Steely Dan

[Al_4_ISU 12463]

Schlitz has been revived in the Midwest recently, and it doesn't suck at all.  Same thing happened to Grain Belt (which I'm assuming most of y'all haven't even heard of).

[deadshank 24652]

I'd go for a can of original formula Schlitz.  Reminds me of the old man picking up a sixer while my brother and I waited in this babe magnet as we were on our way to Lake Texhoma for a family reunion with the Choctaw side of the family.

[Al_4_ISU 12463]

2 hours ago, deadshank said:

I'd go for a can of original formula Schlitz.  Reminds me of the old man picking up a sixer while my brother and I waited in this babe magnet as we were on our way to Lake Texhoma for a family reunion with the Choctaw side of the family.

You grew up in a James McMurtry song.

[Carl Spackler 3482]

4 hours ago, HouTex said:

Shitty beer?  Schlitz beer until around 1978 or so was fantastic.  They fucked with the recipe, and had some terrible ads, and it basically died.  I don’t remember the Steely Dan ad.  

Fine -- amend my statement to say post-1978 Schlitz.  The Schlitz I've had is piss.  (And I frankly doubt that Schlitz brewed at any time could truly be called "fantastic," but, hey, different strokes for different folks.)    

You don't recall the ad because it didn't see the light of day until fairly recently.  The family of the guy who engineered a lot of SD's music, Roger Nichols, found it in his archives just last year.  The ad never got aired.

https://www.stereogum.com/2231031/another-lost-steely-dan-track-has-been-unearthed-and-its-a-schlitz-beer-jingle/news/

[deadshank 24652]

39 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

You grew up in a James McMurtry song.

I think of those days every time I hear that song playing.  Uncle Louie was full-blood Choctaw standing about 6' 8" and rarely adorned with a shirt.  My ma died when I was around 2 years old.  The old man got remarried and took his new wife, my brother and 6 year old me up to Lake Texhoma to stay for the weekend and turn her new in-laws aloose on her. 

Upon arrival, Uncle Louie staggered out of the front door and off the front stoop to greet us.  He was so friggin' huge his presence blotted out the sun and it went dark outside.  He mussed my brother's hair up and drew a static charge off my buzz haircut.  He then turned to my dad and bellowed "Jim, good to see you have the sense to find you a new squaw to take care of the little Injuns!" while he slapped my new mom on the back and thoroughly knocking the air out of her lungs.  

She had no clue what she was in for as my dad never showed her the fine print prior to their wedding.

[Sbbruin 21850]

3 hours ago, deadshank said:

I'd go for a can of original formula Schlitz.  Reminds me of the old man picking up a sixer while my brother and I waited in this babe magnet as we were on our way to Lake Texhoma for a family reunion with the Choctaw side of the family.

My old man was a Schlitz man.

[Rip76 4925]

Not all about The Dan, but great interview with Michael Omartian.  But the Dan stuff is great, and a great interview.

 

[UTCzech III 2907]

Lotta fuckin yappin in this thread (sorry, I'm drunk, nothing personal), let's have some goddam music

Had this one stuck in my head ever since I saw this thread bumped

 

Love all the Dan stuff, but Katy Lied/Royal Scam is pretty much the high point for me, before they got a little too slick

 

might be my all-time favorite, here with both the guitar and sax outros

 

and a great deep cut, only available on certain greatest hit albums, have this one on vinyl, sounds fantastic

 

[ohchaucer 1443]

I'm a lifelong Steely Dan fan and now enjoying getting my 6 yo son into it.  He can't get enough (unless it's to play some Tom Petty).  I agree with many that everything up to and including Aja ruled then they started to diminish; but I actually like Gaucho a lot.  The only SD songs I don't like are Haitian Divorce and East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.  I also, frankly, don't love Do It Again.

I finally got to see them a couple years ago and, man, I regret not seeing them when Becker was alive.  Still put on a fantastic show.  And while he's not quite Steve Gadd, Keith Carlock live is an absolute killer drummer.

[59 Burst 434]

I always thought there was a certain degree of mystery about them. Sure, it is easy to google something now. But when you had to buy some monthly publication, and hopefully they covered what you were interested in. Some basic shit went under the radar.
For me, I always felt they were far more cerebral than the average rock band. There was complexity to the arrangements that most top 40 lacked at the time. Not Yes or ELP complexity. Just not the simplicity of say, the Eagles.
 

I’ll also be the first to admit I never knew they used Skunk, and Larry (Mr. 335) Carlton. That is a pretty diverse pair of guitarists who approach the instrument from radically different points of view.

Then you have their attention to detail in production of the albums themselves. If you were an audiophile back in the day few albums moved the needle like the quality of sound you got from Aja. The production of that album made average stereos sound really good. Until then many high end stereo stores used shit like Gino Vinnelli’s People Gotta Move. Simply because it was perfect to audition something like JBL’s Paragon. Which ran about $10,000 in the mid 70’s.