Reelin' in the Poll: STEELY DAN - ILM Artist poll #50 (voting closed)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-a2DKIoiaAS4/Uyj1xI4TfkI/AAAAAAAAAAk/6xIhQUPgMe8/w958-h539-no/orig_steely_dan_282341629.jpg

The Granddaddy of the all and 50 is a nice round number.

Ballot part one (mandatory): Your Top 20 Steely Dan tracks. Usual scoring method will be applied. Please order your list with your #1 at the top and #20 at the bottom, no need to number them. I will take unranked lists just clearly state that yours is unranked.

Standard ILX poll allocation in effect: 1:40, 2:36, 3:33, 4:30, 5:28, 6:26, 7:25, 8:24, 9:23, 10:22, 11:21, 12:20, 13:19, 14:18, 15:17, 16:16, 17:15, 18:14, 19:13, 20:12

Ballot part two (optional): Your Top 10 Walter Becker or Donald Fagen Solo tracks. This can include anything that either were involved with for example, Walter Becker stuff with China Crisis.

Ballot part three (optional): Your Top Steely Dan and/or Solo albums. If you only want to rank the first seven Steely Dan then that is fine or you can rank The Nightfly above the whole lot.

Send ballots to steelydanpoll AT gmail dot com. Please include your ILM user name.

Deadline for voting will be Sunday late night in Los Angeles on March 30, 2014.

i will never top the New Order poll that i did but here we go. this is going to be fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steely_Dan_discography

alright!!! gonna be REALLY hard to narrow down to just 20 tracks, but the side polls should be fun, i will be advocating strongly for Becker's Circus Money album as usual.

brilliant! very excited indeed -- i have so many thoughts on so many of these songs. hopefully i'll get round to sharing some of them.

that should read: Your Top 10 Walter Becker and/or Donald Fagen Solo tracks.

fuck yeah

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/614j%2BXAGFcL._SX466_.jpg

I just had my Steely Dan phase earlier this year so I'm very ready for this.

A breath of fresh air after the floyd poll

albums 3, 4 and 6 have all been my favorite steely dan albums at some point in my life. 1 and 2 sometimes sneak up on me and whisper in my ear that they should be my fave. 5 has never quite. i dismissed 7 when i first heard it and it has spent the rest of my life sneaking up on me and whispering things in my other ear. i know absolutely nothing about the reunion albums, though i'm sure i've heard tracks here and there. should i?

wishing we would also poll our favorite non-becker non-fagen steely dan players.

Turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening

well, yeah.

Inescapable Henley. I had images disabled, so I didn't notice that piscesx had already addressed that lyric. :)

Sub-poll of best line from a Steely Dan song would be intense!

Anyway, been looking forward to this for a while. Probably the best band ever, so it's gonna be tough.

This fuckin' band. This song in particular, I feel, is criminally underrated. Just wanted to campaign for it a bit:

http://youtu.be/u9g-Z5nFg5Y

Granddaddy of them all.

wish i asked for sub poll idea's first, love the best line idea. a lot.

xpost

20 is madness!

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adding this because it's such a brilliant idea:

Ballot part four (optional): Your Top 3 Steely Dan line(s). It can be a line or a phrase from one of their songs. Have no idea how that will turn out.

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You didn't waste time getting this one started!

sick, bro, i've been psyched for this one for eons. I could make at least a semi-defensible case for any song off the first 7 albums.

even "with a gun"?

well as a former administrator of the Ballot Poll thread, i know how much you want to keep the queue going.

xxpost

ah fuck HELLO

hooboy. redelurking.

first ballot received and it has their Top 3 lines. that is going to be so much fun.

i'm gonna go ahead and campaign for some unreleased tracks because these are amazing songs that i'm probably going to vote for:

"This All Too Mobile Home"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq54uBiPJU0

"The Second Arrangement"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FlQRmYaXiE

Not entirely sure it will make my ballot yet, but I want to go to bat for "Here at the Western World", a Royal Scam outtake that's showed up on since of the greatest hits albums.

I mean, I'm sure everybody voting in this poll is gonna have a hard enough time picking 20 steely dan songs out of the ones they already know, but I'm just throwing that one out there

i'm gonna have a massively hard time with this. but it's gonna be satisfying.

my favorite non-album track:

"the mock turtle song":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4JCLcCk9P0

My ballot won't be long--10 songs, and I'll probably have to do a bit of relistening to fill out the last two spots--but in terms of how much those eight key songs mean to me, there are very few people I'd rank ahead of them (Neil, the Beatles, a few others). Pretzel Logic is embedded into my distant memories of high school in a huge way.

now we'll see how far the Gaucho love extends.

Wait, people were gonna vote for albums other than Gaucho??

I can't figure!

Excited about this poll!

Not entirely sure it will make my ballot yet, but I want to go to bat for "Here at the Western World", a Royal Scam outtake that's showed up on since of the greatest hits albums.

Yeah, seconded, I love this one.

Greek!

Medallion!

throwing some early support behind Rose Darling, a kinda heartbreaking song that details a narrative in which the meaningless and insipid hours drag, and the precious moments aren’t rightfully yours for the taking.

Oh shit :-) Just had The Original Soundtrack pre-Dan record on this morning. Nothing life changing on that but still quite fun stuff. This should be a great poll - co-sign on Western World, it's fantastic.

wish i'd been to this tour

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/1382254_10152685557314972_1175447205_n.jpg

I've put off listening to Everything Must Go for far too long. Now is the time.

i think i listened to that once and it sort of washed over me.

Honestly, I am expecting the same (which is why I've put it off), but I already know every song on the rest of their albums so spending an hour to be complete wouldn't kill me.

Sent!

i'm going to listen to a lot of 'dan this week but i am pretty sure my ballot is just going to read like one of the greatest hits albums

I've put off listening to Everything Must Go for far too long. Now is the time.

― Vinnie,

much much better than Two Against Nature ("Pixaleen"! "Godwhacker"!).

blues beach
i'm frying
sizzling in the merciful rays
and it's the long sad sunday of the early resigned

both everything must go and two against nature are great, do not miss out on voting for "jack of speed" maybe my favorite dan song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IChlag1TSw

really The Royal Scam is the only meh album in their run.

Man, my SD listening has intensified steadily since I became a fan a little over a decade ago, reaching a new peak of obsessiveness and frequency in the last week or so, and yet I think I could count the number of their songs that I'm sick of on one hand. This band repays repeat hearings like no other.

I've never really gotten around to the outtakes for the simple reason that there's already too much to dig into on the original 7 albums (never mind Fagen's solo stuff). I don't think I'll ever be done unpacking them - what a run.

also title tracks: "two against nature" and "everything must go." though i'm guessing they're not likely to place higher than, say, "the royal scam."

this is a band where I wouldn't be surprised to see every album cut from their first 7 get at least one vote, except for maybe East St. Louis toodle-oo.

i'd be shocked if anything from the first seven didn't get at least one vote.

i'm wondering if anything from you gotta walk it like you talk it... gets any votes. was that one ever mentioned in the thread?

I ended up making up some very arbitrary rules on the fly, such as "surely you can't have SIX songs from one album in here", just to get it done.

#SorryNotSorry

龜, Gaucho is amazing and I can definitely understand picking 6 or all of the tracks.

especially since Nightfly was not allowed in your 20 and Gaucho is Nightfly's Cousin Dupree.

that deadline is very soft as i'm going to bed. will add the last few after work tomorrow, so you actually have about a half day longer.

this has been an amazing experience. i will have some stories to tell of what i witnessed as the order was being hasted out.

龜, Gaucho Countdown is amazing and I can definitely understand picking 6 or all of the tracks.

― Belgian Flanders Albums Chart (Sufjan Grafton), Monday, March 31, 2014 12:17 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fixed.

xp Cool. Think I'm gonna slap together a last minute late night ballot.

me too. got it down to about 25 right now.

Alright, I voted, can't wait

sent

favored album?

Got my ballot in with under an hour to spare. Can't wait for the results!

I voted for about half of countdown and most of Katy Lied

Walked into a cafe near my apt in shanghai and they're playing 'only a fool would say that' :))))))>>>>

best of cbat :)

yes.

I haven't been following the thread closely (or at all, really), but life experience tells me I'll probably be the only voter to put Charlie Freak at #1.

there was at least one "charlie freak" discussion herein. it's never been one of my favorites, but it seems to me there's pretty strong support here for every song on pretzel logic except for the two side-closers. then again, there seems to pretty strong support here for roughly 97 percent of the songs in the SD oeuvre.

submitted. Aja got the most, then Countdown.

nice! need some aja love to offset the late PL surge

though I've been liking PL more now, and it was the underdog for a bit there. Bee Ok's comments make me think there was a PL/CBAT comeback.

there's no consensus here at all which is cool, this poll could be all over the place.

I am totally committed to my #1 choice, but after that, I could have re-ranked them a hundred different ways. Or switched out about 10 songs that I chose for 10 that I didn't.

reading a kate bush biography right now, in an interview she lists Steely Dan as one of her early songwriting influences. glad to see two words of awesomeness connected.

Wow. As I checked out the catalogue, I kept thinking they're the exact mid-point between Kate Bush and The Doors. But I'd never dare say that out loud.

her fave album is Gaucho, a quick google revealed she played Babylon Sisters when she guested on a radio show "I think they're very underestimated. They're the most incredible musicians. This is it. They are here - a musician's band. I mean, all the musicians in this country just rave about them technically, and as songwriters. But you know, they're not really played on the radio, but they're just incredible"

Throw Back The Little Ones seems the most undeniably Bushic, but there are others

this is a band where I wouldn't be surprised to see every album cut from their first 7 get at least one vote, except for maybe East St. Louis toodle-oo.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, March 31, 2014 12:53 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It almost made my ballot, though purely for sentimental reasons. I thought it was really touching that they paid tribute to Ellington (who had just passed away), and I'm hard-pressed to think of any other band that would have/could have done a similar tribute.

That said, a little talk-box goes a long way.

Man, there are some hardcore Dan fans on here. Hope I don't fuck up the art.

Though I was really proud of myself for finding the right image to go along with "Stuck In the Middle With You", so at least there's that.

It almost made my ballot, though purely for sentimental reasons

same here. I grew up in a house without jazz records (well maybe there was a David Sanborn record at one point) but the Dan's "East St Louis" was almost def. the first piece of jazz I ever heard.

but it seems to me there's pretty strong support here for every song on pretzel logic except for the two side-closers

"Monkey In Your Soul" just missed my ballot

^^I rated it very highly.

It made my ballot, too. One of my favorite PL songs.

So cool to hear that Kate Bush is a fan. I was rediscovering SD (and Gaucho especially) at the same time I was first getting into Kate. I even have a playlist that's just Gaucho + The Dreaming because those were the main albums I wanted to listen to all the time.

(xp) i mentioned the two side-closers simply because they were the only two that didn't expressly get love in the thread. i believe that's been cleared up now.

seeing the steve winwood thread revival yesterday reminded me how easily traffic's "the low spark of high heeled boys" could have been a steely dan song circa the royal scam and aja.

Throw Back The Little Ones seems the most undeniably Bushic, but there are others

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Voting is Closed!
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so i'm about to send pplains the final list. he has some work to do on the pictures and i have some last minute stuff to do.

by taking some time, i should be able to have a great rollout. going to start with some subpolls on Wednesday Night. the main rollout will run Thursday starting around 9 AM Pacific Time and run to either Friday Night or Saturday.

thanks for your patience but we are almost there.

oh btw i will sleep, the poll is not going to go for 24 hours straight.

was unable to vote due to, um, surgery but looking forward to recovering with the rollout.

will there be a Spotify?

hope you are oK, rogermexico. get well soon!

yeah ditto!

if noone else does a Spotify playlist i definitely will -- some polls it seems like there's almost a stigma against them, but like w/ Pink Floyd i ended up just making one for my personal use even though i wasn't really posting on the thread

procedure went well, resting comfortably, percocet's not quite cuervo and columbian but all good. xo y'all.

Polled At Last: STEELY DAN - ILM Artist poll #50