Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic


$23 Adventure Time, part 3/4

If we were playing the standard Sesame Street game One of These Things Is Not Like The Others, you wouldn't even need to know the fourth album to know that the lower left hand corner is the answer (coincidentally where i seem to fall on the political compass; i'm quite a bit more anarchic than Ghandi). 

Steam Powered Dildo is an awesome name for a band, but ABC is not Bottle of Beef so Becker and Fagan went with Burroughs' name for it, Steely Dan. Here's their 3rd album, Pretzel Logic. It's a 5-star album across the board. The only criticism of the album is that most people don't have a clue what any of it's about, but when has that ever mattered? The point is that this is one of the few jazz-rock albums where no one can find any sort of pretension or insult lurking beneath the surface. They certainly aren't trying to call you an idiot for not "getting it." Jay Black famously likened them to the Charleses Manson and Starkweather. 

I, of course, am a big Skunk Baxter fan, especially when he's going head to head with the saxes or imitating a muted trumpet (seriously, East St. Louis Toodle-oo is amazing), but he certainly isn't stealing the show from anybody else on this album. It all just works so well. Jazz rock is kind of a misnomer. I can't think of a better term for Steely Dan, but this isn't at all like Chicago, or Lighthouse, or the Prog of The Moody Blues or Ponty. 

This is one of those honest albums i mentioned. There's no gimmick here, this sounds like everyone involved said "yep, that's perfect, that's exactly what we wanted to do, and you can't deny it's great."

It doesn't matter if you don't understand it, they feel the monkey in your soul, and how could you possibly call them liars? He's not gonna stop you from buying the more expensive peanuts and chestnuts, be mostly he sells hot fresh pretzels. Buy two pretzels and split the difference, that's Pretzel Logic.

Part 4

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more