No Filler Music Podcast - Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

This week we're digging up an old episode that we recorded over 2 years ago that we never ended up posting. We tackle our favorite Steely Dan album Pretzel Logic, from 1974. This was the band's final release as a proper five-piece before Walter Becker and Donald Fagen posted up shop in the studio, recording all future albums with a constantly revolving cast of studio musicians. Pretzel Logic varies widely in style from track to track, and showcases what each of the five members brought to the table, and what made Steely Dan such a powerhouse in their genre-bending jazz rock stylings. To this day, the song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" from Pretzel is the band's most successful single, over 40 years later. Track Listing: Night By Night Through With Buzz With A Gun Charlie Freak Marvin Gaye - One More Heartache Check out more great music podcasts on Pantheon: www.pantheonpodcasts.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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that we never ended up launching with, uh, that we recorded, A little over two years ago, we covered Steely Dan's Pretzell Logic, which came out in 1974. So last week, we actually recorded a whole other Steely Dan episode, and we covered their album, Goucho, which came out six years later in 1980. And then I went back and listened to this older episode, and I really, really enjoyed it. So we decided to go with this one. It was really fun to listen to Travis Cumberland. up with the idea for what you heard's in this episode. So we kind of like hash it out and

talk about it within like three minutes of the episode. So it's really great. I really enjoy listening to it. I hope you do too. It's a really good episode I think. It's a good representation of this album of Steely Dance. So we're just going to play it as is. And then we'll be back at you next week with a sidetrack on Larry Carlton, who is a studio musician, a guitar player that shows up in a handful of Steely Dan records. So anyways, check us out on the Pantheon Podcast Network. There you will find all of our shows within the website. It's pantheonpodcast.com.

You can also find a lot of other great music podcasts within the network. You can also check us out at no filler podcast.com. if you want to kind of dive into our show notes and all that fun stuff. So anyways, I just wanted to brief you on this one. I'm just going to play it as is. Hope you enjoy it. Again, this was originally going to be our third ever episode way back in the day. But we scrapped it at the time.

So here it is. Hope you enjoy it. Thank you, as always, for listening. I'm Donald Fagan. And my name is Walter Becker. You go for a saying it. Hi, my name is Walter. Dr. Becker. And I'm Donald Fagan.

And here, what are we supposed to send this? We're still eating. I can't remember what station is. It's right here. Oh. Okay. Hi, my name is Donald Fagan. And mine is too.

Whoa. And here's a cut from our latest album. That wasn't so good. No, we could do that again. And welcome to the third episode of No Filler. A music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. In each episode, we'll dive into a little history of the artist and the album of choice with snippets from interviews and concerts as well as music from the album

itself. My name is Travis and Q, how you feeling? Feeling great, man. It's an early morning podcast we're doing. Yeah, I got my coffee here. I'm ready to go. Oh, I'm wired, bro. Wired. How's Texas treating you right now? It's good, man. We've had, we've had, We've got a week of fall weather. It actually feels like fall, although we had some storms last night, but other than that, it actually feels like fall. Yeah, we're, we are now into the cloudy days up here, which I don't mind. I love it. And the fall colors up here, just breathtaking.

We don't, yeah, we don't, we don't have that down here. We have like a week of it. We have a week of it, and then. Yep. And then they're just, you know, they're on the ground. basically. I remember. So we're talking about Steely Dan today.

Well, before we get into it, I've got a new segment that I wanted to try out. Lay it on me. Here's the name that I was thinking for this segment. It's going to be called What You Heard. What You Heard? What You Heard. Do you like that?

Yeah, that's great. What do we listen to? Yeah, what you heard. Well, basically. you know, yeah, what have you been listening to lately?

Well, I just got turned on to this awesome. It's like a, it's like a Canadian girl white stripes band. Okay.

They're called the PAC AD. Never heard of them before. And they, man, they are just a raunchy, gritty, garage blues. Okay.

And, you know, drummer and guitarist. Okay. Freaking great, dude. The album I was listening to is called the funeral mix tape. Definitely check it out, man. I know you're a fan of the White Stripes. If you're a fan of the White Stripes, check them out. They are fucking awesome.

I'm going to go check them out in December. They're coming up to Bellingham. It's going to be awesome. I'm excited. So is it the same setup where he's the singer, she's the drummer? No, no, no. It's two girls. Oh, I'm looking at these.

pictures here. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, man. Check it out. It's, man, just, I mean, I got 30 seconds into the first track on that album. I was sold. Well, that's good, man. I'm always, because this is so, so they're, they're relatively new, right? I think they've been around for a while. Like I said, man, I had never heard of them before. I'm always glad to hear when new bands are still bringing that bluesy, gritty stuff to the mix. You know what I mean? Yeah, I was in need of some new tunes like that in my life. Yeah. So it was good timing. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I'll check them out. What about you? What are you listening to? So you remember I mentioned to you, so when we were doing the Foles episode, and we talked about

Antipolis, the band. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they're an actual group. they still make music and they came out with a new album recently. And it's called Where the Gods Are in Peace. And it's like a concept album all the way through. Yeah, I listened to a couple songs from it when you had mentioned it to me. It's freaking awesome, man. Yeah. I love that vocalist.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, his, yeah, Zap Mama. That's his name. Zap Mama? Zap Mama, yeah. But, yeah, it's just this, like, funky, like, jazzy, like, bluesy, like, Afrofunk, I think is what they're calling it. You know what it reminds me of? You remember the Budo's Band?

Yeah, the name rings the bell. Yeah, I was into them for a bit. Yeah, it's that kind of like, Afrofunk. were beat, heavy on the horns. I think they're like a 17 piece band or something. I'm sure they're, it's very similar. Cool. So the story that I told you was, you know,

I was in a record store and they were playing it and I shazammed it and didn't even make the connection because I didn't read the, I just saw that I got a successful shazam and then went about my business and went back and reviewed. And I was like, wait a second. Antibos, that's the band that did the horns on the Anadolz record. So that was like one of those like the universe is smiling down on any kind of moments, you know? Yeah.

Oh yeah. And to hear that like, oh, they just put out a new record and it's kick ass. That's cool. So anyway, that's a, I had to immediately get the vinyl for that because it's just one of those records that, you know, needs to be heard on good speakers. So anyway. And that's what you heard on no filler. What you heard. You heard with Perd.

I was going to joke about that. We could get Purr'd on here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right, so we're talking about Steely Dan today. And I'm sure you've heard of them before. They're the band that, you know, if you're around our age, they're the band that your dad was really into. and so you've probably heard their music through your dad.

And in the case of us, your dad would play it and then you either liked it or you ignored it. In our case, we fell in love with it. Or Steely Dan was the band that your dad hated because I'm sure there's equally as many people. Well, yeah. In that case, you would never have any exposure to it

other than you might hear Ricky don't lose that number. in a department store or something like that. Yeah, right. And not know that, oh, it's that song, but, you know, I don't know who the artist is. But Q, I'm freaking, I'm really excited to do this episode. This is, Steely Dan has forever been just like untouchable in my mind as far as like, there's no one else like them. You know what I mean?

There really, there really isn't. Yeah, we're going to nerd out over, over Steely. So we've got Walter B. Becker, who actually just passed away earlier this year. He was guitars and backing vocals. He wasn't lead guitar, but he helped with a lot of the composition of the tracks and actually wrote a lot of the lyrics as well. And we've got Donald Fagan who plays keyboards and he's the lead singer of the band. So it's basically these two guys. And I think between the both of them, they both wrote the songs and lyrics together. Yeah. Basically,

these two guys and they would pretty much just bring in any musician that was willing to work with them to help record and tour so to give you a good this is I thought this was a good overview

of of the duo here Fagan and Becker Denny Diaz which was one of the founding members of the band he was guitars he described them as basically one person

with two brains, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Highbrow, intellectual humor, no fart jokes. He wanted to make sure that that was mentioned. Yeah. They would finish each other's sentences, that kind of thing. Yeah, when you're listening to them in interviews and stuff, yeah, you can definitely, you can hear that connection.

Yeah, they're super close. They met back in college. So from what I read, Donald heard Becker. playing guitar in probably like a practice room or something like that in some music hall in college and then they they formed their first group I guess just the two of them it was uh they were called leather canary and that is a sweet name but even sweeter in my opinion is the fact that Chevy Chase was the drummer. Yeah, man, I can't...

That's right. I said Chevy Chase, the comedian. The Chevy Chase. Isn't that wacky? I know. That's crazy to me. When you told me that, that blew my mind. Chevy Chase. Yeah, I mean, what are the odds? And what's funny is, at the time, Chase called the group a bad jazz band.

I mean, I wouldn't. honestly I wouldn't call them a jazz band. I would call them one of the, you know, they're the greatest fusion, fusion band of all time. Yeah, there we go. That'll be challenged. That'll be challenged by some listener.

That's fine. But I feel like, you know, fusion, usually when you think of fusion, you think of jazz rock, jazz blues. Yeah. But they fuse everything together. You know what I mean? And that's what's great about pretzologic.

I feel like it's the most like varied. Yes. of their albums as far as like sounds and genres. Yes. And I think we picked a good selection to showcase that. Yeah, and I'll say this right now. You know, I'll be honest, one of the reasons I thought it would be great to do Pritzel Logic as well is to show, to play some of these songs for people that have kind of been standoffish

and have always been turned off by just hearing the name Steely Dan. They just go, oh yeah, nope, not for me. Well, these songs on this album, Pretzel Logic was their attempt at writing complete musical statements within the three-minute pop song format. And track by track, it seems like they're diving into different styles of music, too. So they had two albums that came out before Pretzell Logic. The first one being Can't Buy a Thrill, which was their first full-length album, which had Reelan in the Years on it, which is probably their first major single, I imagine. It had Do It Again and Reelan in the Years. Those are the two singles. They both were top 20. Reelan in the Years was the song that we definitely heard the most growing up to our dad. He always had the compilation albums.

You know, the best of albums. Yeah, we heard that one a lot. Yeah. Their sophomore album Countdown to Ecstasy was not as successful as Can't Buy a Thrill. So it did not produce a single. And from what I read, and I know you read the same article, they sort of blamed the sales of the poor sales of Countdown and Existee on sort of how they had to kind of, they felt they rushed

to the process of recording it. Yeah, because they started touring. Because they were touring so much, yeah. A lot. So, yeah. Since they're perfectionists in the studio, they couldn't achieve the results that they wanted

if they kept up that tour schedule. So. You know what it reminds me of? I imagine that's exactly what John, Paul, George, and Ringo felt. Yeah.

Post-Beedlemania phase, they were just done with touring and just wanted to to just be in the studio as much as they could. To the point where, and same with Steely Dan, they started to approach their albums, not even thinking about

how they would be able to replicate it live. Yeah. And just working from the perspective of being able to record in the studio, bringing in whatever kind of instruments not carrying whether or not they'd be able to tour with it. Yeah. That's exactly like the Beatles, man.

They did the exact same thing. With Steely, for Pretzalogic, at least, the songs they were writing were more complex, I guess. And so that's when they started to enlist the help of the studio musicians, you know. I think Pretzalogic was the first album where they really leaned. more heavily on studio musicians, you know what I mean? Yeah, and they even, I mean, they kicked out founding members of the band, really. Or just sort of like, yeah, their role in the album wasn't as vital as it was before because they had, it's like, oh, well, let's just get this other accomplished drummer to come in

and do it instead, you know? Yeah. And like that, that, I think contributes to their reputation as like a pretension. just banned, you know? Erogent pricks. But, you know, it's to achieve, you know, it means to an end or whatever. Like, the results are clear when they, you know, that they know what they're doing, you know. Yeah.

And I feel like we should mention, a lot of people don't like Steely Dan. And it's almost like they don't even know why they don't like them. with almost everybody that I talk to when I bring up Steeley to end to somebody I feel like more often than not it's oh I don't like them but the people that the people that do like them are like us

and they love them you know what I mean because if you you know here we go we're going to start sounding like we have a propensity for pretentiousness as that one guy said of and he I don't know if this is something that this guy coined

but he referred to Steely Dan fans as Dan fan. Dan fans. A Dan fan, so. Yeah, you're talking about from that article that we read? Yes. Isn't it called arrogant pricks or something like that as the name of the article? It's called 40 years on, arrogant pricks. Steely Dan's Pretzologic revisited.

Yeah. And that was written by Valerie Seabird. And that was on the editorial music website Quietus. that was back in February of 2014. But no, yeah, 40 years on. So, yeah, she was basically revisiting it. And kind of told that story about how, like, they were done with the touring.

They knew that if they wanted to pull off what they heard in their heads, as far as, like, these compositions they were writing, like, who cares if we can't produce this, reproduce this live, you know? let's bring in the best of the best studio musicians and make it the way we want to make it you know and like they're known for that for their perfectionism in the studio and like their masterful you know studio sessions you know what I mean yeah but I think it's that pretentiousness that you can hear

off of steel yeah it yes but I'm just saying like you can like the point that she was making in this article is that like that they've earned the right to be arrogant pricks, you know what I mean? Right, because yeah, they'll bring in these studio musicians and they'll make them just go over and over in the studio, re-record and re-record, spend hours and hours with them, and then they might just splice all that up to bits to where it's almost not even recognizable in the track.

You know, but then years down the line, if they call that studio musician back in to work with him again, at the drop of a hat, they would go in there, sit down with him and do it all over again just because they're that good and they're that respected as well, despite being known as arrogant pricks in the music biz. Like you said, they earned it. So, and, you know, I'm sure another reason people get turned off by. by Steely is because of their lyrics. They're not exactly approachable. No. And yeah, let me play this clip from this interview. And I'm sure it's just because of our age that we have no idea who Mary Turner is.

But this is from an interview in 1981. It was a radio show, I think. It was called Off the Record. And I wish I kind of looked a little more into it. But this show, the clip that I was listening to online had been kind of cut and pasted together. But in some parts of it, you could hear the needle drop. So I'm wondering if these interviews were pressed on vinyl. And that's why it's called Off the Record.

It'd be kind of a cool concept. But yeah, it sounds just like it's being played on a record player. So anyways, here's a little clip from that interview. She's kind of talking them about their lyrics. Your lyrics are always really good, but sometimes they're also really hard to follow. We're very much concerned with the sound of the words and the music. You know, and there are many instances when we're writing lyrics, when we'll sacrifice literal meaning or, you know, linear storytelling effect for sound effects.

And we got a lot of flack about that actually, you know. You say, well, it's hard to follow. That's the way we've been writing songs for a long time. And I think that we're aware of it. We've gotten to the point where we rarely sacrifice literal meaning for the sound of phonemes. I think we've come to the point where we can compromise and come up with a lyric that's both meaningful and poetic. So, yeah, so they would, when they wrote lyrics,

they would choose, you know, a certain word over another word if it, if it worked with the composition, you know, if it worked better for the, for the rhythm or for like the cadence. And then let's play that clip from the interview with Michael McDonald, where he talks about them bringing him in for Asia, some of the Asia sessions and like why they brought him in. and then how he was kind of told to phrase some of these words, you know. Yeah, so this clip is from a documentary series called Classic Albums. This one came out in 1999, and it is all about Steely Dan's sixth studio album, Asia. So here it is. I'd worked with them enough to kind of know what I was in for, you know. Certain words that they just wanted to hear a certain way,

that, you know, normally under normal circumstances, people wouldn't, you know, they kind of, this is the words, you hear the parts, you sing it, and, you know, that's the phrasing. But for those guys, phrasing could have such nuance, you know, that, you know, singing a line like half as much as you'd think, oh, you know, how many different ways can you say it in that phrasing rhythmically, you know,

but it would be, it would come down to such fine points like pronunciation and exact rhythmic, you know, vibrato, no vibrato, you know, things like that. So it was always real challenging. He did a couple parts on top of himself. Sorry. Oh, man. I love Michael McDonnell. Yeah, they started isolating each of his vocals on that. It's funny. But I mean, you know, if you're familiar with the song, Pegg, Like, his vocals in that track are what I always remember of that song.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, all I remember is Michael McDonald. It's just like a background thing, yeah. But he didn't lend his vocals yet to Steeley when they recorded Pretzellogic. I don't think he had come in until later. No, but he was in the band even before Pretzellogic. You know that, right? Michael McDonald?

You sure about that? Here, I've got it right here on Wikipedia. It says during the previous album's tour, the band had added. vocalist percussionist Royce Jones, vocalist keyboardist Michael McDonald and session drummer Jeff Prokero. So that was during Countdown to Ecstasy. Interesting. Okay, so he didn't lend his vocals on the album until Katie lied. No, but I think during the tour, I'm sure he was lending his vocals.

So yeah, to me, that's kind of what makes Steely Dan cool, too, is that they've had all these, like, bit players, like, forever. You know, it's never been like, oh, we're a band of five people or whatever. It's always been, let's pull in whoever we can pull in to like pull off whatever we're trying to do in this moment. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So with Pretzel Logic comes two singles. Ricky Don't Lose that number and the title track, Pretzell Logic.

Ricky Don't Lose that number goes on to be their biggest hit. ever as far as chart position and charted at number four so you know they bounce right back from countdown and produce i mean this record prezologic is listed as number 385 on rolling stone's top five hundred greatest albums of all time wow no i mean 385 you're like well that's nothing they're not that's nothing. They're not top 10. But I mean, it's greatest albums of all time, not greatest rock albums, greatest albums of all time. And Rob Schofield, a writer for Wollstone, said that in 2004, he wrote that Pretzel Logic is Steely Dan's songwriting and Fagan singing at their peak of fluid power. Yeah, I had read something like that too. Yeah, that they were at the height of their game.

Yeah, and I agree with that. And a lot of people also kind of phrased. it is like this record kind of set set the template or whatever for how they were going to approach. Basically it was like they got into their groove with what they were trying to do with like jazz rock fusion. You know what I mean? Like this is the album that you, that it gets realized

and then it just gets better and better after that. Yeah, for sure. Until ultimately Asia, which is considered probably their best album by many Asia. not my favorite what's your favorite steely day and album draft actually mine is

probably royal scam but you know what dude after listening to pretzologic for so much after the last couple weeks getting ready for this episode probably pretzal logic it's one of those ones that I like would forget about

and then I'd go back to it and be like god damn if this is not a great record like track by track you know what I mean yeah I'm gonna go with count on ecstasy. Really? I love, yeah, I love it.

Bodhisapa, my old school. Yeah, my old school is good. I like gold teeth. Yeah, gold teeth's great. But anyway, so yeah. And again, it's like their entire, really their entire discography is

unmatched, really. You know what I mean? When you look at them as a whole, it's like, there's just, who can you compare them to? You can't. You can't compare them to anybody. They're so unique, you know. So with all that being said, let's dive into the tracks and let the music speak for itself. We've done a lot of hype here, Q, so we've got to make sure our songs deliver, and I think they will.

My first pick is track two, night by night, and let's just play it, and then we'll talk about it. So I love the chorus in that song. I love the bass. buildup to it. I love the harmonizing. And just like the overall sentiment of that, right? Like, I don't really care if it's wrong or if it's right. Until my ship comes in, I'll live night by night. I think that's such a cool, like, just those lyrics are really cool. And you can hear Jeff Baxter, a guitar player.

Skunk Baxter, as he is often referred to as. He sort of teases that blues guitar just a little bit after that first verse. Yeah, I like how that's, he just drops down on track two, you know, like. Yeah, well, he did the solo on Ricky Don't Lose that number too, which is a very clean, as far as like the game, clean jazz solo. And then you go right into track two and it's his kind of bluesy, gritty, blues jazz like guitar.

So it just shows how accomplished he is. later we play on one of your tracks his steel pedal guitar playing. Yeah, which is my favorite. So he's one of the founding members of Steely Dan. Yeah. He did go on to form

Duby Brothers with Michael McDonald, right? Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah. I don't know if they formed it, but, you know, they ended up, they ended up being part of the Baby Brothers. I mean, he played on, he played on every, um, he played on every steely record,

I think, up to, um, up to Asia. So with that being said, let's play the second clip because I wanted to, I want to hear that solo. That guitar solo of his. Yeah, so again, like you hear a little bit, he sort of teases it. Yeah.

After the verse and kind of threw out. And then the solo itself is pretty great. Some people have listed it as one of the top five. Steely. No way. Guitar solo. Yeah. Oh, specifically.

I found that. Steely, yeah. I found this article where these musicians and producers of each listed their top five guitar solos, Castile Dan guitar solos. I mean, Jeff Baxter does quite a bit of the guitar work throughout the whole discography. So his name comes up a bunch. But one person particularly, or one person listed the night-by-night solo as one of their top five. So it gets a lot of love.

Yeah, so here it is. Here it is. So yeah, great guitar solo, great jazz blues, gritty. Like, it's a, it's interesting because, like, if you take out the guitar work in this song, you know what I mean? It's, I mean, in my opinion, that the guitar solo elevates this song to a whole other level. For sure. I mean, it's.

It's a simple song. This is, this is us, you know, going back to, like, how well they do fusion of all these different types of genres, right? Like, you can take that guitar solo out and put it in a rock song, a standard rock song, and it's perfect. But you plug it in here, and it just, again, it adds another level to this song and makes it that much more amazing. You know what I mean? Yeah, and the drums, too, sound great, of course. I'm not sure who the drummer was, but I think they just had one drummer for the majority of the session on pretzel logic. So that's track two, night by night,

kind of just a good intro into the album, right after Ricky Don't Lose that number, which is the first track. And again, like, if you're familiar with the album, or at least if you want to go listen to it, hearing Ricky don't lose that number and then hearing night by night afterward is the perfect showcase of, like,

just how varied they are with their number. sound, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think you're right. How diverse this album is. Yeah, because Ricky don't lose that number. It's like a, it's an old jazz, at least the main riff is an old jazz song by Horace Silver. The piano line. Again, it's like, yeah, the piano line at least.

But it's just like, and that's why I love this album so much, it's, these songs are short and sweet, you know? Yeah, that's what I like about it, too. Yeah, it's so varied. genre. You know what I mean? There's so much going on on this album. So let's talk about what track. Are we just going to go on sequential order here? Yeah. So the next one that we're going to play for you is track seven. It's called Through with Buzz. And it might actually be their shortest song. So it's short enough that I'm just going to play the whole song for you. So yeah, let's play it.

You know I'm Yes I'm The violins in this song And I think it's cool too That the violins are pretty much I mean they're like One of the main parts of this song It's almost like they take the role of like a rhythm guitar section

And I think it's great too It's got those stabby You know it sounds like the strings on Eleanor Rigby Yeah or you know psycho the psycho theme yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly but yeah um i always think about um the similarities to eleanor rigby like you said yeah which is funny because hell you know eleanor rigby was on what revolver which was one of those first albums that the beatles decided you know what who cares about whether or not we can replicate this live

You know, let's just do what we want to do in the studio. Let's bring in some strings. Why the hell not? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, why the hell not? Like you just said. Yeah.

Why the hell would you not? So, yeah, cool song. Nice and short, short and sweet. You said you had a little background on that song or something like that, or you had a little interesting story about that song that you wanted to tell? No. Yeah. No, I didn't.

I thought you said you found some stuff on it. Uh, no. But I'm looking at your notes on it. You got a, you got a, you got a, you got a, you got a link here. Yeah, yeah. I know. I already, I used that information in that way. Oh, you already used that info?

Yeah, yeah. So I guess we'll cut this on it on it. That's all you wanted to say. Yeah, pretty much. So, but I can say this, though. So through with Buzz is actually the B side. for when they really spreads a logic as a single, through with Buzz was the B-side.

So. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, we definitely won't be playing that one for our bonus B-sides this week. But yeah, so that's, I really like that song. Short and sweet, heavy on the strings. We can go ahead and just move on to our next pick, which is going to be track nine. which is called With a Gun. I love the song, man.

Yeah, and I think this one is definitely the most, you know, just out of left field kind of as far as the style and everything. Let's just play it. With a gun, be what you are just the same. Western country tune. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm bellying up to the ball. bar at some saloon or something. Right.

It's awesome. With those lyrics, too. I love them. Yeah. It's great, man. I mean, again, with, I mean, they can pretty much write whatever kind of tune they want. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And execute it. And that's why they, that's why they pull on the studio musicians. Because it's like, hey, we need, we need somebody who can, who can, well, actually, skunk Baxter is the guy who does that steel pedal guitar. Yeah. It's like, they already had. They already had a crew member who could do that. But I'm just saying like, these guys are so talented

that they can pretty much pull off any genre and like put it in, you know, wrap it in the steely dance sound. You know what I mean? Yep. Turn it into a steely dance song. Yeah. I like the harmonizing too. You know, it reminds me of Reeling in the years.

And that's... It's a signature piece of their sound is the harmonizing. Yeah. Even more so than, you know, the background female singers, like in night by night. Yeah. I like this harmonizing, you know, this steely-ladan harmonizing. So from what I understand, it's four people that are harmonizing on this record. One of them is one of kind of the key players that comes in and out.

Yeah. Jim Hodder, that's his name. He was one of the early, early member. He's a drummer. What's interesting is he's a drummer, but also would sing on the, he actually is the vocalist on Midnight Cruiser on Camp by a Thrill. He's the singer. But he's a drummer. So like for Pretzologic, I think they pulled him in just to contribute to the to the, to the, to the,

to these harmonies, the harmonizing. That's cool. So he just came in. You know, he wasn't, again, he didn't drum on that record, even though he's a drummer. Yeah. But they said, hey, let's use your vocals. So again. And it's funny, you know, and he's just like, okay, yeah, sure.

I don't care. Yeah. I don't need to play drums to be on your record. So with a gun, the lyrics are, you know, it's just about a, you know, kind of like an outlaw or someone who is now running from the law because he, killed someone over some debt that he owed. You know, it's just a classic Western tale. Did you pay the other man with the piece in your hand? Murder the man with Lugar in hand.

Yeah. Pretty straightforward lyrics in this one. Until he caught your fingers in the till, he slapped your hand and you settled up the bill with a gun. I love it. It's great, man. Yeah. You know, hey, I'll pay the bill.

and then you get shot. I also like, it says, you know, with a gun, you will be what you are just the same. You know, it's like, yeah, you've got this gun, but it's not going to change anything. You know, they're going to catch up to you. So, yeah, with a gun. That's my two picks, through with Buzz and with a gun.

They're pretty different songs, too. And then that with night by night, you know, the three picks that we've, we've played so far. It's a kind of a good representation of the variety of styles that are on this album. Well, yeah, that's a good segue into the final

pick. A song called Charlie Freak, track 7. Did I get that right? Is it track 7? Because you said that... No, no. Okay, sorry, it's track 10. Yeah, track 10. Track 10. So... So this one plays... This is something that...

Right after with a gun. Yeah, which is cool. Yeah, this is something that they do a lot with their songs. They do these sort of character portraits, like Think Dr. Wu, Kid Charlemagne, or more recently Gaslighting Abbey, right? Yeah. They do this a lot where they like, or pixeline, you know. But this is another one of those songs where they're telling a story about this,

this character that he's calling Charlie Freak. All we know about Charlie, really, is that he's a junkie living on the streets. And the last possession that he has that's of any value is this gold ring. And the narrator of the song comes across him on the street, gives him some money for that gold ring. And then so with this song, it's all about the layers.

Everything gets added on slowly and ultimately to the buildup of the final verse. So without saying any more about it, let's just play it. We're going to play the entire song because you really have to hear it. Of having Fagan give us a call and tell us to take down this episode immediately.

Wait, hold on a minute. My doorbell's ringing. Okay. Oh, hey, Donald. Yeah, sorry. we'll stop. God damn it, dude. I did not know you were about to do that.

I thought you meant for real your doorbell was ringing. No, dude. No, Donald didn't show up, so we're good. We can play it all the way through. That's good. All right. Cool. Then let's play it then.

All right, so. There's so much to talk about. There's so much to talk about. So this song is all about layers. Yes. Right? You start the very first verse. It's just a piano bass drum.

and his vocals. He doesn't even have any, there's no harmonizing either on that first chorus, I guess, if you will. Yeah. The second verse comes in. There's sort of this volume swelling going on. I don't know if it's guitars

or with like the keyboard, but there's some, these swells, this volume of swells. I think it's the guitars coming in. It's probably the guitar, yeah. So third verse, it's this, it almost sounds like an ebo. Are you familiar with it when an Ebo is Q?

I have no idea what that is. Or I probably do. I just don't. Yeah. I'm going to describe it, but it's like this little, it's a little device that you, um, that you kind of hold above the guitar strings and it makes the strings vibrate just a little bit. So it almost mimics the sound of like strings.

That's what's called an E. That's what's called an E bow because it's like a, it's like a bow. Yeah. Okay. But, um, I think that's what, what's happening on that third verse. I can't find a live video of them playing this from back in the 70s, otherwise I could tell you. Yeah.

There's a lot of great recordings of some of their live. It's hard for me to find live footage of them, dude. It really is, at least from the 70s. Not actual footage. There's audio. Lots of great audio. Yeah, yeah. But you even hear sleigh bells coming in at that bridge.

It's slay bells. It really is. That's one of those things where you're like, man, who, I mean, who would think to just throw some sleigh bells into this? the song, but it works so well. The sleigh bells, I think what they're trying to do is paint the picture here of this junkie on the street in New York or something like that. You know what I mean?

And it's snowing outside or something, you know what I mean? During, yeah, during winter. Because you can't hear sleigh bells and not think about snow. At least I can't. Yeah. You know what I mean? Really. But anyway, with every verse, there's another.

layer that gets added to it. They never take away. Nothing is ever taken away. It's always like something else gets added here and then something gets added on top of that. And the signature steely Dan harmonizing too. Harmonizing, yeah. And then the final verse, like I feel like it's just so, it's such a powerful. It is.

Everything has built up to this final verse when he runs. You know, he hears the news. He runs back. He gives him the ring back because he can't. keep it. Yeah. And now, and the last line, now come my friend, I'll take your hand and lead you home. Man.

Yeah. Like he, you know, he just made this friend with, you know, with a homeless guy. Yeah. Somehow found out that, that he had died and he rushes back, gives him back the ring. It's like, I can't keep this ring. It's yours. You know what I mean? What a fucking song, man.

Yeah. That's a great one. It's probably one of my favorite silly tracks. for sure. It's good. It would make my top five of Steely Dan favorite Steely Dan songs, no doubt. We should mention too. So the song that we started this episode with is called Barrytown, which is another one that we thought about kind of talking a little bit more about. But you got a little taste of it. That's another one of our favorites off the album, Barrytown. So Charlie Freak is the second to last track on the Alps.

And that's our picks for Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic, which was released in 1974. That's going to do it for us this week. Our take on Steely Dan didn't want to bore you too much with too much background info on these guys. Because this episode could have been two hours. And compared to episodes one and two, which were bands that probably aren't very well known, you know what I mean? Right. Steely Dan is one of the greatest rock bands of all time,

so we really don't need to give background. It's out there, you know. Oh, yeah, it's out there. You probably already know a general overview of them, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Enough. Enough.

So, yeah, and I feel like we just barely scratch the surface with this episode on Steely. but I think this album is a good intro to Steely for people who may who may be interested in diving into them, you know what I mean? Yeah. Because again, it showcases so much of what they do

and how well they mix genres together. You know what I mean? How well they can pull it off. And how you can go from one track to another and you can hear like a Western saloon song, you know what I mean, with a gun and the straight end of Charlie, freak, which is like this really like this great...

It's just a genre-bending tune. Yeah. Yeah, so I think a lot of people make the mistake of approaching Steeley Dan for the first time by just playing a Besta of album, which I think probably, you know, you're going to get their popular songs, but, I mean, honestly, there's a lot of Steeley-Dan songs that I don't really like. I think it's better to... to listen to an album all the way through to really get a good idea of what makes them so great.

Yeah, so Prezol Logic is the album that I would tell people to check out if they're checking out Stealidin for the first time. And again, it's a great intro to them because track one, you're going to hear their, you're going to hear their most successful single of all time. Ricky Donnellers that number. So you're going to hear one of their greatest hits. and then the rest of the album is is just so varied and like entertaining really there's even a

we didn't really mention this but track five is a is a like a note for note cover of a Duke Ellington song you know what I mean yep and yeah East St. Louis Tudaloo guitar and everything yeah it's cool apparently Jeff Baxter like pulled off a a horn solo

or trumpet solo or something like that with his guitar. That's awesome. Yeah, and did it, had like some effects on it and stuff to make it sound like a horn. Yeah, so it's literally a cover of a Duke Allen song. Yep. Pretty cool stuff.

Do we have an idea of what our next, what episode four is going to be, draft? I would love to go 90s grunge. And I would love to talk about Allison Change's Dirt. Allison Chains, or we could do 16 Stone by Bush. Oh, man, that would be a good one too. Let's do it, man.

Let's do a Bush episode. Until then, stay tuned. Midway through the week, we'll post our bonus B-sides for Steely Dan. And, Travis, you had a song picked out for our outro track. Yeah, so I, let's see here. So there was an old interview, there was a radio interview that Donald Fagan did in the 80s. he had just released Nightfly which is his solo album

one of his solo albums and from what I can tell they had him on this radio station during this interview he was sort of acting like a DJ I guess like he was talking the person interviewing him they would go through and he had these picks these old jazz songs and whatnot

that he had picked that they would play and then talk about and one of the songs that he played or that he mentioned was a Marvin Gay song called One More Heartache. So, we're going to play it.

That's going to be our outro song. That Donald handpicked for his appearance on Capitol Radio back in 1982. It was a UK radio station. So he was promoting Nightfly and I got to play some tunes for the audience.

And this is one of the tracks. Perfect. And that'll do it for us this week. My name is Travis. And I'm Blenton.