

My son has suggested that Christopher Nolan ripped off YGT2 for the "totem" aspect of Inception. "the answer they reveal/life is unreal".

I've had to apologize to my wife for how obsessive he's become about the Dan.

this is exactly the kind of film analysis that we need much more of

II just because it fits in so well with the vibe of the rest of the album.

David Palmer had very bad teeth, that might have been one of the inspirations.
Of course, the surface meaning is to stake them in a (dice) gamble.

My son has suggested that Christopher Nolan ripped off YGT2 for the "totem" aspect of Inception. "the answer they reveal/life is unreal".

I've had to apologize to my wife for how obsessive he's become about the Dan.

― omar little, Thursday, October 19, 2023 11:40 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

on the contrary, you should be taking a victory lap for raising the boy right

once again waging my war to make everyone listen to Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Törnqvist sing Steely Dan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw3y1s-0y8g

I love 1 and 2 but am most of all glad that Don and Walt would have never subjected us to Your Gold Teeth III

on the contrary, you should be taking a victory lap for raising the boy right

Oh believe me, I shed tears of pride when he starts singing 'throw back the little ones' or comes to the dinner table explaining what the phrase "Haitian divorce" means.

YGT feels unnaturally rushed, like Fagen gauged the rhythm wrong when tracking his vocal. And it would have been better if the backing vocalists had done more than just shadow him; they're barely audible. It could have used weirder backing vocals in the style of "Peg." But yeah, the music is great, and both the electric piano and guitar solos are fucking sweet. The particular type of distortion the guitarist uses reminds me of Frank Zappa.

YGT II is one of their most swinging songs; it's almost jazz, both the initial fusion fanfare and the song proper, which I could totally imagine any number of jazz singers recording as an "offbeat" or "hip" choice in between 1930s standards. Especially since the lyrics are barely there; it's a few lines and then the chorus.

Thinking I gotta vote for II.

The Dennis McNally book about The Grateful Dead talks about how a lot of Robert Hunter's lyrics for them involve someone being in a position where they are gambling against seemingly incredible existential odds and somehow surviving to roll the dice again. That situation is what I get out of YGT II -- the arbitrary-seemingness of life's vicissitudes casts an unreal light on it itself. The unknowabilitiy of life circumstances and their background, leaving one essentially shrugging and puzzled

I think there's kind of a loose theme on Katy Lied of exasperation/desperation, whether from addiction, (Doctor Wu) alienation, (Bad Sneakers, Any World ) or surfeit of compulsive hedonism (Rose Darling). Given those themes the take still manages to be somehow optimistic? Contrasted with the subsequent SD albums which are really more about a prison of nostalgia, outright losing the plot a.d the aftermath therof, and sheer decadence. Though I could as a listener just be projecting in large part.

Talking about a prison of nostalgia, it was the success of this sequel song that led to their ill-fated project A(nother)ja, the unreleased and suppressed 1981 Steely Dan album:

"Do It Again, Again"
"Turn That Heartbeat Over Again, Again"
"My New School"
"You Lost That Number (After I Told You Not To...Rikki)"
"This Time, Really Through With Buzz"
"Black Saturday"
"Daddy Still Don't Live in that New York City No More"
"OK...You Took Me Alive"
"Hey Ninety Nine"

I guess Katy Lied is supposed to have been maligned production-wise, but... on that and subsequent records I like to think of studio people regretting that Fagen's saliva was not captured precisely on tape.

II cos it's the best steely dan song. gorgeous and weird.

yeah. "countdown" is my fav dan LP, but ii is just so great. this was a tough choice, but i voted ii.

this is the best ilm poll for ages, really enjoyed racking my brain about this.

something i really like about YGT 1 is the "lady madonna" interpolation. it got me wondering if ii wasn't in dialogue with the B side, "the inner light."

"lady madonna" interpolation

Never noticed that, it's so subtle it may well have been unconscious. "See how they run/roll".

once again waging my war to make everyone listen to Sara Isaksson & Rebecka Törnqvist sing Steely Dan

yeah this is great. weird and moving to hear a song like this sung as a straight-ahead emotional proposition instead of a flash-your-cards-but-never-show-em gesture

Their "Gaucho" is unreal. I think something in my emotional makeup was permanently altered by hearing I'll drop him near the freeway / Doesn't he have a home? sung with all the pathos of "Desperado"

bugs me how they don't do the right harmonies in YGT 2 chorus but it is very good

your gold teeth number one has one of the best bridges known to man

keyboard solo in I > guitar solo in II

i assumed i like II better so i sat and listened to them this morning and right now i'm feeling the first one more

― no gap tree for old men (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 19 October 2023 3:16 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

exact same

which guitar solo tho?

listened to both today and changed my mind back... ii > i

Good morning!

yeah i voted for ygt first but now i think it's ii. when the results come out please +1 / -1 accordingly.

Who are these strangers
Who pass through the door?
Who cover your action
And go you one more?

II doesn't seem that inscrutable to me: life is short and meaningless, so you better live (i.e. throw the dice) because either way you are going to die.

Love that swing after the intro in II.

I'm going to listen to both later to decide, but right now I think it's II.

Porcaro drums are always so cool to me.

can anyone who knows music theory explain why the chords on ii are so intriguing and unlike anything else i've ever heard? feel like they are a big part in creating the ambiguity of the emotional tone that call all destroyer was talking about

The song is solidly in A but uses chords outside of the major key, many of which aren't compatible with each other, and each of which can be said to have its own emotional shading; so the piano vamp is in Mixolydian mode, but the verse includes a B major from the Lydian mode ("speak with their", "why do you") that's immediately "undercut" by using D and G to get back to A at the end of the line. To me it feels like shifting between confidence/boldness and misgivings/doubt.
Then in the chorus they have a cadence G7 to A ("see how they roll") which doesn't fit any conventional key and I find has a lot of pathos. It's also very effectively sentimental (though highly conventional) to have the phrase "life is unreal" end on the relative minor of A: F# min.
I notice this song shares a lot of harmonic material and chord progressions with "Any Major Dude".

I can't really comment on the intro/1st guitar solo except they're doing a lot of chromatic movements, I don't even hear a strong tonic note in that part.

You need Donald Fagen to demonstrate all this on his electric piano.

"ygt ii" is also a major showcase for what fagen and becker called the "mu major" chord, in which you add either the 2 note or 4 note to the major chord. so in this case, the "g" and "a" chords are really more like "gsus2" and "asus2" chords. sometimes, like in the instrumental intro, they'd use the mu major note as the bass note, transforming a conventional triad into a maj11 or 13 chord. this suspension serves to remove some of the stronger emotion, imo, making each chord feel a little smoother, or icier (or "steelier" har har), and allowing for chord movements that make sense on the keyboard but don't sound like conventional changes, landing somewhere halfway between rock/pop and jazz.

someone with more theory knowledge can let me know if i'm totally off base lol. here's a layman's explanation, from a site that has some pretty good transcriptions of dan songs: https://www.hakwright.co.uk/steelydan/mu-major.html

G7 to A ("see how they roll")

my feeling is that, because this takes place in the context of a descending chord progression (preceded by D > C#min), the G7 also creates the impression of a Bmin flat 5. in any event, it definitely creates some cool chromatic movement!

i also think it's notable that the piano and bass play a unison single line (not a chord) at the turnaround. your ear is looking out for a resolution at the dominant (E7), but it never really comes. sort of an evasive thing, to my ear. it's cool.

finally, just my opinion, these chord changes are far more indebted to lennon-mccartney than any jazz

life is unreal

xp in the verse sure, but the intro?

your gold teeth number one has one of the best bridges known to man

― is he disgruntled adrian? (voodoo chili), Friday, October 20, 2023 6:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

keyboard solo in I > guitar solo in II

― flopson, Friday, October 20, 2023 7:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

these posts are otm, this thread has me thinking a lot. like, I reflexively vote for ii, it is pretty goth and has sharp teeth. but katy lied -- I'm an Aja-over-all dude but Katy Lied holds a really special place for me and one reason is that the emotionality of it is almost unbearable at times. which is weird, because it also has "everyone's gone to the movies," which is just a super dark and ugly tune, really the Dan at their most pigfuck afaic...but there's also "Rose Darling," "Bad Sneakers," "Dr. Wu," and "Any World," these are all songs that just ache, and "Gold Teeth II" crowning the Katy Lied emotional quinella. There's a hurt in the "who are these strangers" line that recontextualizes the wonder of its first iteration as "who are these children" -- it's extremely rich, which for me is the key word for this album on the whole, there's this grown-up complexity to the affect & the feeling. ygt ii is a lush expression of that complexity. I'm still a ygt i guy in the end, what a fuckin brazen song to make at all, but there's so much to say in favor of a ii vote -- the good analysis of the song musically on this thread, too, its affective power aside.

sorry I mean to say "I reflexively vote for i" which is the case. ii is not goth.

the phrase “the dan at their most pigfuck” has given me such delight

I wonder how a Your Gold Teeth vs Josie poll would go. Which song hammers a minor 7th chord in the verse most effectively.

Halfway, voodo, budo: i thank u for your posts

what’s the one roulade cathy berberian knows she can’t sing?

Love your post breaking down ygt2, Halfway. Really interesting to read

These songs are remarkably close in quality for being so different from one another. I voted i just because I was feeling spicy when I saw the poll

i also think it's notable that the piano and bass play a unison single line (not a chord) at the turnaround. your ear is looking out for a resolution at the dominant (E7), but it never really comes. sort of an evasive thing, to my ear. it's cool.

It's a nice touch that this instrumental line is the same melody and has the same chord changes as the 2nd and 4th lines of each verse, the B - D - G - A progression I mention above.

These are the kind of details that made me finally vote for YGT2, it's just all around tighter in terms of lyrics, music, emotions, arrangement, etc. YGT1 is more loosey goosey, weird melodic runs over Santana-style vamps and inscrutable lyrics. I love it, but 2 feels more accomplished.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

see how they roll

i've always thought YGT I was far superior. the "tobacco they grow in peking" bit kills me every time. and donald rarely flies on keys as much as he does at the end. YGT II has always felt cheesy to me, like a lot of katy lied

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow, I'm not surprised II won, but I thought it would be much closer

this margin is absurd

Suggestion for a follow-up poll - "FM (No Static At All)" vs. "FM - Reprise".

Margins otm

Dumb luck, my friend :'(

yeah. "countdown" is my fav dan LP, but ii is just so great. this was a tough choice, but i voted ii.

This is where I landed; Countdown is the better record, but Katy Lied has the shinier Gold Teeth.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the single dissonant electric piano note Fagen plays in the bridge of "YGT I" right after "there's one roulade she can't sing." It's a musically perverse move, but if you listen to the song enough it becomes another hook.

keyboard solo in I > guitar solo in II

― flopson, Friday, October 20, 2023 7:55 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

The keyboard solo in I is fantastic, but the guitar solo in II is the greatest guitar solo on a Steely Dan album and therefore the greatest guitar solo...of all time(?) (at least I can't think of one I like more right now)

The solo is great but is at least matched by, say, any Jim Hall solo on Undercurrent. I don't agree with single issue (solos) voters in this poll.

I've realized that these two albums mark distinct periods in my life.

Countdown: college, drinking with friends, hungover in the shower. Could definitely identify with the show biz kids.

Katy Lied: post college, trying to make a living and figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Definitely more jaded, lost in the barrio.

I still listen to the latter regularly, the former almost never.

Countdown is a college party record in the sense that a Lifter Puller album is a party record. It's for those that partied awhile ago.

Well, yeah, like the mid- to late 80s.

life is unreal