Mike Natale:Listened to: MP3
I’ve always had a slight admiration for Steely Dan acquiring their name from a book by William S. Burroughs. Unfortunately, that’s where my admiration for Steely Dan ends. Don’t get me wrong, Pretzel Logic was not unbearable, but it was incredibly boring. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of mellow music. Some of my favorite albums are mellow. But this was just dull. Nothing on the album caught my attention. The only track that intrigued me even the least bit was “East St. Louis Toodle-oo” (a song not wirtten by them but by Duke Ellington, Bubber Miley) and that’s only because I had visions of Woody Allen stumbling through some Chaplin-esque slapstick routine. The vocal harmonies were impressive, but I could get those same harmonies from The Eagles and actually enjoy the music. Pretzel Logic isn’t a bad album, but it certainly is not one of the 500 greatest, especially when much better, more listened to, and much more classic albums didn’t make the cut. I’ll give you an example…
Would Replace With: 1984 by Van Halen.
Yes, if you can believe it, Van Halen’s classic album 1984, their most popular, which spawned such hits as “Jump”, “Hot For Teachers”, and “Panama”. Even the less popular tracks on the album could work as solid rock hits. 1984 continues to be Van Halen’s most popular album, and received new interest yet again when the cast of Glee performed Jump earlier this year. Highly doubt they’re ever gonna perform “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”. I’m just sayin’. So, without a doubt, I would remove Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan from this list, and replace it with 1984 by Van Halen.
-Mike
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Nick Young:
Listened To: MP3
Well, I guess I should be happy that I finally managed to do it. Indeed, I found a musical composition that’s more annoying when it comes to “reminiscing about the days of old,” than Bob Seger’s 1979 single “Old Time Rock and Roll.” My musical Razzies go out to Steely Dan on this fine day for their pre-millennial fossil, 1974’s “Pretzel Logic,” which manages to do in thirty-four agonizing minutes what “Old Time” mercifully only did in three. Oh, and did I mention Steely Dan are a jazz fusion band? Ah… now you’re starting to believe me! Think back to what Dmitri Martin said in a comic sketch depicting a genius and an idiot both subjected to smooth jazz at the same time and under the same conditions. Both poor unfortunate souls ended up vomiting. True story.
I felt as though I was going to be sick on “Pretzel Logic’s” noxious opening track, Latin-rock shitstorm “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.” From the get-go I was turned off by the implication that these guys were actually having fun while they single-handedly made samba music a possible means of torture for even the hardest-shelled POW’s. Their false sense of laid-back ‘fun’ permeates succeeding tracks such as “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” and “Logic’s” sole instrumental piece, “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo.” The latter track sounds like a hallucination occurring inside the fevered head of Woody Allen- a maddening little ditty that he would hear during a slap-stick acid-trip (and that is by no means a compliment).
On the surface the album’s painfully desperate midpoint track “Parker’s Band” moves with breakneck locomotive force and nervously vibrates with amphetamine-induced, ahem, ‘grooviness,’ but listening to the song is about as fun as watching a mosquito get slowly absorbed into liquid amber. Subsequent tracks such as the burnt-out anthem “Through with Buzz,” the excessively doughy, unpalatably stale nursing-home rocker “Pretzel Logic,” and the unbearably aggravating horse opera irritant “With a Gun” chafe the ears in devious, Hellish ways you never thought possible.
It’s like spending the night in Vegas with a group of depressed guys who either A) don’t want to do anything remotely sinful or B) have run out of money. The tantalizing malevolence is all around you, the sinfulness is palpable, but you’re shit out of luck because the guys you’re with (lets call them Donald Fagen, Larry Carlton, Chuck Rainey, Bernard Purdie, Paul Griffin, Don Grolnick, and Michael McDonald)* are just there to whine bitterly about “the monkeys in their souls.”
Overall, “Pretzel Logic’s” disheartening second-half suffers so greatly from its dispiriting juxtaposition of grief-stricken “ Paris , Texas ” (1984) bleakness with scraggly, funk-rock schizophrenia that the album could easily be labeled the cacophonous aural equivalent to mad-house maverick Terry Gilliam’s “Tideland” (2006). The aggravating glam-jazz discordance makes itself most apparent when Don Fagen bellyaches (while he’s… strutting?) on the eponymous slug-rocker “Pretzel Logic,” that “those days are gone forever / over a long time ago.”
Tell me about it. The days when Steely Dan was considered musically relevant went out with Gram Parsons. Steely Dan’s melancholy reimagining of the years prior to their formation on “Pretzel Logic” is not on a timeline I’d like to find myself “reelin’” in the memory of. “I know that things must change,” grumbled Fagen on “Barrytown,” “I like things like they used to be.”
Well Fagen, you and your steely comrades made this point crystal clear… and it only took every last one of your albums in your mopey discography to do so! Well done, boys! You so wise!
*These names happen to be the band members: Donald Fagen (vocals), Larry Carlton (guitar), Chuck Rainey (bass), Bernard Purdie (drums), Paul Griffin (keyboards), Don Grolnick (additional keyboards), and Michael McDonald (additional vocals).
Would Replace With: American Water by Silver Jews
“American Water” is not a moody jazz album like “Pretzel Logic.” However, when it comes to road-worn, devil-may-care melancholia, the Jews make the slashed and torn lifestyle that Steely Dan tried so furiously to evoke something that sounds like it is unquestionably theirs- belonging solely to singer / songwriter David Berman, guitarist Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement fame) and the awe-inspiring indie-rock project that they created together.
The deeply moving narrative of album opener “Random Rules” introduces us to a perpetually wistful character (undoubtedly based on Berman) that may live a sad, desperate life, yet it’s a life that approaches perfection in all of its tragic beauty. In Berman’s trademark baritone, which sounds like Smog’s Bill Callahan flavored with just a touch of Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy for some added emotional instability, the singer quietly pleads his seasonal lover to consider lifelong companionship (and not just in name only):
“So if you don’t want me I promise not to linger
But before I go I gotta ask you dear about the tan line on your ring finger”
This near acceptance of defeat runs like a steadfast river all throughout “American Water.” Berman keeps us in close proximity to a character that expects the worst but always secretly prays for something hopeful. This vague hope haunts “Random Rules’” cryptic final lyric:
“No one should have two lives
Now you know my middle names are wrong and right
Honey we’ve got two lives to give tonight”
-Nick
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*Disclaimer* Nick and I write these seperately. It is sheer coincidence we both thought of Woody Allen. Though that ought to show how Woody-esque that track is.
Thanks for reading, and see you guys tomorrow for #128: Marquee Moon by Television.
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