Why does everyone hate Steely Dan?

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AstroDan
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Post by AstroDan » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:17 pm

Larry mentioned them disparagingly in TapeOp and it just took off by people who, more likely than not, were just indifferent; like he would give high-fives to anyone who knocked Steely Dan.

I was kind of disappointed when I first read TO and joined this forum because I was a pretty manic SD fan. In all honesty, they're a band I got into when I was really into playing and learning guitar, going to school for it, etc, because it was a classic rock radio type band that brought all of these guitar clinic session nerds to light. As my tastes have gone in order from: older kid who had a drum set>Neil Peart>Keith Moon, they've morphed into a band I lost interest in. The fact that Fagan is a New York jazz guy who wound up playing L.A. rock might lead to some of the dismay.

If you must hate a band, hate Foreigner. No one can argue that that is a fine band. They are terrible. Foreigner is a terrible band.
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Post by RefD » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:22 pm

Tatertot wrote:So most people actually DON'T hate the Dan?
going by the sample represented by this thread, there's plenty of fans here.
?What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.? -- Seneca

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Post by ;ivlunsdystf » Tue Oct 07, 2008 4:28 pm

AstroDan wrote: If you must hate a band, hate Foreigner. No one can argue that that is a fine band. They are terrible. Foreigner is a terrible band.
Dude. I saw Foreigner in 1993 - they had the Target Center for an entire evening and they promoted the heck out of their show for the month prior, but demand was so low that they finally cut the tickets to $5 (down from $35 or whatever when they first went on sale) - I went with my then-girlfriend and it was actually FRIGGIN' AWESOME - before the show they came out onstage with a bunch of groupie type women modeling the various t-shirts and pleading - BEGGING - all of us to stop by the merch tables and buy some stuff! They were obviously bleeding cash on this tour -

Anyway, Lou Gramm proved that he is capable of BRINGING IT - he definitely still had the pipes and the moves, even though he looked pretty old. We stayed for the first half or so, I suppose, but finally walked out fully satiated during the extended drum solo in the middle of "Urgent".

They were obviously so washed up that there was true desperation - the entire evening reeked of it - which in my opinion led to a relatively kick-ass show.

(They could have waited another ten years to reunite, prolly, and hyped it differently like Steely Dan and the Eagles did, and made zillions. Bad timing?)

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Post by DrummerMan » Tue Oct 07, 2008 5:26 pm

AstroDan wrote:Larry mentioned them disparagingly in TapeOp and it just took off by people who, more likely than not, were just indifferent; like he would give high-fives to anyone who knocked Steely Dan.


:lol:
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Post by CraigS63 » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:00 pm

blackdiscoball wrote:
blackdiscoball wrote:
People fell there is no "life" to it..


One of the reasons I love Steely Dan (early stuff) is, IMHO, the vibe is awesome... Not only are the recordings engineered great, but the takes rock. Plus, they wrote some great pop tunes... YMMV
Agreed. And the harmonies are amazing! I love the background harmonies.
I keep hearing Michael McDonald in my head, although he was probably not on all that many Steely Dan songs.

Don't care either way about Steely Dan, but liked Fagen's first solo CD and the bomb-shelter video (around 1982 or so?).

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Post by franklloydwrong » Tue Oct 07, 2008 6:02 pm

sometimes it's hip to hate on good bands (the dead, phish, bright eyes). i don't know anything about steely dan, except that i read in a book once about a danish vibrator with the same name who turned out to be a rapist. i am pretty sure that baby boomers and yuppies were about 15-20 years apart in history, so i don't really associate anything with "baby boomer yuppies". i did, however see a steely dan cd today at goodwill for 1.99, and thought about getting it after reading this thread for a few days, but when i opened it, it looked like half of the cd (on the bottom) had water or something pressed into the plastic like a clear stain. i wasn't sure if it would play right, even though there were no scratches. tomorrow it will be 1/2 off, so should i pick it up anyways? it was two against nature.
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Post by Jay Reynolds » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:04 pm

Tatertot wrote: Dude. I saw Foreigner in 1993 - they had the Target Center for an entire evening and they promoted the heck out of their show for the month prior, but demand was so low that they finally cut the tickets to $5 (down from $35 or whatever when they first went on sale) - I went with my then-girlfriend and it was actually FRIGGIN' AWESOME!
[Carl Brutanandilewski]: Every time I hear Urgent, I think about that girl's boobs...covered in vomit...
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Post by sad iron » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:28 pm

AstroDan wrote:If you must hate a band, hate Foreigner. No one can argue that that is a fine band. They are terrible. Foreigner is a terrible band.
I actually have often said that Mick Jones is one of the most talented rock singers around. Maybe in the top ten all time, definitely top 20. Blue Morning, Blue Day's a pretty great song too.
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Post by ubertar » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:45 pm

franklloydwrong wrote:baby boomers and yuppies were about 15-20 years apart in history
While the heyday of the boomers was the 60s, and the term yuppie was coined in the "greed is good" 80s, both groups still exist. While "yuppie" originally meant "young upwardly-mobile professionals", it now pretty much just means arrogant, pretentious, rich assholes regardless of age, so there's plenty of room for overlap between the two groups.

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Post by RefD » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:48 pm

ubertar wrote:...it now pretty much just means arrogant, pretentious, rich assholes regardless of age, so there's plenty of room for overlap between the two groups.
"trust fund kid" is a subset, i guess.
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Post by ubertar » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:01 pm

RefD wrote:
ubertar wrote:...it now pretty much just means arrogant, pretentious, rich assholes regardless of age, so there's plenty of room for overlap between the two groups.
"trust fund kid" is a subset, i guess.
I don't know... I think the "professionals" part of the the original definition still kind of holds, actually. Yuppies have high-paying jobs, and materialistic values.

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Post by franklloydwrong » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:10 pm

did the definition of baby boomers change also to include the greed of the next generation? my parents are of the age that they were born shortly after WWII and they are neither young, nor upwardly mobile, nor are they arrogant or rich or any of the other terms used. they did however sell out their '60's ideals for mainstream american life and christianity in the '80's. but they are still not rich or arrogant "young urban professionals". just sayin.
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RefD
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Post by RefD » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:19 pm

ubertar wrote:
RefD wrote:
ubertar wrote:...it now pretty much just means arrogant, pretentious, rich assholes regardless of age, so there's plenty of room for overlap between the two groups.
"trust fund kid" is a subset, i guess.
I don't know... I think the "professionals" part of the the original definition still kind of holds, actually. Yuppies have high-paying jobs, and materialistic values.
i haven't heard many ppl use the term "yuppie" since the dotcom collapse.
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Post by tonejunkee » Tue Oct 07, 2008 10:26 pm

wow :shock: I had no idea people hated this band - it's gotta be jealousy - Hmmm well let's see. Becker/Fagan studied jazz and were fanatical fans of it in general. They took this non-manstream genre and turned it into something that regular folks could easily digest - GENIUS - todays "smooth jazz" is what should be hated and protested to the HILT!

I should add though, that Fagan has admitted that they "really wanted to sound like Bobby Blue Bland" Listen to his records - THAT is where their studio sound came directly from - It's SO blatant - His records are way better IMO
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Post by floid » Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:34 am

i got turned onto SD by a pot-smoking preacher who like to boff his parishoners. I think he probably qualified as a yuppie, while most of them were baby-boomers. Not sure what this says about the typical Dan fan, though
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