Very early in fasting month Fuad was asking me about the mighty Steely Dan and whether I had any of their albums. It seems he'd discovered them through someone he knew, who'd played him some of Two Against Nature, and was keen to have a further listen. I was able to supply him with all the studio albums released under their name which left quite a hole on one of my CD stacks. In order: Can't Buy A Thrill, Pretzel Logic, Countdown To Ecstasy, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam, Aja, Gaucho, Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go. I must say I envied him the experience he had in store - just writing the albums down is a reminder of just how many great songs there are in there. And this omits the solo stuff from Fagen and Becker which is all but Steely Dan in name.
Of all the albums named above it's Katy Lied which generally I find to be underrated, but not by myself. It was released just as I went to university and was the first Steely album I really listened to. The textures seem to me sparer than on other albums, especially in pieces like Everyone's Gone To The Movies (brilliantly insidious lyric, by the way) but melodically it's an extraordinarily fine collection as songs like Bad Sneakers testify. This was also the album that made the decisive move to a sort of funky jazz idiom, leaving the pop elements of the first three behind, but it somehow lacks the slickness of the later work, allowing for more intimacy in the listening.
But what strikes me very forcibly about lending the pile to Fuad is that we're now in a position with regard to a lot of rock and jazz music to plug ourselves into large bodies of great work, sometimes a whole lifetime's output, which may previously have slipped beneath our radar. And sometimes it's hearing a band or a solo artist develop over a period that adds a fascination and new level of understanding to individual tracks that make them seem bigger than single songs. One example that springs to my mind is Fire In The Hole off the first album, Can't Buy A Thrill. Jazzy in a Thelonious Monk sort of manner, it seems a bit out of place considering the pieces it rubs shoulders against. Yet more than anything else on the album it's predictive of later jazz-funk directions. And it has a curiously emotional wallop to it, partly as a result of the obvious straining in Fagen's vocal.
I've got an odd feeling that when Fuad returns the CDs I might just mount a self-indulgent play-through of the whole lot.
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