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RE: Never bought an SD recording after AJA...

Posted by Charles Hansen (M) on September 5, 2017 at 16:24:17

In Reply to: Never bought an SD recording after AJA... posted by musetap on September 5, 2017 at 05:54:40:

> > And I had 'em all.

Just lost interest.

I've listened to some of them, but none hold up as well as the earlier recordings.

A LOT of that has to do with the guitar solos, which became an integral part
of the SD sound. That's the reason they spent SO MANY HOURS getting those
great guitarists to play what they needed for the songs.

And let's NOT forget Elliott Randall! < <

Hi Musetap -

I agree - "Aja" was the beginning of the end, in my opinion. They were starting to lose that spark, and by "Gaucho" it was gone, IMO. I think that's why they killed the Dan after that - they knew it was already dead.

I had special places for "Katy Lied" and "The Royal Scam" - the former largely because Michael O'Martian dominated the piano tracks (he had shown up once or twice before that), and the latter because the entire album pretty much had Bernard Purdie on drums, which gave every single track a fantastic groove, and most of the tracks had Chuck Rainey on bass and Larry Carlton (at his best) on guitar.

Aja still was interesting, if overly polished, while Gaucho was mostly just polish, IMO. No edge, no drive - better than "easy jazz" (like Kenny G.) but that's about all it did for me. The fact that they just let Becker play *all* of the guitar solos pretty much underscores that they just didn't really care any more. It's just like anything else - there can always be too much of a good thing - in this case rock-and-roll fame and stardom. At least The Beatles quit on a high note - can you imagine if "Let It Be" had been their last album? (Yes, I realize that "Let It Be" was released *after* "Abbey Road" in the US, at least, but The Beatles *knew* they couldn't let that be their "swan song" and went back and killed it for "Abbey Road".)

Cheers,
Charles Hansen

PS - Elliott Randall blew everybody's mind with that solo on "Reelin' in the Years". But I think the Dan knew just how to push him. If you listen closely to the fade out (which I did many times, hoping for more brilliance) you can instead hear him descend into "guitar diarrhea". He had his own band for a while based on the notoriety from that solo called "Randall's Island". I think I even bought a copy of one, but there was no "there" there.

His website is a bit self-congratulatory... "Steely Dan's Premier Guitarist". Yeah, sort of - in the sense that "premier" means "first". But to the best of my knowledge "Reelin' in the Years" was the only track he ever played on. While it is clearly *one* of the best Dan guitar solos ever, I'd say there were many more equally great ones by at least a half-dozen other players, most of whom were featured on more than just one song. YMMV.

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