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t was all pretty simple outsider buddies) back then. It was back then. It was 1977, and a break from all of the bold-faced rock and roll dominated my bull that I felt most of the adults in life. My blue and white my life were feeding me. Soundesign 8-track tape Rock and roll was the thing. The player was constantly guitars were loud and blasting Humble Pie, Deep Purple, the Sex piercing. The drums Pistols, the Ramones, were over-the-top and and anything else that intrusive. The whole thing was equal parts gave me The Feeling. tribal stomp, Gospel The Feeling was the revival, and Dirty thing, and the music Harry cinema. I knew gave it a ride straight to By Tony Lombardo my soul. that this music was the Real Deal because . . Defining The . well because it was. Feeling isn’t easy. It’s And it wasn’t just the over thirty years later, Real Deal. It was the and I still don’t know what it was. Part of it, Only Real Deal—at of course, was youthful least the only one that exuberance. Part of it I knew of. It was all so was the promise and gloriously simple. possibility that rock and roll had offer. That music somehow made a skinny, Then I encountered Steely Dan. pimply-faced kid like me feel like he could do anything. Part of it By the time I discovered Steely was pure fun. For me, rock and roll Dan, they had already put out five meant a massive party of heroic great albums (Katy Lied, Pretzel proportions (never mind the fact Logic, Royal Scam, Countdown that most of the time, that “party” to Ecstasy, and Can’t Buy a Thrill). was me alone drawing electric Some Seniors played Pretzel Logic guitars in the margins of my algebra at a party, and I was confused. The homework). The Feeling was also loud, brash, bravado of Jagger, Plant, about truth and honesty. There and my other favorite rock singers was something about the music that was gone. So were the ear-splitting rang true to me (and to my other guitar riffs, the lunkhead rock lyrics, fourwallsdown.com
Smoking with the Boys Upstairs
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and the Oh-So-Holy rock beat. In And I guess that’s it. That’s short, the vehicle that had driven why we should care about Steely The Feeling right down my throat Dan. Their music reminds us (and the collective throat of the that contradiction, paradox, and American teenager at that time) had unpredictability can sometimes been replaced with complex jazz be positive attributes. We need harmony, lyrics about solipsism and the music of Steely Dan and their existential displacement, soloists illogical approach to deliverance working across bar lines á la Bird of the Feeling more than ever. In a and Coltrane, swing rhythms, and world where so much music, film, instrumental and television virtuosity—all is created, not within a pop Steely Dan’s music has by artists, but music context. by marketing Looking back, always taught me to look directors, Steely that stuff should Dan continue to for commonality, even have had me create great art running for the when conventional wisdom while completely hills (or at least i g n o r i n g for a copy of tells me none exists. m a r k e t i n g ’ s Led Zeppelin cardinal rules: IV). I didn’t Keep it simple. understand what I was listening Give the customer what he thinks to, but whatever it was, it had he wants. Reveal the outcome me, and I didn’t know why. It immediately. No surprises. No was kind of like the Grinch. He paradoxes to resolve. Keep the took the gifts, food, decorations, product (or more precisely the and all of the other Christmas stuff customer’s view of that product) away, but Christmas came anyway. pure. Clearly, Steely Dan comes I felt the Feeling that night, but from a different place. Steely Dan how? Everything that I thought creates a world where the listener is was responsible for it was gone, yet asked to submit to Steely Dan’s own the Feeling remained. Steely Dan special logic—a pretzel logic if you delivered the Feeling, but they did will. It’s a logic where Thelonious so in a way so utterly contrary to Monk and Motown are one, where the ways in which it had typically slickness somehow can mean the been delivered before. opposite of crass commerciality, fourwallsdown.com
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and where Duke Ellington and Keith Richard share a cab to the Bowery in search of a score. It’s over 30 years later, and Steely Dan’s own brand of pretzel logic is still affecting the way that I think. When I listen to the straight up rock and roll of Deep Purple and Humble Pie and the jazz of Coltrane, Monk, and Mingus I hear the similarities of those styles, not the obvious differences. Steely Dan’s music has always taught me to look for commonality, even when conventional wisdom tells me none exists. For me, that’s another way of explaining why Steely Dan matters: They created a musical world that takes knocking down walls for granted. They have created a logic without borders that still somehow makes sense. If the listener chooses to submit to (or at least temporarily accept) that logic, he will get the Feeling, but he’ll get it by way of a wonderfully devious route.
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