I should probably be playing some 50NL HU right now, but I don't really feel like it and I'm kind of out of it after consuming a great deal of alcohol last night. Snow storms FTW. You don't care, though. Anyway, I'm back again to talk about some good music, one of the things that makes this world ****ing great. I know 3,500 posts probably isn't something that is celebrated a lot, but whatever, I haven't done anything for a post milestone to this point, so this is going to be where I start. I really have no idea what I'm going to do, but I'll try to throw in some pictures and YouTubes and use paragraphs to ease your eyes and make this thread not too TL; DR.

Just as a recap, my introduction to The Lounge came with this thread which was able to garner some pretty good discussion about the degree of awesome which is The Beatles. Because of this, I thought I'd start another thread that will hopefully be able to do the same with Steely Dan. If you've never heard Steely Dan, I would strongly recommend starting right about now, and no, Steely Dan is not one person.

I really like the first paragraph of their Wikipedia page, which reads:
Donald Fagen


Walter Becker


Together, a long time ago


I like that paragraph for the most part, because I think this song, my personal Steely Dan favorite, does it 100% justice. Kid Charlemagne was recognized as #80 on Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time, and the entry for the song was pretty spot-on. It read:
To go along with the guitar solo, the use of the piano is awesome and blends into the song's sound perfectly. Hell, all this and we haven't even began to talk about the lyrics yet? Listen to this song and tell me that it doesn't set the scene perfectly as far the drug scene of the '70s. I wasn't there, but for anybody that was, it must have been one hell of a time. Wikipedia explains the context of the song pretty well, chronicling the rise and fall as well as the mentality of a prominent drug dealer. To spare quoting all the lyrics for awesomeness, I'll just post some of the Wikipedia page, they seem to do it justice.
I seemed to spend a lot of time on that song, and of course Steely Dan isn't awesome for just one composition. Some of my other favorites include:

My Old School
Hey Nineteen - especially this one because of Becker's little "Cuervo Gold" story.
FM
Reelin' In the Years - It was probably performances like this that made them stick to the studio for so long, it kind of sounds like the backing vocalists are just screaming without much harmony during the chorus. Fagen sounds great, though. But, I had to include it because LOL Bill Cosby!
Reelin' In the Years circa 2009
Peg
Do It Again - I'm not a big Michael McDonald fan but I think he does a good job with this song.
Dirty Work
Deacon Blues
Josie
Black Cow
Aja

Obviously I can't get them all and I'm sure those that I forgot can be added in the thread somewhere along the line. I could probably keep going for awhile, but I think this is a pretty good ending point. To get the discussion going, I'll post a poll about their albums & which is your favorite, since for whatever reason I forgot to do that in The Beatles thread. Here is their discography so you can see what songs are on each album or whatever. On that note, I'm going drink my big black cow & get out of here.

Love a lot of their stuff. My Old School is one I heard when it came out, and it was thought of as great lightweight fun then. It's still a tremendously fun song today. Pretzel Logic is my favorite album, but I have a set of their collected albums that I have listened to time and again.

Do it Again is witty and showcases the Dan's ability to make stuff sound pleasant, catchy, and upbeat that is actually quite dark. Same with Reelin' In the Years.

Hey 19 is flat out funny, but still manages to twist a knife quite well. And Deacon Blue is all about the knife twisting, tone-wise.

Tremendously listenable stuff IMO that buries some cutting themes and lyrics inside. The irony makes many of their songs a sort of ongoing perverse joy. They expect you to pay attention.

Absolutely. I love listening to their lyrics & sifting through them. I never really paid much attention before I looked up Kid Charlemagne, but like you said most of their songs have a darker side even though they're played through a more upbeat, jazzy style. Hey Nineteen is probably my second favorite song, and obviously has a dark undertone. I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan the more I listen to them.

I remember when CDs first came out, Aja was a must have for the sonic mastery of its mix.

Yes, I'm old.

Steely Dan is great.

Highly recommend the boxed set that has like five or six albums on it. Even if you don't like some of their songs, there are so many there that you can still listen to good stuff for hours.

Aja was my first CD purchase as well even though I had the vinyl. I still own the vinyl to this day of everything from Can't Buy A Thrill through Gaucho and Donald Fagen's The Nightfly.

I can't pick a favorite but I am extremely partial to what I term the middle four in Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, The Royal Scam and Aja.

I still love Aja in spite of the fact that it was released the same year as I was taking a music theory course in high school. Our teacher loved this record and we spent the better part of 3 weeks charting chords for all of the songs. If anyone had an excuse to hate a record it was our class after this exercise.

The last two records were interesting for the mere fact that Steely Dan had been dormant for so long. Even though I bought them I rarely listen to them now and actually enjoy Donald Fagen's solo efforts a bit more than these last two.

It was also cool to finally get to see a band play live that never toured in their heyday.

Allegedly Chevy Chase was in one of the early iterations of the band, but quit, saying they were a terrible garage jazz band.

He sat in with them on piano on an old Saturday Night Live.

Sounds like an interesting course, it's a shame they didn't do taht kind of stuff when I was in H.S. Would have been awesome.

Yeah, Two Against Nature certainly is different, but overall I like it. I saw them in NJ a few years ago, I'd definitely like to go again if they come around within the next year or two.

Can't believe I forgot Rikki Don't Lose That Number! Great song.

That's another one that seemed slight when I first heard it, but picked up more resonance the more I listened to it. Great sound, too.

"Do it again" is my favorite.
Although I'm only familiar with their radio hits. Riki don't lose that number is just OK. Reelin' in the years is slightly better. The guitar solo is awesome. Actually most of the instrumental stuff is good, but the chorus is awful.

I'm not a huge fan of mid-70s "solid gold" type soft rock. Doobie Bros., Allman Bros., Steely Dan, etc. are just mediocre imo for the most part.

My favorite songs overall are Any World That I'm Welcome To and Midnight Cruiser, but I chose Can't Buy a Thrill because it's got so many great songs in addition to Cruiser, Do it Again, Only a Fool, Reeling in the Years. I like their early sound better than their later sound, seems more warm or soulful or something, and a little more varied.

Love Fagen' Nightfly album...and one of my favorite Steely Dan songs is one of the few Fagen didn't sing on: Dirty Work.

Saying the Allman Brothers were mediocre oughta get a person tied to the Whipping Post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsG5UkSZVFs

head asplode at comparing the Allman Bros. to the freakin' Doobie Bros.

I'm gonna throw a little love in here for Bodhisattva. Just a fun little jam.

I guess My Old School is my favorite song of Steely Dan's by default. But FM and Hey 19 would be 1a and 1b in my book. Love the solo in Peg too.

I wasn't the biggest fan of them when I first heard them, but then I started to pay attention to their lyrics and started to like them much more. Going along with what Blarg said, their songs seem so upbeat and fun but most have much darker stories/undertones if you actually look at what they're saying.

Deacon Blues was a hit right as I graduated from high school, and I remember I couldn't get that line "I want to drink Scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel" out of my mind for weeks.

No other songs on the radio sounded like Steely Dan's. I recognized that they were different, and I had friends who were musicians and liked jazz and loved Steely Dan, but I was left a little cold. I bought Can't Buy a Thrill way late, just as I started college, a big round black record back then, and I got obsessed with it. I'd play Midnight Cruiser over and over again, listening to those first lines "Thelonius, my old friend..." And then I started appreciating the Aja songs a lot more after that.

Absolutely love this band. One of the few I can always listen too and I don't recall ever switching stations or CD's when their music is playing.

BRAG: The guy who owns the house that my studio is in introduced me to guy who is their main road manager/personal assistant/go-to for everything/and everything else guy. He took us to their last show out here and we got to hang out backstage and "party" with them. I shook hands with a couple of members, but since this is LA, the party is filled with mostly industry people. The "party" just ends up being a lot of friends and fans mingling while the main members of the band have "meetings". I was only there for a little while, so they might have joined everyone later, but still. I got to go and ended up meeting some of them.

I've pretty much only heard Aja and their Greatest Hits type stuff. I feel like these guys can never get the full credit they deserve. Maybe because the overall vibe of a lot of their music doesn't seem especially intellectual. For whatever reason, Steely Dan makes me think of the South and a lot of stupid people. They were great innovators though. Maybe the best minds of their era from a strictly harmonic/rhythmic standpoint. Would be interested in checking out some more of their experimental/fusion type stuff. I'm also a big Zappa fan.

How do two guys from New York make you think of the South?

Regarding their music not being especially intellectual, one of the biggest criticisms of their work has been that it was often self-consciously intellectual and clever. Lyrical references to beat literature, ancient Greek classics and Eastern philosophy to name a few hardly seem the province of the anti-intellectual.

Compared to Led Zeppelin these bands are not too dissimilar. Where does Bad Company fit in with these groups? I seem to enjoy their music the most out of all these type bands from this era.

Zeppelin has ruined most of that music for me. In my opinion they are so head and shoulders above these type bands that followed that I admittedly cannot differentiate between most of them.

The Allman Bros. epitomizes bluesy southern rock. They were virtuosos. Check out their epic, 2 CD live album, Live at Filmore West.

The Doobie Bros. Is more comparable to Chicago. They aren't completely horrible, but they are far from good.

Now you're bringing another dissimilar band into the mix, Bad Company.

I is confused.

Wow, this is basically the exact opposite of my impression of Steely Dan. I've always thought of them as unusually intellectual, and... Southern? Are you sure someone didn't write "Steely Dan" in magic marker on a Hootie and the Blowfish CD?