The golden age of Web 1.0 Steely Dan fandom
A scroll down memory lane with Jim "Hoops" McKay, majordomo of the Dandom Digest
What was the best time to be a Steely Dan fan?
The easy answer, of course, is the 1970s, when the group blessed the record-buying public with a new LP annually between ’72 and ’77. That run of six exceptional albums in six years, from Can’t Buy a Thrill through Aja, is a feat that may never be equaled. The band toured for only half of that period before Walter Becker and Donald Fagen abandoned the road to work on their studio tans, but that scarcity would surely be mitigated by the experience of seeing even one of the feverish shows on the ’74 tour, when the lineup featured Jeff Porcaro and Michael McDonald. The guys would arrive at the venue to discover, as Mr. McD recounted in his memoir, “an ounce of blow, conspicuously piled in the center of a coffee table in the dressing room,” and they would play as if they’d hoovered every last crystal.
The ready availability of free cocaine aside, there is a reasonable argument that the golden era of the Danfan was actually 1993 to 2003.