Gaucho Poll

Hey Nineteen

Gaucho, taken as a whole album, is better than the sum of its parts, making a poll like this difficult. Having said that, Hey 19 gets my nostalgia vote as the first Steely Dan song to make an impression on me growing up. It also nails that world-weary, too-slick/polished, creepy, sort-of passionless vibe of the disc better than anything else on it.

"Glamour Profession" on a whim. Really strongly tempted to vote for the title track.

"One more expensive kiss-off, who do you think I am..."

The title track, narrowly over "Hey Nineteen" and "Third World Man."

Hey Nineteen or Gaucho or the guitar solo on Third World Man. Haven't decided yet.

only SD poll I didn't have to think about for more than 2 seconds, Babylon Sisters all the way

otm

Several months back, I would have picked Babylon Sisters with no hesitation. But lately, I've really been feeling the title track. Love that swishing, chiming synth pad that sneaks in during the chorus. Really, every song on this album is great.

Really, every song on this album is great.

otm times a billion

I'm constantly amazed at how smooth Glamour Profession is while naigating through the ups and downs of a truly complex chord progression. Each bar enters a slightly altered mood from the last. And the horns have the sleaziness of a really cheap horror film.

"you got to shake it baby,you got to shake it..."

Babylon Sisters all the way

only song I don't really love on here is 'my rival'. could almost vote for 'hey nineteen' or 'gaucho,' but I totally have to go with 'babylon sisters'. this album is the ultimate dan grower.

Yeah I always skip "My Rival"

It's the last song I "got." It's all about the backing vocals.

for me it was between time out of mind and gaucho aka "jackin' for chords" and I had to go with the latter for its gorgeous development. but the time change in "time out of mind," Jesus Christ. the only album I know of where a twenty-year break seems like the band's only logical response.

Yeah, everything about "Gaucho" is so well-developed. I mentioned on the other thread that I can't think of any song with such subtly deployed irony; Fagen's confidence is such that I can't disentangle the contempt for the Gaucho and his self-identification.

For years I couldn't figure out what the backing vocals were saying when they took over on the chorus (nearly drowning out Fagen, which is another great tactic).

*FROM his self-identification.

I am sure we've already done this, but it still is "Babylon Sisters"

voted title track, but it wasn't easy. first three are pretty hard to top -- not just w/r/t to Gaucho, but SD's entire catalog.

Voted Babylon Sisters

Like the rest of ILM, I feel this is the most underrated Steely Dan album. While I still like "Aja" and "Pretzel Logic" better, the first three tracks here are downright fantastic. But I still come back to "Babylon Sisters" because it has some fantastic chords and chord changes, and is also possibly the ultimate hi-fi classic among the Steely Dan tracks.

you gotta give Geir an OTM when he's OTM: I've sat down with the sheet music to "Babylon Sisters," and those changes are fucking CHOICE.

Easily the title track for me (the glowing vocals of the chorus, fantastic lyrics), followed by "Time Out of Mind" or "Babylon Sisters"

title track wins it for me.

It's the last song I "got." It's all about the backing vocals.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, July 14, 2008 3:21 PM (6 hours ago)

man, this is just a general steely dan truth! just saw them live and people were FLIPPING OUT during the "you'vegottoshakeitbaby" bits in babylon sisters.

skate a little lower

I have a theory that his rival in My Rival is Billy Joel, though I don't think I can prove that it's true...

I can imagine Billy Joel stinking like a prickly pear.

Good as it is, this is where they started to run out of melodies and had to settle for grooves instead. (But I have to admit I considered voting for "Glamour Profession" before picking "Time Out of Mind."

If My Rival was replaced with The Second Arrangement, this would be the best album ever, period.

yeah, I like "Second Arrangement" more than most of the songs that made the cut.

where is it available?

I got it off of some Steely Dan Archive site that appears to no longer exist, but it seems to be out there on bootlegs as much as any other SD outtakes/demos.

I'll leave my Soulseek on tonight if anyone wants it

I forgot to mention that I voted for "Hey Nineteen." I'm surprised by the love for the title track, which I find a little boring.

my rival is pretty dope, i think. love the keyboards.

it's got that great tinny synth solo.

one dollar used to be a whole lot but it hardly worth shit today

2nd Arrangement is pretty overrated, I find

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I went with "Babylon Sisters" mostly because you can hear Green Gartside and his chirpers in the exchange "So fine so young/Tell me I'm the only one." Think maybe he got the idea for Cupid & Psyche 85, if not his entire career, from listening to Steely Dan?

"Babylon Sisters" for me

Man I love the Dan so much

I decided to go with Gaucho, mostly because it proves that they were not out of melodies. That song has so many hooks it could make an album.

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

mostly because it proves that they were not out of melodies.

Keith Jarrett begged to differ.

whoa, surprising that babylon sisters didn't take this.

I am shocked that Hey Nineteen didn't walk away with it.

drinking Kirschwasser from a shell, chasing the dragon, they really cover all the bases

Like a Sunday in T.J.
It's cheap but it's not free

Also I'm surprised and curious at the notion of Gaucho as hedonistic!

― Tim F, Tuesday, June 3, 2025 12:36 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's super hedonistic, but depraved as hell, i am more surprised as the notion of it being just this bippy collection of pop tunes

depraved and empty (?)

Both “The Second Arrangement” and “The Bear” deserve a place on the album but the sequencing is a conundrum - I would only replace “My Rival”

The Becker and Fagen promo pic for Gaucho is one of my favourite “these guys have seen some shit” album promos ever

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDkpcZ_SXt-/

https://www.rootsvinylguide.com/ebay_items/steely-dan-gaucho-original-promo-lp-press-kit-1979-mca-6102-bob-ludwig

Bad boy and the perv

"hedonistic" I can't co-sign -- "anhedonic" OTOH

it's both? hedonistic as in pursuit of pleasure. isn't the third world man the only guy staying in his room? i guess the guy up in the custer dome too but everyone sounds high af in that song

Not just a room but a bunker. I haven't heard The Royal Scam in a while, but it wasn't a surprise when I found out "Third World Man" was an outtake - it shares the same vibe, including a dark streak of paranoia.

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
etc.

“My Rival” is clearly the weakest link on this album imho.

I think anhedonic is a perfect term to describe the record

"My Rival" is the weakest song.

My Rival:Gaucho::I Got the News:Aja

both good songs, just not at the level of the others

I like My Rival a lot more thank I Got The News

you guys don't deserve The Dan

"My Rival" probably is the weakest song on the album, strictly as a song, but it still works so well in the context of the album. It seems to both seethe and whimper at the same time and I think that sets up the descent described in "Third World Man" rather nicely...

you guys don't deserve The Dan

"my rival" is probably my favorite lyric on the record

the organ sound they get on "my rival" is incredible

I like My Rival a lot more thank I Got The News

this is the wackest take I have ever heard

what can I say, I've never really enjoyed I Got The News, it's ok for you to enjoy it though

I refuse to nitpick with Steely Dan, those first seven albums are essentially perfect as is, and sequenced really well also.

I personally think the thing with gaucho is not that it’s hedonistic, but it’s exhausted and tired, from the wreckage of ones past transgressions, or the fruitless pursuit of pleasure, or the empty fantasy lives which lead to dead ends, always on the outside looking in like some sort of impotent purgatory. Even the upbeat songs are tinged with that specific type of American paranoia which was probably most prevalent in the 70s in fiction and film and other music. It’s as if everyone who survived the events of the Royal Scam settled down with boring day jobs, and on the weekends tried to recapture that feeling that’s gone forever. Also like a lot of their songs, I think the whole album is wishing you could be someone you’re never going to be, or be again — thinking about the past fondly, except this time they’re not talking about girls they went to school with, but everybody they used to party with in their 20s. And the efforts to get back to where they were are simply met with failure, till they lose their minds and hole up at home.

the hugely emotional chord change during “answers for his crime” is the heart of that song, maybe

great post, omar

Yeah, great post. I was thinking neither “hedonistic” nor “anhedonic” felt right, and I think it’s because this album takes place on the trajectory from the former to the latter.

recapture that feeling that’s gone forever

It's interesting to think that the anomie of the record reflects how both Donald and Walter were apparently pursuing once-fruitful behaviours that were quickly going to become unhelpful in their lives, one through workaholism and the other through addiction.

"The Second Arrangement" is a relatively blithe way to end the record and their early career. I always thought that "Third World Man" needed a little of the relative grit of their earlier stuff - Denny Dias, where are you?

Agreeing with Omar.

The characters on this record are experiencing anhedonia but are doing stuff that would appear hedonistic to onlookers.

again, hedonism is PURSUIT of pleasure not ACQUISITION of pleasure

Can’t believe I’m posting this piece of shit song to a steely Dan thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYrurkKKeA0

xp

right, I feel like a lot of people in this thread are conflating hedonism with happiness

this is an interesting distinction -- I do think when one imagines a hedonist, one doesn't generally imagine a person whose successful pursuit of pleasure is in their past. by the time of Gaucho, Fagen's narrators are in their post-hedonistic phase. Or, like, they're on the Unfulfilled Gross corner of the hedonism alignment chart where Fulfilled Hot is the Lawful Good in the upper right

hoops mccann is a hedonist, but the guy bringing him drugs might not be

can't complain if there's Szechuan DUMPLINGS! now that the deal has been done

Sauce on side!

actually (sorry for actually) I was reflecting on this discussion yesterday and thinking about my own feelings about the word “hedonistic” and in my mind it contains the seed of its own rot or something, like maybe it’s all that semi-Buddhist thinking I was brought up with but I always sense a sense of desperation and perpetual unfulfillment when it comes to “hedonism”. There was a post someone made about the Las Vegas country festival shooter at the time that stuck with me, how you could paint this picture of a miserable dude whose pleasure centers are so fried by gambling that he has to do something so awful to get his dopamine fix or something. That was hedonism to me. The “illegal fun under the sun” line in glamour profession evokes that to me as well, these people are not being responsible and settling down, they’re raising the stakes. Anyway that was probably a pretty problematic post and I swear I’m not that weird.

I've been moderately obsessed with "Time Out of Mind" the last several days and can't get it out of my head. It's not a song I would normally have put among my favorites on this record. And the overly long bridge would make Mike Post blush. But the hanging-in-suspension pre-chorus here--"Children we have it right here/It's the light in my eyes/It's perfection and grace/It's the smile on my face"--is positively sublime.

https://i.postimg.cc/Twc8ZsdV/temp-Imagem-Vk0b-D.avif

I am holding a mystical spheeeeeeeere

after the title track, “Time Out of Mind” had always been my favorite on the record

"Time Out of Mind" is possibly the most enjoyable track on this record - also has some of Knopfler's best playing outside of his own records - and for me it's usually THE highlight of Steely Dan shows with Fagen doing an extended solo, something he doesn't do on the record.

"Like a Sunday in T.J.
That it's cheap but it's not free"

this line from Babylon Sisters is one of my favorite on the album. As a kid in the 80's we would go to me grandma's house in San Deigo for weekends in the summer and many a Sundays were spent in T.J. shopping and eating because it was "cheap".

Not that it was necessary, but the recent Lou Hayter cover of “Time Out of Mind”, and especially the Ashley Beedle remix, really underscored for me how indelible a song it is.

Also thank you brimstead, yr explanation of why you consider Gaucho to be hedonistic makes perfect sense to me.

I agree with the idea of hedonism always containing within it the idea of its own eventual failure - desire as a void that only grows larger the more you attempt to fill it.

Gaucho always strikes me as going for something quite specific: I’ve met people who have sought to circumvent or deal with the above quandary by turning their hedonistic pursuits into a kind of craft, such that they can derive their satisfaction from their mastery of those pursuits (and from being acknowledged for this by the partners or pupils in corruption) rather than (or in increasingly substitution for) the illicit thrills those pursuits used to afford. Those who can no longer learn, teach.

Gaucho feels to me like it really captures the vibe of that approach to pleasure, both lyrically and musically.

https://i.postimg.cc/3R4rZYHf/IMG-2812.png

605 outside the stadium

You had me all excited to hear this remake of “Time Out of Mind” but like so many of these retro electro acts, it fucks the chords up.

time out of mind and glamour profession are the king and queen of this record imo

wow that remix of Lou Hayter's serviceable cover of Time Out of Mind is ace.

… except for the chords.

Enjoyed this one:

François K - Glamorous Dub (Live Stems Mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkVKUbRHxOo