What album are you listening to?

Harmsway wrote:

THE ROYAL SCAM by Steely Dan. One of the most perfect albums of the 1970s.

Planning to lash out and get the SD albums soon. I've only got a Best of.

"Kid Charlemagne" is a real favourite of mine, though. Shame Kanye had to do... whatever it was that he did to it. I also really dig "The Fez".

FourDot wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

THE ROYAL SCAM by Steely Dan. One of the most perfect albums of the 1970s.

Planning to lash out and get the SD albums soon. I've only got a Best of.

Good man. Steely Dan is by far my favorite band. Their less-celebrated material tends to be even richer and more surprising than the more famous stuff. ROYAL SCAM is Steely Dan at their most disillusioned, and the album is sharper and more unified than the rest of the Dan albums (only their newer albums, TWO AGAINST NATURE and EVERYTHING MUST GO, come close). That said, Dan doesn't have a single rotten album to their name.

FourDot wrote:

"Kid Charlemagne" is a real favourite of mine, though. Shame Kanye had to do... whatever it was that he did to it. I also really dig "The Fez".

Both are terrific, but every song on ROYAL SCAM is a winner. "Don't Take Me Alive," "Caves of Altamira" and "The Royal Scam" are my personal faves.

Listening to "Don't Take Me Alive" right now. I like the music a lot - great guitar work (reminds me of John Squire circa SECOND COMING, funnily enough). Not particularly well-versed in the Dan (the only other song of theirs I've knowingly heard is "Reelin' In The Years"*), but I'm enjoying this stuff. Cheers for the links,

ETA: Come to think of it, "Dirty Work" is one of the many songs that's used memorably in THE SOPRANOS, although for a long time I didn't know it was by Steely Dan. (These guys really do have some very, uh, peculiar album covers, which I guess was par for the course in those days.)

I actually just bought The Royal Scam in the interim. Looking forward to going through it.

My path to the work of SD was decidedly odd. I was casually watching The Simpsons one day, and it was one of those episodes where they're in the future for whatever reason. The scene where Bender pops up, and they're playing "I.G.Y." I thought it sounded pretty neat, investigated, and ended up buying The Nightfly, which I love. Particularly this:



Looking up Fagen, I saw that he was a part of SD, and looked up a few links on YouTube. And after listening to these in particular:









I was hooked and bought the Best of. And most of that is superb - the aforementioned "Kid Charlemagne," "Do It Again," "Dirty Work," "Black Friday," "Cousin Dupree"... but the one that really blew me away is this:



That is an inordinately good piece of music.

Actually, I was planning to start my collection with Gaucho, specifically because I kept getting "Time Out of Mind" stuck in my head - they had a vinyl version available at my local music store, and I thought that'd be pretty neat... but by the time my pay came in they had sold out. Which was decidedly odd. But I'm guessing that The Royal Scam is just as good a start, if not better.

Loomis wrote:

(These guys really do have some very, uh, peculiar album covers, which I guess was par for the course in those days.)

They once admitted that some of their album covers were "Worst of All Time" material. But you don't judge an album by it's cover, I guess.

FourDot wrote:

I actually just bought The Royal Scam in the interim. Looking forward to going through it.

Cheers!

FourDot wrote:

My path to the work of SD was decidedly odd. I was casually watching The Simpsons one day, and it was one of those episodes where they're in the future for whatever reason. The scene where Bender pops up, and they're playing "I.G.Y." I thought it sounded pretty neat, investigated, and ended up buying The Nightfly, which I love.

Fagen's THE NIGHTFLY is groovy. And, while we're on the subject, Fagen's MORPH THE CAT, all about New York in the wake of 9/11, is a dynamite album, pretty much as good as any of the Dan albums.

FourDot wrote:

Actually, I was planning to start my collection with Gaucho, specifically because I kept getting "Time Out of Mind" stuck in my head - they had a vinyl version available at my local music store, and I thought that'd be pretty neat... but by the time my pay came in they had sold out. Which was decidedly odd. But I'm guessing that The Royal Scam is just as good a start, if not better.

GAUCHO reminds me a lot of THE NIGHTFLY. Same kind of sound in places (see "Glamour Profession"). I'll take any Steely Dan I can get, but it's the Steely Dan of ROYAL SCAM that I admire the most, and I'd say it's a good starting point. As much as I like the more playful, celebratory Steely Dan, I like my Steely Dan with a good dose of world-weariness and disillusionment (the most recent Dan album, EVERYTHING MUST GO, has something of the same spirit, but it has less bite; it's the album of two guys who have given up swimming against the tide).

The best thing that can be said about Dan is that though their sound evolved, they never lost sight of what made 'em Steely Dan. There was no major career misstep. You pop in any of their albums and you'll get what Steely Dan delivers: delightfully playful lyrics, devilishly catchy hooks, and some of the cleanest music production around.

Harmsway wrote:

Loomis wrote:

(These guys really do have some very, uh, peculiar album covers, which I guess was par for the course in those days.)

They once admitted that some of their album covers were "Worst of All Time" material. But you don't judge an album by it's cover, I guess.

No, although I do find that a good album cover goes a very long way and often reflects and even enhances the music (two favourite albums that spring to mind are Primal Scream's SCREAMADELICA - which is my avatar image - and My Bloody Valentine's LOVELESS). When I look at my favourite bands - The Stone Roses, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, The Smiths - it seems that one of the things I like most about them is that they've always put a lot of love and care into their artwork.

That said, I do really like some of the Steely Dan sleeves I've seen: KATY LIED and PRETZEL LOGIC, for instance. And I guess their artwork that's tasteless and awful is intentionally tasteless and awful, sending up the wildly OTT LP sleeves of the period.

Hounds of Love, Kate Bush. I don't know why. Feels like I'm running up a very steep, never-ending hill today.

Loomis wrote:

No, although I do find that a good album cover goes a very long way and often reflects and even enhances the music (two favourite albums that spring to mind are Primal Scream's SCREAMADELICA - which is my avatar image - and My Bloody Valentine's LOVELESS). When I look at my favourite bands - The Stone Roses, Pet Shop Boys, New Order, The Smiths - it seems that one of the things I like most about them is that they've always put a lot of love and care into their artwork.

That said, I do really like some of the Steely Dan sleeves I've seen: KATY LIED and PRETZEL LOGIC, for instance.

I suppose it would be different if I had really grown up in the age of the LP. But I was a CD guy, and now I'm really an MP3 guy. In that frame of reference, the album art becomes an increasingly minor part of the listening experience.

Loomis wrote:

And I guess their artwork that's tasteless and awful is intentionally tasteless and awful, sending up the wildly OTT LP sleeves of the period.

I'm all for giving Steely Dan credit, but I won't give them that much credit.

Apparently, the album cover for THE ROYAL SCAM was originally designed for Van Morrison's unreleased 1975 album, MECHANICAL BLISS.

Digging The Royal Scam. Particularly the ones singled out by Harms earlier, with "Don't Take Me Alive" possibly being the best of them.

Rossini - Stabat Mater

Harmsway wrote:

I suppose it would be different if I had really grown up in the age of the LP. But I was a CD guy, and now I'm really an MP3 guy. In that frame of reference, the album art becomes an increasingly minor part of the listening experience.

I wouldn't say I grew up in the age of LP, exactly. When I started getting into music, i.e. becoming a fan of bands and buying their material, it was the end of the 1980s and the LP, while it still existed, had definitely been dethroned by cassettes and CDs. I too was a CD guy, indeed I still am - since I don't own an iPod, I still buy all my music on CD.

I think having good album artwork (which can still be impressive on a CD sleeve) is rather like having a good film poster - it's increasingly a rarity (as with film posters, the golden age of album artwork seems to be long gone), and it's always welcome when it makes an appearance. One can and does enjoy music enormously without any accompanying artwork, of course, but it's certainly a nice bonus when the two combine to good effect.

Loomis wrote:

I don't own an iPod

:shock:

Well, I own an MP3 player (didn't buy it myself - a friend gave it to me), which I understand is a sort of poor man's iPod. The sound quality's nothing amazing, and it doesn't store at that much, but it's okay for taking three or four albums' worth of tunes on holiday. It kinda does what it says on the tin, I guess.

Truth be told, I wouldn't mind getting an iPod, but I don't fancy the idea of having to re-buy my CD collection from iTunes.

You don't have to. You can just rip your CDs onto ITunes and into AAC files.

Sharky wrote:

You don't have to. You can just rip your CDs onto ITunes and into AAC files.

Exactly. I have nearly a month's music on my iTunes/iPod, and practically none of it was purchased via iTunes.

Wish I could fit my turntable into my pocket, but that aside I'm a vinyl man all the way and utterly despise what the internet has done to the music industry as well as the i-tunes culture it has spawned, which seems to encourage people to just listen to random tracks as opposed to embracing the album for the beautiful art form it is.

To be honest, CD had already done that to a point.

Too many people with short attention spans and no patience. Appreciating a good album can take a good few listens sometimes, but the rewards are great when the whole thing clicks together. But people probably skipped tracks easily on vinyl back in the day to be fair, it was easy enough to simply lift the arm and move to another track.

What's disappointing is, as Laz suggests, that many people now don't even purchase the whole album to begin with, they'll just buy one track because it was on The X-Factor or because some untalented hack on Radio 1 played it as part of his/her corporate playlist. So experiencing an album isn't even an option for many listeners nowadays as they likely won't even own it.

FourDot wrote:

To be honest, CD had already done that to a point.

Yeah, it had.

And I'm not sure the album is quite as dead-and-buried as some make it out to be. People who take music seriously, of which there are many, still listen to entire albums.

Lazenby. wrote:

Wish I could fit my turntable into my pocket, but that aside I'm a vinyl man all the way and utterly despise what the internet has done to the music industry as well as the i-tunes culture it has spawned, which seems to encourage people to just listen to random tracks as opposed to embracing the album for the beautiful art form it is.

Gotta disagree here. Before piss poor sequencing of tracks somehow became the norm, I'd probably agree with you, but I don't trust record producers today to know how to create a decent listening experience. That's why I like to create my own playlists that fit my tastes, not those of some seedy bloke sitting in front of a mixing console.

Besides, sometimes I like to go after tracks that I'm in the mood for, and not have to wade through a handful of mediocre songs to get there. Call that instant gratification if you want, but I call it practicality.

Pet Shop Boys Discography.

Good call. The first and still the best of their three greatest hits compilations to date. (I think there ought to be a law strictly limiting the number of compilation albums that an act may issue.)

RE: individual tracks vs. albums, I think that compilations and "best of"s had already done that, on further reflection. Going through my Dad's old LP's, it's about 90% proper albums, but there's still enough of those compilation LPs scattered about. So I'd imagine it's been prevalent for quite a while, and not just a product of the internet/iTunes/whatever.

Personally, if an artist piques my curiosity, I'll buy the "best of" as a starter, and If I like that enough I'll go through the individual albums.

M wrote:

Too many people with short attention spans and no patience. Appreciating a good album can take a good few listens sometimes, but the rewards are great when the whole thing clicks together. But people probably skipped tracks easily on vinyl back in the day to be fair, it was easy enough to simply lift the arm and move to another track.

What's disappointing is, as Laz suggests, that many people now don't even purchase the whole album to begin with, they'll just buy one track because it was on The X-Factor or because some untalented hack on Radio 1 played it as part of his/her corporate playlist. So experiencing an album isn't even an option for many listeners nowadays as they likely won't even own it.

you mean music has gone back to the way it was before the mid 60s, when the vinyl single was king?
(and albums were generally just a few singles backed by a swag of covers as filler?)

the music world has come full circle...

Sharky wrote:

Lazenby. wrote:

Wish I could fit my turntable into my pocket, but that aside I'm a vinyl man all the way and utterly despise what the internet has done to the music industry as well as the i-tunes culture it has spawned, which seems to encourage people to just listen to random tracks as opposed to embracing the album for the beautiful art form it is.

Gotta disagree here. Before piss poor sequencing of tracks somehow became the norm, I'd probably agree with you, but I don't trust record producers today to know how to create a decent listening experience. That's why I like to create my own playlists that fit my tastes, not those of some seedy bloke sitting in front of a mixing console.

Besides, sometimes I like to go after tracks that I'm in the mood for, and not have to wade through a handful of mediocre songs to get there. Call that instant gratification if you want, but I call it practicality.

same here

even with albums I love I generally resequence the tracks
art is personal and we are all different