After I dropped out of graduate school for the first time, I got a job waiting tables at an Italian restaurant in Upper Arlington. The kitchen manager played Steely Dan during close every night. I don't get it.
1: that's the appeal - it's music that people like you don't get.
Maybe. My first thought was that he was trying to get us to work faster to get out.
3: I don't know anything about that kitchen manager. Does the restaurant still exist?
Steely Dan filled a very particular niche for me - driving through a radio desert in the 1970s or 80s, and can't find anything remotely listenable, when a Steely Dan song comes on. "Hey, this is ALL RIGHT! But back in civilization with better choices, Steely Dan fades to bland, soulless and non-appealing by comparison with the better alternatives. RHCP were in that same niche for a while.
4: I don't think so. It was on Riverside.
It seemed weird to me that she calls Steely Dan "an obscure band". They were super popular! But I guess by 2010, that's not completely wrong.
Still, I think she's giving herself too much credit. Fat Mattress - now that is an obscure band!
It's kind of like how Jude the Obscure really isn't going to stay that way if you write a book about him.
8: Actually he still pretty obscure, until Paul McCartney came along.
7: I think you're not converting enough for milieu: in a community mostly comprised of Taiwanese immigrants and their 1st generation American kids, how much 30-yo American music is known? Nobody's parents listened to any of it when you were little, and your peer groups is pretty homogenous.
Furthermore, a real sea change happened in the '90s: with the rise of hip hop, familiarity with the arc of rock n roll simply ceased to be important. In the '60s the Beatles covered their favorite '50s acts on record; '70s punks rebelled against the Beatles; '80s pop fans heard Paul McCartney duet with the King of Pop; in the '90s "old school" meant rap from the early '80s. I'd imagine that for the writer and her sister, a really deep cut would be Mariah Carey form the mid-'90s. Just an entirely separate culture from Steely Dan (who were kind of sui generis anyway; there's a whole prog rock category that's now deprecated but was a huge part of the story of '70s rock, but there's no larger framework for Steely Dan).
On the topic of music, I give the new Taylor Swift album a B, but the bonus 3am EP an A-.
Obviously, Wham was the successor to prog rock.
I'm a fan of Steely Dan, but I don't think about them often these days.
FWIW, I recommend the documentary about the making of Aja which appears to be on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sdMV9TzMkc
Really interesting look at the musicianship involved, and their process in the studio (which sounds boring, but that image of Steely Dan has stuck with me, and is one of the first things I think about)
12: There's a lot of truth to this, but it's still not unusual to walk into a public place with canned music and hear a Steely Dan song.
Covid may have killed over a million Americans, but at least it stopped that problem for a while.
they managed to perfectly capture what it felt like to live in the suburbs and never quite fully belong
I like Steely Dan's music but describing it this way seems wrong. Maybe she got them confused with Rush.
STILL ROCKING THE SUBURBS, LIKE STEELY DAN DID!
Or maybe she meant "how it feels to live in the suburbs and be a drug chemist or a swinger or someone who goes cruising for teenage girls and never quite fully belong."
Parent, speaking Mandarin to their teen: "(is there gas in the car?)"
Teen, sassily: "YES THERE'S GAS IN THE CAR"
I've never even lived in a suburb. I've only worked in a suburb once. It was an Italian restaurant in Upper Arlington.
16: Yeah, fair, "obscure" is probably not the right word. I'm not sure we have a word that captures "present in the culture, but without presence." Like, to bring things forward a couple decades, Nirvana still has a presence in the culture. You still hear Stone Temple Pilots songs, but I don't think anyone born after 2000 has ever had a thought about STP.
Loomis at LGM frequently talks about how historical memory almost always distills historical moments to just a few (typically 3) figures who then carry all of the weight of that moment. Other names may survive, but there aren't really stories attached to those names (or there's a single story that is the name--Medgar Evers was a significant leader, but he's really only remembered for being murdered).
Essentially the same pattern repeats with music; the key difference is that, because people have widely ranging tastes, the emblematic acts of an era can shift, even if everybody agrees with the core. Like early rock n roll: Elvis and Chuck Berry, of course, but who the third is will depend on your tastes: Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Etta James, Buddy Holly, Drifters, Coasters, etc. And for people who don't much care, Elvis might be the only one they are aware of
20: I think there's a vibe about suburban anomie that comes through as relatable even if the particulars are really out there.
Maybe this is a terrible analogy, but ISTM it's a bit like gangsta rap: the actual stories are not lived by most Black people, but the settings and the vibes are.
24: Oh, I was raised in a Buddy Holly/Chuck Berry/Little Richard household; my mom didn't really like any of the post-Sun stuff, let alone movie Elvis. But you just can't write him out of the history. Especially because he inspired SO MANY other important artists.
I read somebody saying that the Luhrmann movie captures some of the visceral thrill that made Elvis such a big deal, and that's almost enough to make me want to see it.
My parents listened to Perry Como.
I did not really hear rock music growing up until high school. So even though I'm white and awful, I don't get the suburban vibes.
5. What better alternatives were those in the 80s?
5. What better alternatives were those in the 80s?
I have aged into Steely Dan in a weird way. I like them better now than when they were current. I think as a youngster, I thought they had a kind of elevator music vibe, and I have since decided that their stuff is more complicated than I appreciated. The linked article refers to the "slickness" of Steely Dan, and I think I've come to admire that.
I've always really liked Steely Dan. [shrug]
I can't remember ever hearing music in an elevator. When was that a thing?
I'm sure I've heard some of there songs but they are a total blank spot for me. Was Dan one of Doobie Brothers?
I'd be shocked if you couldn't hum along to at least nine or ten different Steely Dan songs. "Steely Dan" was a steam-powered strap-on dildo in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch (not joking).
I'd be shocked, provided you were exposed to FM radio at any point in the last 40 years, anyhow.
29, 30: for me at that time, less prog, more rock. They're not "80s bands" but in some places the radio played Stones, Pink Floyd, The Who etc, regularly in those years, and maybe there was some college station playing Maggotbrain by Funkadelic and other off the beaten track wonders. In other areas it was a steady diet of cheesy pop songs. Northern Michigan was a music desert.
Okay I turned on the FM radio. So far I've heard the eagles and toto's Africa. I must be close.
I like (but don't totally love) Steely Dan, and I think I responded both to the wryness of the lyrics and the slick perfection of the music. A lot of what's sneaky about the music is how often some really fucked piece of harmony or dissonance is just slid right in there, or sat on top of a ridiculous drum groove. It's not a coincidence that they are really popular with rappers and hip-hop producers who have sampled them to death.
I think, though, in part, my exposure to them was at last partly mediated by TV documentaries about them, like the one linked above. I partly learned about their music from seeing them talking about it with a lot of sideways wit and quiet piss-taking and revelling in the ways in which they manipulated entire teams of the best studio musicians to ever walk the planet into doing their bidding. I've banged on here before about how much I love records made by those various gangs of studio musicians that made up the "house" sound of various places. MFSB (in Philadelphia), or the Muscle Shoals bands, the Wrecking Crew, the Funk Brothers, etc. Steely Dan basically created their own versions of those types of session groups on a track by track basis.
They're not "80s bands" but in some places the radio played Stones, Pink Floyd, The Who etc, regularly in those years
Yeah, in my north Jersey HS in the late '80s, this was the default soundtrack for guys who weren't into metal. The kids who were into "college rock"--anything from the Smiths to the Replacements to the Pixies--were a tiny, tiny minority. For all practical purposes, I never heard of, let alone heard, any of those bands prior to reaching college.
I can't prove it, but I'd bet money that Def Leppard and Guns n Roses were by far the biggest contemporary acts. Everyone else who was popular was either legacy acts or niche acts. Maybe Janet Jackson, but I never got the sense that there was any single pop act that was really widely popular (partly because so many of the girls were into metal). Mmm, probably George Michael now that I think about it.
40: Can't be more than an hour away, if you stick with it.
"You go back, Jack, do it again..."
"Rikki, don't lose that number, it's the only one you've got..."
"Are you reeling in the years? Stowing away the time? "
"They've got a name for the winners of the world, I want a name when I lose..."
Any of that ring any bells?
Things were looking up for a minute with Joan Jett but I seem to have detour through billy Joel. Guys, I'm totally lost here and someone keeps ringing these bells that are like a half beat too slow and so unfunky it makes me want to tear off my skin.
45: I didn't imagine you were actually going to do it! Don't hurt yourself!
I mostly listen to music over FM radio. It's pretty much that and my wife's playing Taylor Swift. But I listen to the aging Gen X station.
There's a fantastic cover of the Steely Dan song FM by the Mountain Goats, one on "Sweden" and a live version floating around. I like Steely Dan, both as background and for focused listening. I'm not big on most of their contemporaries or most "classic rock,"
I've begun enjoying some bands that I hated when they were contemporary-- Hall&Oates and Lionel Ritchie are the two that really stick out that way. Probably inextricable from attitudes about nostalgia.
Overproduced eighties R&B also-- Ashford &Simpson, Gap Band's "Emergency." Some 10cc.
One of my favorite Steely Dan covers is Rickie Lee Jones doing, "Showbiz Kids" particularly this YT video which uses it as the soundtrack to driving in the snow at night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUx4FyA0L7s
On the topic of unexpected the Mountain Goats covers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_EMrL7D3SA
It's hard for any tMG covers to beat the very first one: the cover of Carole King's One Fine Day that he opened his first set with. I am very fond of "Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise" though.
Also if you're looking for a name for your Taylor Swift/The Mountain Goats mix, I've solved that problem. It's "Twin High Maintenance Machines."
Went to dinner at a restaurant with a menu based on Scottish pubs. I had a Tennent's and described the music as "late-20th century British folk music" when they played Flock of Seagulls.
Every so often I happen onto the yacht rock channel on the satellite radio, and it's weirdly addictive. I'm listening to Supertramp this very moment. Not on the radio.
Mid-20th century British folk music.
I guess I just never liked the sound of the guy's voice. So i recognize lines, but couldn't write out a verse. I was strictly suburban at the time but it didn't speak to me,
53: Yeah. my daughter (early 30s) was in the car with me and I had that channel on and I found myself floundering in trying to describe the combination of mockery and appeal that led me to have had it on (it's not really close to my usual fare). I think you may have needed to have been there for the original.
My swim coach in college had a very limited repertoire of cassette tapes (maybe they were 8-tracks who knows?) and Can't Buy a Thrill was one of them. So I have that whole album seared into my brain with weird associations. Did somewhat put me off their sound in general.
The will to autocracy seems strong.
58 was meant to be in the "They're heeeeeeeeeere" thread.
Steely Dan are good. They were super popular in the 70s when I was a kid. Since then they have sort of cycled in and out of style so I can see why somebody in the 10s would think they are obscure.
42: Michael Jackson? Prince?
Not really. It was a little past MJ's peak. People must have been listening to Prince, but I have no HS-age associations with him (I was in Jr HS when Purple Rain came out, and it was a huge deal).
I should add that it was an almost all-white school. My schools in Miami were thoroughly integrated (busing ftw) so that was a bit of a culture shock. OTOH it was pretty class-integrated for a suburban HS.