?
Do you know why it makes you laugh?
2 Likes
Always nice when people answer their own questions.
3 Likes
Although (or maybe because) I’m not a musician, Rick Beato always manages to point out things that have never occurred to me.
Another “song analysis” channel I recommend to anyone interested is The Daily Doug, where musician/composer/educator Doug Helvering listens to music and provides very insightful analyses.
Both hosts are intelligent and entertaining.
2 Likes
I try not anal’ize music/songs too much. Butt that’s me.
1 Like
Fagen and Becker were certainly unique in their approach to music, but I also have to wonder how much Larry Carlton contributed to the final outcome of the songs he played on
Charles Cornell is also quite good.
1 Like
I knew I had officially hit middle age when I found myself liking Steely Dan.
4 Likes
“I am a jazz musician. I know what’s like to go out there night after night and play music nobody wants to hear.” - Branford Marsalis
5 Likes
Oh, yeah… that horrible scene from Reservoir Dogs, with the cop and the ear, and that song… it’s one of those totally inappropriate laughter things.
5 Likes
It’s OK, he’s just another in the long line of nominative determinism.
Someone name Beato becoming a musician, go figure 
5 Likes
Elliott Randall’s guitar solo on Reelin in the Years is supposedly Jimmy Page’s favorite solo. And Randall recorded it in one take.
It’s always good to see Betteridge’s Law stand fast.
2 Likes
Out of curiosity, which pop intros would you say are weirder?
Edit: Or are you saying Josie isn’t pop? Because I would probably agree with you.
1 Like
I leave pop as a pretty broad category. I wouldn’t argue with someone who didn’t feel like Steely Dan is pop, though.
No, I just feel like there are so many weird songs out there. The Heavy opens a song with 60 seconds of thunderstorm sounds. Josie just feels like an elaborate 70s song to me.
Edit: When one says “weird,” I think of things like Hooked on a Feeling or I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night.
2 Likes
Hmm, yeah, i guess that is weird!
Reminds me of what is for me the uncanny weirdness of Afternoon Delight. Such a wholesome approach to looking forward to another round of hot fucking.
5 Likes
I would say their song Black Cow from the same album also has a weird intro base line. It really shows the jazz influence mixed with disco…
1 Like
i say bee-ah-toe
you seem to say bee-toe
let’s call the whole thing . . .
and apparently mr. beato regards a series of jazz like chord changes which are only loosely tethered to a tonal center as weird 
3 Likes
That was fantastic, I’ve loved that album forever, I picked up on the ‘Dan when ‘Reelin’ In The Years’ got played on the radio, but ‘Aja’ was a whole other thing, the quality of writing and musicianship set them well apart from much that was around then.
I’ve never been much into jazz, but music with jazz influences I can totally appreciate, my exposure to such music starting while I was still at school, when a classmate brought to school the just released first album by King Crimson, ‘In The Court Of The Crimson King’ in 1969. I was 15, an impressionable age, so that woke me up to much that had similar influences, like Gentle Giant, Greenslade, Yes, Genesis, etc.
Steely Dan was/is a continuing joy to listen to. I’ve also got all of Becker and Fagen’s solo stuff, but I had no idea that those guitar solos on ‘Josie’ were by Walter!
Every day, as they say, is a school day. 
2 Likes
That was great. Beato is just terrific.
I absolutely love Steely Dan and the Aja album is amongst my top 10 favorite. I distinctly remembering getting this album in high school. For some reason, my parents had bought me the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever for Christmas. I opened it and just stared at it. My mother asked “You didn’t want that album?”. …No. However, since it was a double album it cost more and when I returned it I was able to buy Aja and Best of the Doobies for about a dollar more.
OK, so here’s testimony about how stupid shit can roll around in your head for a long time, and just stay there. But now I can finally get these decidedly un-profound thoughts out my system:
Last year I listened to Aja (the album) a lot. A whole lot. It was part of the “revisiting important (to me) records during the time of covid-languishing” phase of my life.
And I came to this conclusion: Aja is one of the most crazy sublime records of the last 50 years – except for “I Got The News” and “Josie”, which have no business being on that record. “I Got The News” sounds like it belongs on The Royal Scam, and Josie probably should have just been released as a stand alone single. I got to the point where I’d just stop playing the album after “Home At Last”, which as everyone knows, is the best Steely Dan song ever.
