when did steely dan become your favorite band?

Landslide for Option 6

option 6 is for my ban/killfile database

also band only means rock band you can still care more about goodie mob or something

"Walter and I had been working on that song at a house in Malibu. I played him that line, and he said, "You mean it's like, 'They call these cracker assholes this grandiose name like the Crimson Tide, and I'm this loser, so they call me this other grandiose name, Deacon Blues?' " And I said, "Yeah!" He said, "Cool! Let's finish it!"

hahaha--1982 = I old as them there hills!

I'm not sure what to vote, because I definitely familiarized myself w/ most of their songs in the back of my dad's car in the late 80's/early 90's, but I didn't start digging out his vinyl and then buying Citizen Steely Dan and getting hardcore into them until 99-04.

what about "ever since i read abolut them on ILM"?

I remember when "Peg" was in heavy rotation on the radio... = ROFL

where is "Where is my short-terrm memory?/LOL Alzheimer's"?

I think I bought World Party and Can't Buy a Thrill at the same time.

2001, in fact it was right around 9/11

happy anniversary fagen bros.

really, steely dan has been your favorite band since 2001?

that's not what the poll says

1993. Citizen Steely Dan box after a couple years of owning SD Gold. Ahh...

2001 was when they became my favorite band

never forget

fair enough, but theres gotta be a lot of steely dan new jacks who hopped on the bandwagon after all the ilm love (i suppose i am to some degree though i heard them lots growing up like many other people)

not my fav band tho

Doesn't matter when you get in the van, long as you GET IN THE VAN.

also steely dan love coincides w/my getting a record player c. 2004

Early '90s for me, shortly after graduating high school.

fair enough, but theres gotta be a lot of steely dan new jacks who hopped on the bandwagon after all the ilm love (i suppose i am to some degree though i heard them lots growing up like many other people)

-- artdamages, Tuesday, September 11, 2007 3:55 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

do people really think this way? "oh you only like that millions-selling award-winning classic rock radio staple because five guys on a message board made them sound cool."

fair enough, but theres gotta be a lot of steely dan new jacks who hopped on the bandwagon after all the ilm love (i suppose i am to some degree though i heard them lots growing up like many other people)

-- artdamages, Tuesday, 11 September 2007 15:55 (3 minutes ago) Link

i got in thru 'my old school' at that point, my fresh year of college. that song cooks

It was fall 1998 for me, after reading Xgau's blurb on Pretzel Logic. I liked-not-loved it until I bought Katy Lied in the spring of 2000. My friends totally didn't understand -- at the time Steely Dan were as unpopular and as uncool as bands got. Even after the release of that Farrelly comedy soundtrack I sensed a lot of, "Who gives a fuck about those beardos?"

Now, of course, these same friends adore Gaucho.

alex i didn't mean to accuse anyone it just occurred to me that there are a huge number of steely dan super fans and if you go and read that huge thread there are a bunch of posts w/people saying "i just picked up x steely dan album and WOAH is it great!"

i dont think its a bad thing either btw

yeah i know, i'm kinda kidding, it just seemed funny to me.

i am funny i'll give you that

I want the option of "Steely Dan is probably my favorite band every time I listen to them but then when I am listening to something else, not so much."

that's a silly answer.

Dude just click "lol u old" and be done with it.

Al & Dan are punxxxx

But yeah I was rocking the old greatest hits double album ON EIGHT TRACK back in the first category when I was in jr high school, "Peg" was the jam and I still remember the anticipation over the freakin' "FM" soundtrack cut and right now I am playing that entire "FM" guitar/saxophone solo over and over in my head god dammit awesomes.

When did Steely Dan become your least favorite band? When they became an ILM sacred cow.

I'm not sure what to vote, because I definitely familiarized myself w/ most of their songs in the back of my dad's car in the late 80's/early 90's, but I didn't start digging out his vinyl and then buying Citizen Steely Dan and getting hardcore into them until 99-04.

Ding ding ding.

Well, not exactly. My dad only had Katy Lied on vinyl, and we didn't have a turntable anymore, so I checked out A Decade of Steely Dan from the public library in late 1995, made out to it in early 1997 ("you've got to shake it, baby"), and considered it a "guilty pleasure" up until about 2003, when I started reading ILM and was thereby prompted to buy the rest of their catalogue.

I fell in love with Steely Dan before I was 10.

poll of the year

I have never listened to steely dan outside of that De La Soul sample, and don't plan to. Maybe I'm missing something awesome but I can live with that. This may be completely misguided, but something about the idea of sitting down to listen to a fucking Steely Dan album makes me feel defeated and old. It feels as though I would listen to Steely Dan if I was contemplating divorce or Grecian Formula or hiring a call girl or buying Viagara but I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky fella and I'd rather not hear that depressed Disneyland daddy hotel bar jazz-rock shit. But maybe I have them all wrong

maybe

u rong

If it's not clear - I bet they're really really good and really really smart - but from the descriptions I've read and from their faces, I just don't want to know about them. I don't want to come face to face with a certain middle-aged sadness that they seem adept at describing. I think they are interesting, but I'm not interested in them.

xpost Yeah, but I kind of love Fritz's second-to-last sentence there.

TS: Steely Dan vs. John Updike

"Viagara"?

viagra. you know what i meant, don't be pedantic

viagara falls

yeah - updike! if they're like updike i don't want to hear them.

Sorry, it was the melding of Viagra and Niagara that got me thinking.

Addendum to my orig response-- actually bought Katy Lied in 1986 'cause of the Minutemen, and didn't DISLIKE it, but I wasn't really ready yet for the Sabor de Dan at age 16. This narrowly disqualifying for the "lol old" category.

now i feel guilty for projecting my fear of midlife crisis onto ethan steely dan thread

I think me loving them at age... 8? means I either had my mid-life crises super early or Fritz is batshit insanely wrong about them being middle-aged sadness music.

depressed Disneyland daddy hotel bar jazz-rock shit = ex-husband's dead-tech post modernistic bullshit house!!!!!

xpost re batshitness
the latter is eminently possible, but hearing them at eight might have innoculated you from middle-aged sadness whereas me hearing them for the first time while approaching the outskirts of middle-aged might be like getting chicken pox too late and ending up scarred for life

That's kind of what I always say. I loved them when I was a young kid, 8 or younger, (and still love them). I've never really gone past a simple "nice catchy song" approach to them. I think if you pay a lot of attention to the lyrics, you can get the "middle-aged sadness" idea though. Even so, they seem to be having entirely too much fun being cynical for that description to really stick.

x-posts

(I got caught in a log-in/x-post loop.)

i picked 2008-3000 becuz while i dig the albums i have, I haven't gotten hardcore, picked up the less canonical ones or anything yet (though ILM's doing its part to make it all canonical).

The funny thing is I actually owned Kamikiriad back in middle school after hearing some stuff on Bloomington's "progressive" radio station. I swear to god, I didn't knowingly hear any Steely Dan until college, aside from rap samples and that scene in Say Anything.

Are there no Steely Dan promo clips or is VH1 Classic just lazy in always playing that damn 'Kid Charlemagne' Storytellers clip?

I like the chicken pox metaphor though.

fuck you guys, this thread is making me want to go buy a steely dan record

I've always been attracted to middle-age crisis stuff, even when I was in high school. I dunno why. I like Updike. That said, Steely Dan's jazz sensibility and pop hooks are what initially caught my ear.

I've got this friend whose favorite band has been Steely Dan since 1991 - 1998, and I only really listen to them at his house. I keep putting off getting any records b/c he keeps meaning to make me his ultimate best-of Dan comp, so I'm assuming that will happen and chose 2008 - 3000.

I was like 100 yards away from seeing them at Jazzfest last year, but chose New Edition instead c/d

I'm pretty sympathetic to the "why the fuck would I want to listen to Steely Dan" stance, hardcore intellectual fans can be pretty insufferable & smug (like everyone wants to hear what they sell as the most lyrically dense lite rock ever), but I was at a bar and really digging on this song I didn't know until I heard them say "any major dude will tell you" and since then it's been gravy.

"Babylon Sisters" is so fucking SEXY-sounding.

made out to it in early 1997 ("you've got to shake it, baby")

Jordan, your friend = E.M., I assume?

but of course

I'm pretty sympathetic to the "why the fuck would I want to listen to Steely Dan" stance, hardcore intellectual fans can be pretty insufferable & smug (like everyone wants to hear what they sell as the most lyrically dense lite rock ever), but I was at a bar and really digging on this song I didn't know until I heard them say "any major dude will tell you" and since then it's been gravy.

-- da croupier, Tuesday, September 11, 2007 7:50 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

OTM, i've kinda raged against this mentality on other threads, the whole reductive idea that the appeal of SD rests almost entirely on the lyrics being dark/ironic and contrasting with the smoothness of the music.

i have to admit that's what got me to drop my pop/punk-derived resistance to the slickness and actually listen to them, though, even if these days i barely hear the lyrics as being "arch" or whatever

I'm still waiting for the Steely Dan love to translate for renewed appreciation of easy listening and eighties R&B.

The same friends who now love Gaucho gawk when I suggest listening to Luther Vandross or George Benson.

(and Donald Fagen looks like Count Chocula in that photo)

(xpost: then again i was also 21 or whatever and required music to be "rough" or something similarly inane)

George Benson: C/D; S/D

(Not that I've really pursued George Benson any further.)

I don't mind listening to Luther Vandross and George Benson.

Alfred, you need new friends.

Well, they don't read Henry James either. I'm fucked on every front. But they do like Gaucho!

As a '70s kid in the back seat (like several others upthread) I just liked the way those singles sounded on the radio. The subtleties of the lyrics and musicianship were over my head, but their mood still got through. I think anyone who has spent a few years in classrooms could relate to "My Old School," for example. It's not like Fagen and Becker were geezers at the time they wrote that stuff.

Ethan = ILM's best pollstarter

2000 was when I bought cheap ass tapes of Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied from the drugstore and they were no longer "some bullshit my mom listens to."

ilm turned me on to them, tanks guyz

I still don't give a shit about Steely Dan.

I date my Steely Dan fandom to this thread:

POX: Steely Dan

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

it is the late seventies. you are a sick child who is being driven to the doctor's. it is rush hour and raining. with every red brake light that flashes in front of you, you want to throw up on the befogged window. and then steely dan comes on the tinny am radio.

fuck those guys.

i went to go see them in 1996 with my mom, it was fun. she didn't know what marijuana smelled like.

I notice that Becker and Fagen get sole writing credit (and I assume therefore all the royalties) on the new "Kid Charlemagne"-sampling tune on Graduation. Greedy tossers.

Anyway, I have home videos of Daddy Snrub playing "Hey Nineteen" and "Do It Again" from A Decade of Steely Dan to me when I was four. So, it would have to be about 1986 or so.

Successful artists in control of their catalogue can usually leverage to get all/most of the royalties from a record that samples them, but wow, it's pretty rare that the sampled artists will even get sole credit for the song, when clearly Kanye wrote a lot of "Champion" besides the sample. I remember SD weren't too thrilled about "Deja Vu," I guess they'll OK samples but play serious hardball with the terms of approval.

I remember Jagger/Richards ended up getting sole credit for "Bittersweet Symphony" but that was after a lawsuit.

I think Gainesbourg got a similar credit for that David Holmes track which samples "Melody Nelson" (also after a lawsuit.)

First CD I bought was A Decade of Steely Dan back in '92. That was the dark age of Steely Dan fandom, my friends: neither Fagen nor Becker had released anything in a decade and the Dan were relegated to the occasional play on classic rock or oldies radio.

I discovered Bowie in '92 and, despite the wonderful Rykodisc reissues, it was a terrible time to be a fan of his too.

in yalls experience what steely dan songs are usually in karaoke books? i dont wanna get stuck singing do it again

Cafe Bong in Chicago has "Reeling In the Years", I know that much.

The karaoke joint I've gone to most often (Hidden Cove) just has "Do It Again" and "Deacon Blues," I think, and a seven-minute song with saxophone solo seems like a dicey proposition for karaoke, so I've only ever done "Do It Again."

Actually, I just remembered, I did "Babylon Sisters" at the Four Treys in Roscoe Village.

And haha, Cafe Bong, I used to live right around the corner from that place but never went in. I heard reports that karaoke mostly consisted of someone shoving the microphone at guys who were slumped over in barstools.

steely dan karaoke:

Babylon Sisters
Black Cow
Black Friday
Bodhisattva
Deacon Blues
Dirty Work
Do It Again
Fez
FM
Hey Nineteen
Josie
Kid Charlemagne
My Old School
Peg
Reeling In The Years
Rikki Don't Lose That Number
Show Biz Kids
Time Out Of Mind

1989, the number
another summer
sound of the funky drummer
music hittin' your heart because I know you got SOUL etc

bought Katy Lied, freaked out, bought two of those two-fer cassettes (Can't Buy/Countdown & Aja/Gaucho), continued freaking out, still freaking out

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

im a worthless retard and/or owen wilson & steely dan will never be my favorite band 18

Names should be taken; bans should be enacted and enforced!

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/donald_fagen_defends_steely_dan_to