The Internet Resurgence of Steely Dan, with @baddantakes
Hey! How are you? I hope you’re doing well, and that you enjoyed your New Year-related festivities. Have you gotten a jump on those resolutions yet? One of mine is to read 12 books this year, one of which will be “Crying in H Mart” by the incredibly talented Japanese Breakfast.
One of my other resolutions is to listen to more Steely Dan. Yes, really. One of the best habits I picked up last year is actively choosing to make myself happier. Steely Dan makes me happy, so I’m going to choose to listen to more of that sweet, sweet soft rock this year.
When I was a teenager, I did volunteer work at a thrift store connected to a animal shelter, where all the proceeds from the store went to the shelter. I don’t really have many memories in that store, except that I bought one item during my time there: a copy of Steely Dan’s “Gaucho” on vinyl.
I spun it on my record player, which my dad had recently set up for me in my room. I had heard Steely Dan before (“Do It Again” was featured in the smash-hit video game Guitar Hero World Tour, which was an essential part of my youth).
I hadn’t, however, heard any deeper cuts, like “Babylon Sisters” and “Glamour Profession.” I absolutely loved them. I dove deeper into their catalog, past the radio hits like “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” and couldn’t get enough.
I listened to Steely Dan in regular rotation for some of high school, then let them go by the wayside in college, until people started tweeting about them often, around 2019.
This resurgence has come seemingly out of nowhere, but it came to a head during the pandemic, specifically among Gen Z and Millenials on social media.
One Twitter account that I noticed and immediately followed is “Good Steely Dan Takes,” an account that I love that kind of undersells itself (it should be called GREAT Steely Dan Takes, imo).
Alex, who runs the account with an audience of almost 30,000 people, agreed to talk to me a little bit about Steely Dan’s triumphant internet comeback. He’s also talked to The Ringer and Rolling Stone about the same stuff, which is really cool.
(Before we get into the meat of everything, just want to thank Alex one more time - he was a delight, and a super fun guy to talk to.)
Like all of us, Alex has his own personal Steely Dan journey, which started in his early 20s.
“I had a friend who had been trying to get me into them for years,” Alex said. “He mentioned that he thought Steely Dan was one of the greatest. I was really surprised, because he generally had pretty esoteric taste in music. At that point, I didn't really associate Steely Dan with that kind of… I just, I didn't really register them at all.”
I get the same sentiment from some folks when I try to get them into the band, because most people know them from their radio hits. But, when you listen to non-radio songs, you’re often met with genius. Tragic lyrics with a tinge of hope that resonate with almost anyone, and complex musical decisions bordering on perfection.
“This was in like 2010, I heard ‘Babylon Sisters,’ actually, at a bar. I was like, ‘What is this? This is really cool. Like, I gotta I gotta dig deeper,’” Alex said. “When I found out it was Steely Dan, I was really surprised. I was like, ‘I didn't know they did stuff like this.’”
Alex says that within internet spaces, listening to Steely Dan can often start out ironic, because of the image of the band on the surface. On first glance, Steely Dan just looks like a bunch of guys on various drugs making soft rock.
“I think for a lot of people they sort of are listening to it with some ironic distance, just because it's so 70s. Something about the sound of it, the sort of smooth veneer and the kind of the imagery that it evokes. It's sort of like, and I touch on this a lot in the tweets that I post, you know, certain drugs that have gone out of fashion like quaaludes, or like, yacht rock culture,” Alex said.
The internet isn’t often an earnest place. Futility and frustration disguised as irony and cynicism run rampant, especially within Gen Z. But, one thing that will net you actual, unironic appreciation from a variety of people online is talent and authenticity. Steely Dan didn’t often sacrifice their ethos for popularity, but popularity came either way.
“So I think for some people, there might be some ironic distance. It starts off as that, and then as they listen more, they realize that they're actually just really great, you know. They're genuinely like, an amazing band, actually, if you really decide to take the leap.”
Alex and I agreed that one major piece of Steely Dan’s musical mantra is the futility with which they write, which definitely resonates with people in Generation Z rediscovering them for the first time since their dad played them in the living room.
“I think there's something about the sensibility to the band as well, like, there's a sense of futility or despair that runs through a lot of their songs that I think might resonate with a generation that's had to deal with a pandemic and varying economic issues,” Alex said.
Yup. Behind the jazzy backdrop often played by talented session musicians is poetry, written with the same emptiness that sits inside a lot of us. My favorite example is “Deacon Blues” off of “Aja.”
This is one of my favorite Steely Dan songs.
According to Don Fagen, who wrote the lyrics, it’s about a suburbanite with a dead-end job who dreams about being a jazz saxophone player.
“Many people have assumed the song is about a guy in the suburbs who ditches his life to become a musician. In truth, I’m not sure the guy actually achieved his dream,” said Fagen. “He might not even play the horn. It’s the fantasy life of a suburban guy from a certain subculture.”
Walter Becker, another band member, discussed the juxtaposition between success, represented by the Alabama Crimson Tide (this still holds up today) and failure, represented by Deacon Blues.
This is poetry. This is Steely Dan.
There’s so much more to be said about the modern tragedy behind Steely Dan’s music. So much of it centers around the ideas present in “Deacon Blues.”
We were supposed to be destined for more than this, but now all we can do is dream. There’s never enough time to do what we want to do with this life, we’re stuck doing what we have to do. Fame makes me sad, so I have to eat dumplings and do cocaine.
But seriously, there are a lot of ever present themes in their music. Those themes are written and performed fully authentically, untouched by the ideas of money making and popularity. That’s another large portion of the magic behind Steely Dan - they do it for themselves, and for the artistry of it, not for anything else.
All of these things add up to a band that I really love.
(For the record, my favorite Steely Dan song is “Dirty Work,” a timeless classic that I will listen to every day until I die.)
I think it’s easy to see what we can learn from this: always dig into the deep catalog of a popular artist, especially when it’s as large as Steely Dan’s. There’s always something worth listening to, even if culture has shrugged them off as yacht rock.
If you are unfamiliar with Steely Dan, or need a place to jump in and join the party, Alex has some recommendations.
“You can just start at the beginning with ‘Can’t Buy A Thrill,’ because they probably already know ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Reelin’ in the Years,’ so that provides a little bit of an opening. ‘Aja,’ it's a little bit more of a unique sound and has a more distinctive appeal. I feel like ‘Do It Again’ just kind of gets lost in the shuffle of all the other classic rock songs, but I feel like ‘Aja’ has such a distinctive sound.”
I think that’s it for today, in terms of philosophical and musical discussion. You don’t get a playlist, just listen to some Steely Dan, and go follow Good Steely Dan Takes. Thanks again to Alex for chilling with me, and talking about one of our shared favorite bands.
If you’re interested, I asked Alex a bunch of Dan-related questions, which allowed him to get some Good Steely Dan Takes of his own into the world. Those questions are transcribed below. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy the rest.
V: There are obviously some really popular songs that make the rotations on classic rock radio, but you think there are some Steely Dan songs that deserve more appreciation?
A: I feel like that's part of the fun, if you take the the deep dive with the Dan, you discover all these non-radio songs are often just as good, or even better. My favorite Dan era is the later 70s run, so like “Katy Lied” to an extent, but really like “Royal Scam,” “Aja,” “Gaucho.” Some of the deep cuts on those albums are like my favorite songs. So, “Dr. Wu,” I think, is so good. “Caves of Altamira” is one of my favorites, and basically everything “Gaucho,” “Glamour Profession,” the song “Gaucho.”
V: What's the what's the best random piece of Steely Dan trivia you know?
A: I think a lot of fans know about this, but I guess maybe the layman wouldn't know. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who was their guitarist on “Countdown to Ecstasy” and “Pretzel Logic” and toured with them for those years, and was later in the Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald, he actually went on to become a missile defense consultant. He worked with The Pentagon and was, he's a very interesting character if you like, read up more about him.
V: What do you think the best Steely Dan song title is?
A: I like the title “Bad Sneakers” a lot, I don’t know why.
V: My personal favorite is “Any Major Dude Will Tell You.” When “Get Back” came out, you were doing a lot of Steely Dan-related “Get Back” tweets. What do you think the best album would be to make a GET BACK style documentary about?
A: “Get Back” was incredible, and one of my thoughts while watching it was ‘why can't we have the like the Steely Dan version of this?’ But obviously, that can never exist because I don't think there's video of them in the studio.
I would probably go with “Gaucho,” just because a lot went down during the making of that album. I think it took years, and I and I know that's when they were really dedicated towards like a sort of string striving for perfection and sort of technical excellence, and asking the session musicians that they hired to record specific parts to do many takes.
I guess on some sort of voyeuristic level, I’m very curious to see how that all went down. You read the stories about, for example, Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame, who would play a little guitar part on “Time Out of Mind” like 50 times, 100 times or something in the studio for free.
V: What's the best Steely Dan related piece of media that you've seen or read or anything like that?
A: There was a series that, I guess, was on like the late 90s or early 2000s. It was a British series called “Classic Albums.” It was like a documentary series. Each episode, they would pick one classic rock album, and they would interview the creators and talk about the making of it. There's an episode on “Aja” and it's, it's absolutely fantastic. I watch it once a year.
All the really hardcore Steely Dan fans that I know are also really obsessed with it. It's only an hour long, but until we get a proper documentary made about it, that's the best that we got.
V: I'm going to give you just like a few scenarios. And if you can give me give me a Steely Dan song that one should play in that scenario that fits the vibe. So if you're on a late night drive, what should you be listening to?
A: “Deacon Blues.”
V: Excellent choice. If you're on a date, and you're trying to impress somebody that you're on the date with which you play.
A: I would maybe not play Steely Dan and date. Maybe “Any Major Dude,” there's a little bit of a sweetness in that song, and it's a great song.
V: If you're having a beer on the porch with your buddies.
A: I’ll go with “Kid Charlemagne.”
V: If you're after just a long day at work, and you just get into the car.
A: That’s a good question. Maybe “Black Cow.”
V: If you're if you're making a viral TikTok dance.
A: Oh boy. I guess “Peg” or “Josie,” a little bit more dancey.
V: Do you think there are any other 70s bands that deserve that Steely Dan revival treatment?
A: I feel like Grateful Dead went through a similar thing where, for a lot of people, they were sort of seen as kind of joke, because of like Deadhead culture and hippie culture, but now people are realizing that they were truly, on a genuine level, great musicians and made a lot of great music.
I think Fleetwood Mac has had a similar resurgence as well, but in terms of a band that should get the Steely Dan treatment and hasn't gotten it, I will throw a vote for Little Feat. I think they're very underrated. I think they share some common ground with Steely Dan, they're a little bit more like Southern blues rock, but yeah, I'm an enormous fan.
V: Other than Steely Dan, what are you listening to right now?
A: I've been listening to Pastor TL Barrett. I believe he was a genuine pastor and released a bunch of gospel albums in the 70s, with a youth choir. They've been sort of reissued or revived the last couple of years. But I found there was a compilation on Spotify that I found that was really amazing.
Alright, NOW that’s it. Again, thanks to Alex. That was a super fun time, and I hope it’s convinced you to get into Steely Dan if you haven’t already. See you next week, miss you already.
I've always been fascinated by how everyone first plays off their love of the band as ironic or similar. Not claiming any high ground here; I was as guilty as anyone. These were the tapes that often sat under my front seat, and only came out when driving alone (yes, tapes. I'm old).
You'd think at some point, that would change and people would just be cool with jumping in. I dunno, maybe it already has?
What I can say is that there sure are a lot of Steely Dan fans out there. I wrote a quick piece on medium about Becker on the anniversary of his passing, and the comments came from all corners. It was really cool.
P.S. If I had to pick, my fave is "Peg," with "Reeling in the years" coming in second. But man, it's a long list.