{"id":24471,"date":"2023-01-22T05:30:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-22T10:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=24471"},"modified":"2023-01-22T12:23:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T17:23:25","slug":"take-5-steely-dan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/22\/take-5-steely-dan\/","title":{"rendered":"Take 5: Steely Dan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Steely Dan released their debut album <i>Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill<\/i> 50 years ago. The idiosyncratic ensemble led by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen would achieve notoriety as a non-touring collective that drew upon top session players to create its inimitable, jazz-favored rock. But in the early days, Steely Dan was an actual group, one that had a stable, conventional lineup and a run of live dates. <i>Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill<\/i> was a near-immediate success, with two hit singles (\u201cDo It Again\u201d and \u201cReelin\u2019 in the Years\u201d) as well as popular album cuts. But even with all that success, there are little-known recordings from that era of the band\u2019s activity. Here are five of the least-known and most notable.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">\u201c<b>Reelin\u2019 in the Years\u201d (quad mix)<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">One of the many qualities that made \u201cReelin\u2019 in the Years\u201d so popular (<i>Billboard<\/i> #11, <i>Cash Box<\/i> #7) is the lead guitar work of session player Elliott Randall. His licks between Fagen\u2019s vocal phrasings are a defining component of the song. But a rare quadraphonic mix of the song features even more \u2013 <i>lots<\/i> more, in fact \u2013 of those tasty licks. This unique version is available only on the quad 8-track release of the original album.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hE97Rmdgo4g\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">\u201c<b>Dallas\u201d (single)<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">The first-ever release from Steely Dan was a 45 r.p.m. single. Backed by \u201cSail the Waterway,\u201d the tune featured a heartfelt lead vocal by the group&#8217;s drummer, Jim Hodder. With a country feel a bit reminiscent of Little Feat, the uncharacteristic \u201cDallas\u201d wasn\u2019t included on <i>Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill<\/i>. In fact Becker and Fagen made sure it has never appeared on any subsequent Steely Dan reissue or compilation (though it did surface on a Japan-only release). It\u2019s a fine tune, and it did show up on a famous 1979 various-artists vinyl bootleg called <i>T\u2019anks for the Mammaries<\/i>. That\u2019s Jeff \u201cSkunk\u201d Baxter on pedal steel guitar.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Euf716oQx-w\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">\u201c<b>Funky Scare Tactic Orchestral Blues\u201d (live concert recording)<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">A brief piano ragtime blues number, this song never appeared on a Steely Dan studio release. But the song did surface on a tape documenting an FM radio broadcast of a Memphis, Tennessee concert in April 1974.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dxDwXlRFLWs\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">\u201c<b>Bodhisattva\u201d (live-in-the-studio recording) <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">It would be easy to assume that the staggeringly intricate and complex arrangements of Steely Dan\u2019s music were the product of painstaking studio sessions. And indeed they were. But the band could pull it off every bit as well in a live setting, as this blazing-fast reading of one of the band\u2019s trickiest compositions demonstrates.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ijd_5nT6pgw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">\u201c<b>I Mean to Shine\u201d (Linda Hoover)<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"western\" align=\"left\">Nearly two years before launching Steely Dan, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (plus other future members of the group) backed singer-songwriter Linda Hoover on sessions for her planned debut release. With a sound that splits the difference between Laura Nyro and the style of Becker and Fagen\u2019s future band, this stirring, soulful tune would have been the title track of Hoover\u2019s LP. But record industry snags caused the album to be shelved for a half century; it finally received official release in 2022 <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/04\/album-review-linda-hoover-i-mean-to-shine\/\">and is reviewed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/raxcgCAWVhc\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steely Dan released their debut album Can\u2019t Buy a Thrill 50 years ago. The idiosyncratic ensemble led by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen would achieve notoriety as a non-touring collective [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[4878],"class_list":["post-24471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-steely-dan","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24756,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24471\/revisions\/24756"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}