My Steey Dan Thing

Steely Dan were a ubiquitous presence in my late teens and early twenties. Sweating heavily under another day of piledriving sunlight, I'd switch on the radio - 2SM probably - and it'd be "Reeling In The Years" or "Do It Again" repeated just one more time. They were the perfect soundtrack for Australia's far too comfortable lifestyle and so, of course, i rejected them as laid back perfectionist 'session musicians' (said with a pathetic sneer). But I never hated them or the music, really. They were just... there. A vague but pleasant background noise to hum along to.

A little later and they were still around but a little more in the foreground. I was at Art school doing 'Electro-Media'. My lecturer was a gigging jazz organist and he just loved everything they did. He got a copy of "Aja" as soon as it came out and a troupe of us listened to it in the studio control room on great speakers. He was completely, comically dumbstruck but half way through the 2nd side he calmed down enough to point out musicianly things like how tighly locked the drums and bass were. Soon after that and my first real love was a great fan as well. They became the backdrop to our furtive, delicious car rides to and from Bondi.

I never bought one of their LPs because, by then, Radio Birdman had come into my life and the Detroit sound would stain me for quite a little while. But I didn't know that Steely Dan had sunk into me like oil on a rag. Now I own all their releases - even the last couple, dissapointingly unmelodic as they are.

And, except for "Aja" they're all a bit patchy. Strewn about the absolute classics, like "Dr Wu" or "Bodhisattva" are a bunch of songs that are half interesting at best and, at their worst, are just a bunch of laid back perfectionist 'session musicians' playing with dull precision.

The 1st cd I bought of theirs was a pretty good double best of comp but it never had all my favourites and wasn't long enough by half. So now I've made another 2 that puts together all the songs I might even sing in my sleep:

disk 1
01 Any Major Dude Will Tell You 03:02
02 Bodhisattva 05:10
03 Cousin Dupree 05:18
04 Peg 03:41
05 Show Biz Kids 05:05
06 Your Gold Teeth 06:36
07 Kid Charlemagne 04:19
08 Babylon Sisters 05:36
09 Doctor Wu 03:46
10 Fire In The Hole 03:12
11 Reelin' In The Years 04:08
12 Black Friday 03:21
13 King Of The World 04:52
14 My Old School 05:29
15 The Royal Scam 06:17
16 Sign In Stranger 04:13
17 I Got The News 05:06

disk 2
01 Dirty Work 02:57
02 Do It Again 05:38
03 The Fez 03:45
04 The Last Mall 03:30
05 Any World 03:41
06 Almost Gothic 04:00
07 Barrytown 03:09
08 Black Cow 04:27
09 Rikki Don't Lose That Number 04:27
10 Josie 04:15
11 Kings 03:38
12 Deacon Blues 07:08
13 The Caves Of Altimira 03:25
14 Hey Nineteen 04:46
15 Home At Last 05:23
16 Parker's Band 02:40
17 Razor Boy 03:05
18 Two Against Nature 06:10
19 Bad Sneakers 03:19