Ugh! I am—and not as a knee-jerk response, nor because Donald Fagen needs the likes of no-one-from-nowhere me (he doesn’t!) to champion him—easily in the camp alongside Mr. Fagen's “Go fuck yourself” to the filmmaker who, among others, places Steely Dan in the warm-fuzzy of anodyne sub-genre “Yacht”-rock, … and notwithstanding the filmmaker’s self-congratulatory (and self-aggrandizing?) posture that Fagen is somehow being ironic and not sincerely telling him to fuck-the-fuck-off.
[Aside: Even if Fagen is being ALSO humorous-ironic-sarcastic, his epithet is at least—as tropes such as Cliché and Passive-Aggressive also INCLUDE—a substantive truth: i.e., DON’T call “Yacht”-rock what Walter and I had been doing for a half-century now, namely investing in genuinely STILL nonpareil creative songwriting (that is, within music/lyrics; other genres/artists—e.g., novelists such as James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, et al.—certainly can lay claim as avatars if not progenitors of the Becker-Fagen encyclopedic wit).]
I appreciate that YOU meanwhile call to attention the distinction between the sound- and sound-adjacency of indeed progenitors Becker/Fagen, then copied or mimicked or whatever by other bands … and Yes, too, by other musicians in the Dan pantheon. But none of that justifies Hyden’s presumption. I mean, just a for a quick-and-easy example: I love the Grateful Dead AND Joni Mitchell; and lo-and-behold, Garcia, et al., backed Joni here and there and on the “Court and Spark” album. But that does NOT mean that Joni’s music/lyrics have anything to do with Grateful Dead music/lyrics. Yeeesh!
Perhaps I’m in some minority or minor-plurality here, curmudgeonly or otherwise, and I don’t need to invoke some sort of argumentum ad populum, but as we don’t know each other, I will confess that fellow “deep” Steely Dan fans (some east coast; some west coast—all professionals/academics/touring-musicians, et al.—I’m an ol’ west-coast English Lit. guy and writer/poet/editor) indeed feel likewise: that Steely Dan’s music and especially lyrics are still ahead of their time, and in any case not relegated to one or another easy classification, and in EVERY case, certainly not in the same solar system … or galaxy … or universe as, say, the Yacht Rock of “Reminiscing” (Little River Band)—though, as Seinfeld would say, “…not that there’s anything wrong with [Yacht Rock]. :-)
I'm of the opinion that Hyden's presumption is justified by the fact that Mr. Fagen needs the money (a point made throughout the grouchy travelogues in "Eminent Hipsters" and the fact that the much-maligned tours continued well into 2023).
Giving Donald an opportunity to make a face-saving rejoinder worked out for all parties involved, I think. We certainly know when a Fagen "fuck you" is sincere, and one Peter "Gunz" Pankey has spoken at length about what one of those looks and feels like. As it stands, the music is in the documentary irrespective of what the product and genre might be titled. Uptown, baby, uptown baby...
Ha! I got your (c/o Fagen’s/Becker's) “uptown, baby…” reference. That still makes me laugh.
Also agree re $$$, though I’m not sure whether Fagen NEEDS it. But yes, I, too, read “Eminent Hipsters” however many years ago now; and I recall (but don’t quote me, and please feel free to amend or correct me!) some or other conversation, which Fagen recounts, between Fagen and manager Irving Azoff re touring dollars, venue sizes, etc.—somethin’ like that. Azoff was insistent that if the gig were Steely Dan rather than Fagen’s other (solo-with-band) work, then Azoff was on board, but that otherwise the costs and larger venues were a non-starter financially.
Oh, and I kinda liked the—though surprising for a memoir—“grouchy travelogues” cum diary-entries you noted. I mean, that took me a beat or three to get into, but then I was on the bus! Different in style than the per-usual tell-alls (thankfully), and even among otherwise unique storytellers (e.g., Dylan via “Chronicles Vol. 1,” which I thoroughly enjoyed; and Robert Hunter via his recently, posthumously published memoir [“The Silver Snarling Trumpet…”], which I’m currently reading and likewise enjoying—written essentially contemporaneously with Hunter’s early years in S.F. playing and hanging with Jerry Garcia and the later-to-become Grateful Dead).
I’m a gettin’-ol’(-der) west-coast-Jew (cultural, not religious); so I don’t/can't preternaturally share IN Fagen’s east-coast-Jew streetwise ethos, but I did-do-done-still Dig IT!
P.S. Has anyone here read the Steely Dan book, “Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors…”? Just awful, though I have to qualify that by saying the author seemed to be a decent writer, which makes the numerous errors I encountered right off the bat—i.e., and not merely typos—rather embarrassing and a tough-read. (I kept putting it down—ha, literally and figuratively.)
The book was hard to come by at publication in Spring 2023, which made me think the thing was a hot-off-the-presses best-seller. No. ’Twas authored by a U. Texas “minor”(?)-dude :-) but for whatever reason published/printed out of Chicago; so I had to do some sleuthing, including calls both to U.T. and to the printing house, and then thought, well, I might as well buy TWO copies: one for myself and another for a west-coast-living but east-coast-born-and-raised old friend (therapist, also cultural-not-religious Jew, and fellow Deadhead) … who likewise happens to be another in the deep-into-the-Dan clan.
Yup, she was disappointed, too; and as I’d started reading the thing before she did (but, as above, several times walked away from it), I soon felt compelled to call her to apologize for gifting her this inferior thing (… because she knows me, tends to trust my recommendations, and appreciates my “academic meticulousness”; so I felt my errant recommendation might undermine that trust).
Well, now that I HAVE (though not my intention) possibly biased your view), I again wonder if any of you folks read the thing and whether you have thoughts. I mean, maybe you loved it, which, sincerely, is fine. As I wrote, I did not … and/but I had been soooo looking forward to its publication. Did I perhaps sabotage myself by setting too-high expectations? Also, hm, perhaps I should’ve sensed a red flag, as I discovered the book via a NY Times review c/o John McWhorter, who self-identified as a Steely Dan aficionado-of-sorts, but whose review included, if not careless errors, then a fairly superficial understanding of the lyrics (… and which I found to be the case in the book itself).
Finally, I should note that, fuck, any/all that puts ME in hot water, though, because none other than Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon and the truly genius(!) songwriter/musician Aimee Mann contributed dust-jacket blurbs extolling the book’s virtues. So I guess they can tell ME to “fuck off”; but, really(?), see/read the book's misquotes of lyrics, other errors of fact, etc. (i.e., not of opinion/analysis, which is up for debates and (dis-)agreements).
Alrighty. I’ve here rambled and wild-gambled in the game long enough. Onward…. :-)
Since you asked: Quantum Criminals was the first Steely Dan book I actually enjoyed.
Don Breithaupt's slim volume about Aja is fine, but gets a little bogged down in music theory (and I say this as a musician). Brian Sweet's "Reeling in the Years," has lots of interesting facts and stories, poorly recounted. Eminent Hipsters had a strong beginning but it lost me during the touring diary.
By contrast, Quantum Criminals is vibrantly written, with intelligence and wit that are a great match for its subject.
P.S. — We agree that Aimee Mann is a genius. Saw her live for the first time last week after nearly 30 years of fandom, and she did not disappoint.
Donald definitely needs the money, else there wouldn't be all these lawsuits, whether against the Becker estate or an insurance company for a canceled tour. The 2017 quote says it all:
"When the bottom fell out of the record business a bunch of years ago, it deprived me of the luxury of earning a living from records. I don’t sell enough albums to cover the cost of recording them the way I like to. For me, touring is the only way to make a living."
As for Quantum Criminals: I read the whole thing, and would describe the endeavor as malformed and misguided. The art is awful, the pretense is overbearing, but, like you said, the author is a decent writer.
He brings up great points at the expense of undeserved pathos. The book is largely off-the-cuff what-ifs of the sort that any major dude would idly posit anyway. Simply put, it's fanart, and should've been costed as such: e.g. a $5 blog post. The book was most likely designed for a much younger and less-informed audience than the average Dan fan.
You didn’t like a book, so the author and illustrator don’t deserve to be paid market rates for their work? I believe Donald Fagen said it best in documentary phone call…
@Bill: I didn't like the book, so I'm assessing its worth as lower than it's priced. It's the same way that a gas station burger made of meat surrogates is priced less than a real one at an upscale restaurant. I believe this is how market rates work.
Hi. NOT speaking for “The Gaucho,” just for myself as the originator of this thread: I agree with you, per your rhetorical question, that writers/artists indeed deserve to be paid for their work—though you wrote “market rate,” and/but how many genuine writers (i.e., non-plagiarizing writers/sites/algorithms, plus nowadays non-A.I.) earn a decent keep?! :-)
Anyhooodles, I do think this was a minor point in “Gaucho’s” argument, as we were discussing the book's poor quality—either in authorship or editing—that produced … I won’t write “error-FILLED” but “error-prone” publication: again, misquoting others’ lyrics; some basic facts/factoids, easily fact-checked/amended by author and/or editor/proofreader; etc.
Meawhile, as *I* wrote, I recognized the author to be a decent writer (in re crafting sentences and some of the pieces), but was immediately put off by his/its “sloppiness,” and doubly/triply disappointed when I read that two esteemed (by me) writers, Chabon and Mann, blurbed to sing the book’s praises. Well, perhaps they, as I had, over-anticipated and oversold the thing, because we all dig Steely Dan! In any case, their reviews—and again, they are expert at what they do, so I remain baffled—do not match my, nor I believe (m)any “readers’-readers” (or writers’-writers)? book’s efforts.
Of course, that is at some level simply my informed or ill-informed opinion, relative to others’. But as a writer and editor—among other biographical bits and pieces: an essayist, poet, former U. college writing/lit. teacher, and editor [used to edit, alongside a cohort, our state legislature’s bills, amendments, and the like; and have edited a few books (memoir, fiction, creative nonfiction, et al.) and academic-scholarly pieces (articles/manuscripts)]—I expect(-ed), ESPECIALLY IN any exegesis of “our” belovèd, meticulous Steely Dan, levels of, er, um, competence and expertise and, again, meticulousness, that was NOT absent but nevertheless not-infrequently lacking in this book’s effort.
To that end or in medias res, I don’t imagine that the perfecting Don or Walt would be at all satisfied in their own music/lyrics if their end-result were akin to that author’s resulting publication. Nor do I imagine a Chabon or a Mann would be pleased if their respective book or album hit the shelves with such errata.
Apologies. I’ve gone on too long again. I do tend to do that. One of the reasons I decided, now decades ago, to concentrate on writing poetry—typically, Shakespearean sonnets and the like, which thus “restrict” me via form(s) to some brevity per requirements of meter, rhythm, etc.
You’re right—I did ask! :-) So I appreciate your reply; and I won’t try to argue the ins-and-outs or nuances of what you (or I) might consider, as you wrote, something “vibrantly written.”
As I previously noted, too, the author seems a “decent” writer. My objection was/remains that either the author along with the editor/fact-checker is responsible to “get it right,” and conversely for the numerous errata—not necessarily or always the typos or printing/proof errors, which of course can occur at any stage of publication once the thing is already OUT OF the author’s hands and thus beyond his purview. But the several errors I found are indeed the author’s: re misstating facts, misquoting lyrics, et al.—i.e., not mere typos, or misplaced modifiers, etc.
That said—and to piggyback on some of your phrases—while I DO of course agree that intelligence and wit WOULD BE a great match for the inestimable intelligence and wit that is Steely Dan and that are, in particular, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker; sadly, that falters in context of such errata.
I presume the book will not draw sufficient interest or revenue to warrant either a second hardcopy edition or a second printing (for paperback); but if so, and tbd I suppose, then the author's/publisher's more meticulous look to revise and thus amend such errata would be welcome.
Anyhooo, glad you enjoyed the read. As I wrote previously, I sooo wanted to, but did not.
Bo :-)
P.S. Tried to post this as a reply to you, but others’ text overlapped with the “Reply” button, which in any case did not work. But this was meant to reply to your response to my comment/query IN THIS THREAD, and not as a new/original post.
Enjoyed your discussion with Mr. Hyden! Looking forward to the documentary.
Minor editorial note: "cede," not "seed."
Glad you enjoyed it, Marc! (And thanks for the eagle eye; it’s fixed now.)
Ugh! I am—and not as a knee-jerk response, nor because Donald Fagen needs the likes of no-one-from-nowhere me (he doesn’t!) to champion him—easily in the camp alongside Mr. Fagen's “Go fuck yourself” to the filmmaker who, among others, places Steely Dan in the warm-fuzzy of anodyne sub-genre “Yacht”-rock, … and notwithstanding the filmmaker’s self-congratulatory (and self-aggrandizing?) posture that Fagen is somehow being ironic and not sincerely telling him to fuck-the-fuck-off.
[Aside: Even if Fagen is being ALSO humorous-ironic-sarcastic, his epithet is at least—as tropes such as Cliché and Passive-Aggressive also INCLUDE—a substantive truth: i.e., DON’T call “Yacht”-rock what Walter and I had been doing for a half-century now, namely investing in genuinely STILL nonpareil creative songwriting (that is, within music/lyrics; other genres/artists—e.g., novelists such as James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, et al.—certainly can lay claim as avatars if not progenitors of the Becker-Fagen encyclopedic wit).]
I appreciate that YOU meanwhile call to attention the distinction between the sound- and sound-adjacency of indeed progenitors Becker/Fagen, then copied or mimicked or whatever by other bands … and Yes, too, by other musicians in the Dan pantheon. But none of that justifies Hyden’s presumption. I mean, just a for a quick-and-easy example: I love the Grateful Dead AND Joni Mitchell; and lo-and-behold, Garcia, et al., backed Joni here and there and on the “Court and Spark” album. But that does NOT mean that Joni’s music/lyrics have anything to do with Grateful Dead music/lyrics. Yeeesh!
Perhaps I’m in some minority or minor-plurality here, curmudgeonly or otherwise, and I don’t need to invoke some sort of argumentum ad populum, but as we don’t know each other, I will confess that fellow “deep” Steely Dan fans (some east coast; some west coast—all professionals/academics/touring-musicians, et al.—I’m an ol’ west-coast English Lit. guy and writer/poet/editor) indeed feel likewise: that Steely Dan’s music and especially lyrics are still ahead of their time, and in any case not relegated to one or another easy classification, and in EVERY case, certainly not in the same solar system … or galaxy … or universe as, say, the Yacht Rock of “Reminiscing” (Little River Band)—though, as Seinfeld would say, “…not that there’s anything wrong with [Yacht Rock]. :-)
I'm of the opinion that Hyden's presumption is justified by the fact that Mr. Fagen needs the money (a point made throughout the grouchy travelogues in "Eminent Hipsters" and the fact that the much-maligned tours continued well into 2023).
Giving Donald an opportunity to make a face-saving rejoinder worked out for all parties involved, I think. We certainly know when a Fagen "fuck you" is sincere, and one Peter "Gunz" Pankey has spoken at length about what one of those looks and feels like. As it stands, the music is in the documentary irrespective of what the product and genre might be titled. Uptown, baby, uptown baby...
Ha! I got your (c/o Fagen’s/Becker's) “uptown, baby…” reference. That still makes me laugh.
Also agree re $$$, though I’m not sure whether Fagen NEEDS it. But yes, I, too, read “Eminent Hipsters” however many years ago now; and I recall (but don’t quote me, and please feel free to amend or correct me!) some or other conversation, which Fagen recounts, between Fagen and manager Irving Azoff re touring dollars, venue sizes, etc.—somethin’ like that. Azoff was insistent that if the gig were Steely Dan rather than Fagen’s other (solo-with-band) work, then Azoff was on board, but that otherwise the costs and larger venues were a non-starter financially.
Oh, and I kinda liked the—though surprising for a memoir—“grouchy travelogues” cum diary-entries you noted. I mean, that took me a beat or three to get into, but then I was on the bus! Different in style than the per-usual tell-alls (thankfully), and even among otherwise unique storytellers (e.g., Dylan via “Chronicles Vol. 1,” which I thoroughly enjoyed; and Robert Hunter via his recently, posthumously published memoir [“The Silver Snarling Trumpet…”], which I’m currently reading and likewise enjoying—written essentially contemporaneously with Hunter’s early years in S.F. playing and hanging with Jerry Garcia and the later-to-become Grateful Dead).
I’m a gettin’-ol’(-der) west-coast-Jew (cultural, not religious); so I don’t/can't preternaturally share IN Fagen’s east-coast-Jew streetwise ethos, but I did-do-done-still Dig IT!
P.S. Has anyone here read the Steely Dan book, “Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors…”? Just awful, though I have to qualify that by saying the author seemed to be a decent writer, which makes the numerous errors I encountered right off the bat—i.e., and not merely typos—rather embarrassing and a tough-read. (I kept putting it down—ha, literally and figuratively.)
The book was hard to come by at publication in Spring 2023, which made me think the thing was a hot-off-the-presses best-seller. No. ’Twas authored by a U. Texas “minor”(?)-dude :-) but for whatever reason published/printed out of Chicago; so I had to do some sleuthing, including calls both to U.T. and to the printing house, and then thought, well, I might as well buy TWO copies: one for myself and another for a west-coast-living but east-coast-born-and-raised old friend (therapist, also cultural-not-religious Jew, and fellow Deadhead) … who likewise happens to be another in the deep-into-the-Dan clan.
Yup, she was disappointed, too; and as I’d started reading the thing before she did (but, as above, several times walked away from it), I soon felt compelled to call her to apologize for gifting her this inferior thing (… because she knows me, tends to trust my recommendations, and appreciates my “academic meticulousness”; so I felt my errant recommendation might undermine that trust).
Well, now that I HAVE (though not my intention) possibly biased your view), I again wonder if any of you folks read the thing and whether you have thoughts. I mean, maybe you loved it, which, sincerely, is fine. As I wrote, I did not … and/but I had been soooo looking forward to its publication. Did I perhaps sabotage myself by setting too-high expectations? Also, hm, perhaps I should’ve sensed a red flag, as I discovered the book via a NY Times review c/o John McWhorter, who self-identified as a Steely Dan aficionado-of-sorts, but whose review included, if not careless errors, then a fairly superficial understanding of the lyrics (… and which I found to be the case in the book itself).
Finally, I should note that, fuck, any/all that puts ME in hot water, though, because none other than Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon and the truly genius(!) songwriter/musician Aimee Mann contributed dust-jacket blurbs extolling the book’s virtues. So I guess they can tell ME to “fuck off”; but, really(?), see/read the book's misquotes of lyrics, other errors of fact, etc. (i.e., not of opinion/analysis, which is up for debates and (dis-)agreements).
Alrighty. I’ve here rambled and wild-gambled in the game long enough. Onward…. :-)
Since you asked: Quantum Criminals was the first Steely Dan book I actually enjoyed.
Don Breithaupt's slim volume about Aja is fine, but gets a little bogged down in music theory (and I say this as a musician). Brian Sweet's "Reeling in the Years," has lots of interesting facts and stories, poorly recounted. Eminent Hipsters had a strong beginning but it lost me during the touring diary.
By contrast, Quantum Criminals is vibrantly written, with intelligence and wit that are a great match for its subject.
P.S. — We agree that Aimee Mann is a genius. Saw her live for the first time last week after nearly 30 years of fandom, and she did not disappoint.
Donald definitely needs the money, else there wouldn't be all these lawsuits, whether against the Becker estate or an insurance company for a canceled tour. The 2017 quote says it all:
"When the bottom fell out of the record business a bunch of years ago, it deprived me of the luxury of earning a living from records. I don’t sell enough albums to cover the cost of recording them the way I like to. For me, touring is the only way to make a living."
As for Quantum Criminals: I read the whole thing, and would describe the endeavor as malformed and misguided. The art is awful, the pretense is overbearing, but, like you said, the author is a decent writer.
He brings up great points at the expense of undeserved pathos. The book is largely off-the-cuff what-ifs of the sort that any major dude would idly posit anyway. Simply put, it's fanart, and should've been costed as such: e.g. a $5 blog post. The book was most likely designed for a much younger and less-informed audience than the average Dan fan.
You didn’t like a book, so the author and illustrator don’t deserve to be paid market rates for their work? I believe Donald Fagen said it best in documentary phone call…
@Bill: I didn't like the book, so I'm assessing its worth as lower than it's priced. It's the same way that a gas station burger made of meat surrogates is priced less than a real one at an upscale restaurant. I believe this is how market rates work.
Hi. NOT speaking for “The Gaucho,” just for myself as the originator of this thread: I agree with you, per your rhetorical question, that writers/artists indeed deserve to be paid for their work—though you wrote “market rate,” and/but how many genuine writers (i.e., non-plagiarizing writers/sites/algorithms, plus nowadays non-A.I.) earn a decent keep?! :-)
Anyhooodles, I do think this was a minor point in “Gaucho’s” argument, as we were discussing the book's poor quality—either in authorship or editing—that produced … I won’t write “error-FILLED” but “error-prone” publication: again, misquoting others’ lyrics; some basic facts/factoids, easily fact-checked/amended by author and/or editor/proofreader; etc.
Meawhile, as *I* wrote, I recognized the author to be a decent writer (in re crafting sentences and some of the pieces), but was immediately put off by his/its “sloppiness,” and doubly/triply disappointed when I read that two esteemed (by me) writers, Chabon and Mann, blurbed to sing the book’s praises. Well, perhaps they, as I had, over-anticipated and oversold the thing, because we all dig Steely Dan! In any case, their reviews—and again, they are expert at what they do, so I remain baffled—do not match my, nor I believe (m)any “readers’-readers” (or writers’-writers)? book’s efforts.
Of course, that is at some level simply my informed or ill-informed opinion, relative to others’. But as a writer and editor—among other biographical bits and pieces: an essayist, poet, former U. college writing/lit. teacher, and editor [used to edit, alongside a cohort, our state legislature’s bills, amendments, and the like; and have edited a few books (memoir, fiction, creative nonfiction, et al.) and academic-scholarly pieces (articles/manuscripts)]—I expect(-ed), ESPECIALLY IN any exegesis of “our” belovèd, meticulous Steely Dan, levels of, er, um, competence and expertise and, again, meticulousness, that was NOT absent but nevertheless not-infrequently lacking in this book’s effort.
To that end or in medias res, I don’t imagine that the perfecting Don or Walt would be at all satisfied in their own music/lyrics if their end-result were akin to that author’s resulting publication. Nor do I imagine a Chabon or a Mann would be pleased if their respective book or album hit the shelves with such errata.
Apologies. I’ve gone on too long again. I do tend to do that. One of the reasons I decided, now decades ago, to concentrate on writing poetry—typically, Shakespearean sonnets and the like, which thus “restrict” me via form(s) to some brevity per requirements of meter, rhythm, etc.
Hi Marc,
You’re right—I did ask! :-) So I appreciate your reply; and I won’t try to argue the ins-and-outs or nuances of what you (or I) might consider, as you wrote, something “vibrantly written.”
As I previously noted, too, the author seems a “decent” writer. My objection was/remains that either the author along with the editor/fact-checker is responsible to “get it right,” and conversely for the numerous errata—not necessarily or always the typos or printing/proof errors, which of course can occur at any stage of publication once the thing is already OUT OF the author’s hands and thus beyond his purview. But the several errors I found are indeed the author’s: re misstating facts, misquoting lyrics, et al.—i.e., not mere typos, or misplaced modifiers, etc.
That said—and to piggyback on some of your phrases—while I DO of course agree that intelligence and wit WOULD BE a great match for the inestimable intelligence and wit that is Steely Dan and that are, in particular, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker; sadly, that falters in context of such errata.
I presume the book will not draw sufficient interest or revenue to warrant either a second hardcopy edition or a second printing (for paperback); but if so, and tbd I suppose, then the author's/publisher's more meticulous look to revise and thus amend such errata would be welcome.
Anyhooo, glad you enjoyed the read. As I wrote previously, I sooo wanted to, but did not.
Bo :-)
P.S. Tried to post this as a reply to you, but others’ text overlapped with the “Reply” button, which in any case did not work. But this was meant to reply to your response to my comment/query IN THIS THREAD, and not as a new/original post.