![]() ![]() But he’s sitting in the Eagles rooting section, not the rock-critics rooting section. ![]() It’s their most savage satire of their world, just as they were embraced by that world.Īt the end, Steely Dan are peers of the Eagles, as opposed to people on the outside making fun of the Eagles. They mastered the smooth sound of the Seventies, yet it’s their best parody of California. As she embraces the musical ethos of her moment, she becomes a better satirist of the sexual and spiritual ethos. ![]() But it’s like what Robert Christgau wrote about Blue: as her sound gets more and more California, her satire of California gets sharper. She has a similar arc-she gets smoother and jazzier as she goes on. Gen Z just gets them on a deeper level than any previous generation did. The Steely Dan/Gen Z connection seems like a parallel to Joni Mitchell. So the time is is finally right for them. It really does feel like California is sliding into the sea along with the rest of America. They’re also also writing apocalyptically about their time, and our time now seems so unavoidably apocalyptic. What seemed cold and remote and jerky about them back in the day-now, that’s just the way people talk. We’re all looking out at the world with a Donald and Walter-ish kind of dismay. Why is this Steely Danaissance happening now? Why do they speak to our moment? But I thought, “Yeah, let’s take a flyer for a buck on a Steely Dan album.”Įagles to Make a 'Long Goodbye' With Farewell Tour I remember everything I bought that day: a Tortoise remix 12-inch, Miles Davis, Isley Brothers. Wu” and I wanted to know what the original sounded like. But I bought Katy Lied because the Minutemen had covered “Dr. I would ignorantly make fun of Steely Dan and then go listen to Pavement, which is in the same vein-musical sophistication meets irony. I was a young man who consumed a lot of older rock-critic opinions, and I assumed this band was not for me, which is funny because it’s clearly SO for me. At the moment I was coming of age, Steely Dan’s stock was pretty low. How did you begin your personal Steely Dan journey? Pappademas spoke to Rolling Stone about the weirdly timeless appeal of Steely Dan, the current Danaissance, the “yacht-rock” question, the “Deacon Blues”/ Star Trek connection, his favorite drum solo, and how ironic fandom can lead to the real thing. Pappademas writes, “If more people are ready for Steely Dan in the Twenties than they were in the Nineties-or even the Seventies-it’s because our fast-warming world is more Steely Dannish than it’s ever been.” As Pappademas writes, “Around 2020 an ongoing groundswell of semi-ironic Dan appreciation became a full-fledged revival.” Dan culture keeps growing, with newsletters like Expanding Dan, podcasts, and the brilliant Twitter account Pappademas theorizes, “Steely Dan are an endlessly meme-able band because they’re a hilarious concept on paper-two grumpy-looking guys obsessed with making the smoothest music of all time.”īut maybe this revival also means they were ahead of their time. People are more obsessed with these Seventies jazz-rock cynics than ever these days. Quantum Criminals is one of the sharpest, funniest, and best books ever about any rock artist. Pappademas gives a mind-bending guided tour of the Steely Dan universe, exploring their songs, their legend, their negative charisma, their decadent love affair with L.A. Wu to Peg, all the way to the El Supremo in the room at the top of the stairs. LeMay illustrates her favorite Dan characters, from Rikki to Kid Charlemagne, from Dr. Journalist Alex Pappademas and artist Joan LeMay take a deep dive into the genius of Steely Dan, and the strange world that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker built together. You could fill a book with all the shady characters you meet in Steely Dan songs. ![]()
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