Over seven platinum albums issued between 1972 and 1980 Steely
Dan helped define the soundtrack of the '70s, with hits like
"F.M.", "Bodhisattva", "Reelin' in the Years", "Rikki Don't Lose
That Number", "Deacon Blues", "Peg", "Babylon Sisters" and "Hey
Nineteen" . They reunited in the early '90s and have toured
throughout the decade and beyond, releasing multi-Grammy winner
Two Against Nature in 2000 and its accled follow-up Everything
Must Go in 2003. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame in 2001. The Very Best Of Steely Dan features all these
hits and more across two CDs.
BBC Review
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Emerging from New York's Brill building in the early
70s, songwriting duo Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were two
smart Jewish kids raised on jazz and with a y cynicism
about the so-called music 'business' and its attendant follies.
Landing a deal as staff writers with Capitol they re-located to
LA and proceeded to cast themselves as ironic outsiders. This
double disc compilation charts their decade-long rise from ultra
brainy pop technicians to ultra brainy jazz fusionists.
From the off theirs was no ordinary rock band although the
employment of two major guitarists (Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter and Denny
Dias) saw them appropriately kitted out to impress a public
yearning for wailing axes. Albums Can't Buy A Thrill and
Countdown To Ectasy match concise (if knotty) writing with
musical dexterity. But still, naming yourselves after a
mechanised dildo from a Burroughs' novel and writing songs about
dissatisfied gigolos (Dirty Work), Buddhist philosophy
(Bodhisattva), economic ruin (Black Friday), time travel (Pretzel
Logic) and copious drug use (The Boston Rag) wasn't all that
conventional for the times.
That's not to say that they couldn't write love songs (cf: Rikki
Don't Lose That Number) but by album number three (Pretzel Logic)
the pair had tired of touring and be to employ session
musicians to achieve the sonic idealism to match their acerbic,
dark wit.
By The Royal Scam (1976) they'd found their modus operandi.
Guitars were still the focus, but by now the players were mainly
jazz adepts. Kid Charlemagne, in particular, beggars belief.
Larry Carlton's solo is impeccable, especially when borne aloft
by Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie's drum shuffle and matched by wry
lyrics about an anti-hero at the centre of the hippy
dream.
By 1977's Aja obsessive compulsive tendencies had a monstrous
grip; leading to soloists being wheeled in one after the other to
nail the elusive takes that lived in their heads. Michael
McDonald famously recalls how his backing vocals for Peg were
recorded syllable by painful syllable. The icy gleam of jazz rock
rubs up against tales of damaged lives lived in spoiled
seclusion: a lifestyle the pair were themselves courting.
By 1980's Gaucho their material was impeccable (Third World Man,
Time Out Of Mind: featuring a cruelly buried Mark Knopfler solo)
but they now regarded the youthcentric West Coast as a living
embodiment of civilization's last days (Babylon Sisters). They
retired to lick their wounds.
Unfairly used as shorthand for worthy musos your dad would like,
The Very Best Of, while joining a long line of Dan compilations,
is a reminder that, for a period, they matched Zappa-esque smarts
to 60s songcraft and were simply the most perfect band on the
planet. --Chris Jones
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