Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic

Early Steel Dan rocker...

Early Steely Dan and more rock oriented, but many popular plays contained. Still a tight sound for some good jazzy-rock. November 5, 2008

This is "feel good music"

I had a nostalgic moment recently and decided to seek out some Steely Dan music. I found 2 CD's on Amazon.com and was very excited when they arrived. Although used, they're in great shape, sound great and made me feel good, too! This music was important to me when I was in my late 20's and listening to it brought back some good memories of a better time.
October 10, 2008

More than just a product of its era

I was in a bar with a friend several years ago shooting some pool, and Steely Dan came on the juke box. My friend grimaced. "You don't like Steely Dan?" I asked. "No," she said with a disgusted look, "It's cheesy. It's what my parents listen to."

Fast forward a few years. I was on a long hike with another friend and we were listing favorite albums. I mentioned the second and third Steely Dan albums as being among my favorites and asked my friend if he was familiar with them. This is a guy who is obsessed with 70s rock, bands like Led Zeppelin and Rush. Again the same answer, "I think my parents were into them but I never got into their stuff, it sounded a bit cheesy."

I'll admit it, I just don't understand.

The music of Steely Dan is clearly regarded as passe these days whereas other bands from the 70s have been bestowed with legendary status, and I am imagining that the "punk revolution" had more than a little to do with this turn of events. Although Steely Dan stood apart from the other bands of their era (not exactly progressive rock, definitely not glam or country-rock, they came closest to the LA "mellow mafia" sound minus the folkiness), it was their carefully crafted sound that made them easy targets for the deconstructionists who took over the popular music scene around 1977. In an era where attention to detail was becoming anachronistic, the two men behind the Steely Dan machine weren't even a touring band anymore, choosing instead to hide away inside a recording studio creating meticulously sculpted jazz-pop. Ultimately the punks won. Ramones riffs show up in every car commercial these days, but nobody (I mean NOBODY) is selling albums sounding like Steely Dan.

Now me, I absolutely love original punk. LOVE it. At its best it's raw and intense, passionate and fiery, exciting and inventive in the best way. But that doesn't stop me from loving the music of Steely Dan as well. For me, they represent the other side of the same coin. Punk is an extroverted art form, wearing its emotions on its sleeve. Steely Dan wraps its sentiments in a glossy gauze but the same ideas are still there. It's cynical music made by thinking people, slyly subversive in its social critiques rather than blisteringly angry. In many ways it's no suprise that this would be a harder sell because it's simply more work, and most music fans don't want to work. What surprises me, in fact, is that Steely Dan sold as many albums as they did (my theory is that many Steely Dan fans simply didn't listen closely to the lyrics and consequently did not bother themselves with what the songs were about anyways). However, probably the most surprising thing is that Steely Dan's legacy is so poorly regarded that the band is simply dismissed as "cheesy" by anyone who was born during or after the 60s and 70s.

For a music fan of any age, Pretzel Logic should be a rare find in an ideal world. The songs are funny, cleverly-written pieces of pop perfection. At this stage the band was still not so overly produced as to sound saccharine, and the wry and sometimes obscure lyrics spoke of the same kind of meloncholy you'd find in alternative rock but with more bite and better storytelling. The keyboards aren't overly dominant and the sound is much more rock than jazz. Rather than sounding trapped in its era, this disc is timeless.

If you are between the ages of 25 and 35 and consider yourself a serious music fan, I urge you to give this one a chance even if you don't like jazz. It's not exactly trendy stuff, but it's seriously good music. May 30, 2008

Pretzels are gooood...

As always with "The Dan", DAMN great album! A landmark album from the boys in that it was the first where they really started exploring the possibilities of using hired hands; REALLY started to broaden their musical horizons. Little less jammin' blues and more experimenting with Beatle-ish writing, country, jazz... a little more of the bizarre yet still somehow more traditional too.
Also contains (as far as I know) the only covered song in their catalogue: Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo", a really interesting instrumental. And ya can't forget the radio-hit "Rikki..."!
All-in-all, great album! Not as easily accessible to a newer "Dan" fan as say AJA or maybe the first 2 LP's, but a helluvan awesome album regardless! February 14, 2008

Some great tracks and some duds

I am a very great fan of Steely Dan. This is the one album of theirs that I didn't buy in total. Instead I (gasp) downloaded what I consider to be great tunes and saved my money on the rest.

The great tunes are: Night By Night, Any Major Dude and Pretzel Logic. All of the elements of a great Dan tune are in place: interestingly inscrutable lyrics, great musicianship, cool chord progressions, great guitar work.

The duds are:

East St. Louis -- would you buy a whole album of Ellington tunes where the horn parts are done by a guitar with a wah wah pedal and a pedal steel guitar? Just because Becker, Fagen, Skunk, Denny et al did the tune well that doesn't mean you need to hear it more than once or at all.

Parker's Band -- songs about music history, in this case about Charlie Parker and the cradle of Be Bop always skate pretty close to the edge. Rather than waste time listening to a song about Bird, go listen to Scrapple from the Apple by Bird.

With a Gun -- Steely Dan goes "a little bit country." Clearly having a pedal steel guitar in the studio is a corrupting influence.

Through with Buzz -- Steely Dan with strings? Sargent Pepper's calling. He wants his arrangement back.

Charlie Freak -- this song about an addict has a piano part that sounds like it might have come from a Billy Joel album (Can I be sued for saying that?)

I have nothing to say about Monkey in Your Soul except I don't like the tune.

I have nothing to say about Barrytown except that I do like the tune.

That leaves Rikki. It's a good tune. It was overplayed on AM radio. But if you're not as old a dirt as I am, that won't matter.

I must say one more thing about Rikki: don't be upset about the bass part to Horace Silver's Song for My Father being used in the tune. It is a recurring musical quote that works well for about four bars. The overwhelming rest of the tune has nothing to do with these four bars. With Song for My Father, on the other hand, the rhythmic figure is played throughout and very much shapes the tune. That is your first clue that the riff was included as an homage to Horace and a morsel for jazz buffs and not a rip off. January 24, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...