Donald Fagen on "Peg"

[Adam Blake]

Donald Fagen dissects "Peg".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP_2r9zb ... _embedded#!

[Paul Inglis]

Oh yes, I've got this DVD. Very good.

I notice that the first chord he talks about is essentially the famous Steely Dan mu chord - played as a stack of fourths. What a great mind Fagen has - and Warren Bernhardt is no slouch either. I need to get back into my keyboard playing - I'm getting pretty rusty.

Thanks for posting this Adam!

[Adam Blake]

Nice to see you again, Paul! Fagen is perfect in this clip, isn't he? What's the Steely Dan mu chord? The stacked 4ths go back at least as far as 1959 with Miles's "So What". I can't think of any earlier examples of them being used as an essential part of a melody although I daresay Monk or someone similar might have used them in a similar context.

[Paul Inglis]

Adam, the mu chord involves adding another tone (the 2nd or 9th) to a regular major chord - but the magic is in the way it's voiced. There are two main variants used by Steely Dan, both featuring fourths but the second variant really stacks the fourths up. The second variant is usually notated as a m7#5 chord in songbooks - which isn't quite right. Oddly, Wikipedia has a nice description of the chord:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_chord

Of course, Steely Dan didn't really invent this chord - but you might say they identified it and perfected it.

Peg is interesting in any case because of the choice of notes in the melody - and also for the harmony vocal in the chorus. The intervals that the harmony singer (Michael McDonald) has to tackle (he's harmonising his own vocals) are very tough - he was singing parts written by Becker and Fagen.

The way Steely Dan work is very interesting. They write out some of the parts for their songs, but then beyond that they just expect the musicians to know what is required. This resulted in a lot of scrapped sessions, especially on the "Aja" album. Mark Knopfler did a solo for them on "Time Out of Mind" (on "Gaucho") and was convinced after three hours that they completely hated his contributions and that he was doing it all wrong, since their reaction was so inscrutable. To his surprise his work was on the finished mix.

[Des]

I know nothing about music but I liked Gaucho and never really understood why it was panned by the critics at the time. Aja was my fave though, famously ousting Katy Lied from my personal top spot, to the incredulity of my friends.

[Adam Blake]

Steely Dan commit the awful crime of cleverness - and make it work time and time again. Making effective and memorable pop music out of elevator jazz chords and jazz textures is remarkable enough but the lyrics are always thought-provoking and funny in a kind of hipper-than-thou manner.

There's a coldness and aloofness to a lot of their music that prevents them from ever being true favourites of mine but my respect for them is boundless and the "Pretzel Logic" album has a lot of sentimental baggage attached.

Des, don't be silly. You know a ludicrous amount about music. Paul and me were just talking nuts and bolts of the engine - musicology, I suppose.

[Des]

Des, don't be silly. You know a ludicrous amount about music.

I know an amount about ludicrous music but thanks anyway Adam.

[David Flower]

always liked them since I heard their 2nd album Countdown to Ecstasy, which was one of those which I'd never heard the like of before. A completely new music to me. Same year 1973 as I heard Weather Report's Mysterious Traveller - same effect.
But SD, being idiosyncratic in most things, never toured (Europe anyway) in those days and didn't for ages after. I finally went to see them at huge expense* last hear at Hamm Apollo. As you might expect the sound was about the best you could ever hear. In fact a complete aural picture was presented where the horns sounded like they were coming from just where the horns were standing, right across through to Fagen on the other side the stage. Remarkable.
A brilliant set including Peg (though no Do it Again) and a very good moment was the guest spot by Elliott Randall who has lived in Uk for ages (maybe he's english. in fact my bass playing bookkeeper Constance Redgrave knows both him AND Skunk Baxter which I find extremely impressive). Anyway I expected Randall to be another super cool dude like all the rest, but no. He came bouncing on, and never stopped bouncing and smiling his head off, absolutely chuffed to be there. He of course was there to reprise one of the great guitar solos , on Reeling in the Years.
here it is for those who don't know it. From the top...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBllejn5fVA

SD always exerted top quality control over everything they did , which is one reason I expect they didn't like to tour. Maybe technology has caught up with them. Can't think of many artists who are quite so particular over their live sound , though Weather Report and Pat Metheny come to mind. Funny how most musicians put up with any old crap sound when you consider it*

[Adam Blake]

Musicians will put up with a lot of things if you give them money. (But that won't stop them moaning about it afterwards.)

[Paul Inglis]

Steely Dan commit the awful crime of cleverness - and make it work time and time again. Making effective and memorable pop music out of elevator jazz chords and jazz textures is remarkable enough but the lyrics are always thought-provoking and funny in a kind of hipper-than-thou manner.

A lot of what they do would be absolutely dreadful in the hands of lesser men! I generally despise pseudo-jazz or stuff with a veneer of jazz, but Steely Dan somehow make genius pop music out of stuff that would be turned into pap by others.

Their lyrics are also sharp!

My main reservation with them is that they've essentially been plowing the same field since Gaucho. Admittedly, it's a great field to plow, but it would be nice for them to try something a little different for a change.

[Adam Blake]

Can you imagine how much they must have pissed off Frank Zappa! He would have shaved off his moustache to have been able to write songs like "Haitian Divorce" or "The Fez". Not that Frank didn't do all sorts of things that Steely Dan could never have done but he liked so much to occupy the kind of musical high ground that they inhabited with such insouciant ease.

[Paul Inglis]

Can you imagine how much they must have pissed off Frank Zappa! He would have shaved off his moustache to have been able to write songs like "Haitian Divorce" or "The Fez". Not that Frank didn't do all sorts of things that Steely Dan could never have done but he liked so much to occupy the kind of musical high ground that they inhabited with such insouciant ease.

Yes, Frank was a genius but a lot of his stuff sounds like hard work; while Steely Dan just make their stuff sound easy. Not that it is easy, of course. They got a lot of influence from Bacharach and The Beatles - some other guys who could make hard stuff sound easy.

[AndyM]

Don't want to start an argument, but...........isn't Fagen's 'The Nightfly' better than almost all of Steely Dan's stuff ? More focused, genuinely witty rather than borderline smug, less of the airless sheen ? ('Do It Again' & 'Rikki DLTN' still unbeatable, though.)

[Adam Blake]

isn't Fagen's 'The Nightfly' better than almost all of Steely Dan's stuff ?

I've never actually heard it. Maybe I should check it out. Much as I appreciate and respect Steely Dan, I was also too busy listening to something else and never really became a committed fan.

[Paul Inglis]

Don't want to start an argument, but...........isn't Fagen's 'The Nightfly' better than almost all of Steely Dan's stuff ? More focused, genuinely witty rather than borderline smug, less of the airless sheen ? ('Do It Again' & 'Rikki DLTN' still unbeatable, though.)

Well, I don't want to say it's "better" ... but it's at least as good. It's a little more heartfelt, a tad autobiographical, and yes ... maybe less of the "smug".

I didn't hear it when it came out - I remember reading an enthusiastic review of the album when it came out in 1982 - but Steely Dan weren't exactly flavour of the month at that time, so I didn't really get into them until I read some stuff Walter Becker wrote on the internet in the nineties. I thought "I like his humour, and they have a reputation for good lyrics, maybe I should check out some of those old Steely Dan albums again." It wasn't quite love at first sight; as you say "Do it Again", "Rikki" (and "Reeling' in the Years") are beyond reproach, but it took a little while for the rest to sink in. But when they do sink it, boy do they sink in deep. I don't like absolutely everything they've done, but they definitely do inhabit an icy, ethereal, plane of excellence.

The last "Steely Dan" album ("Everything Must Go") also reminds of the "The Nightfly" - it has a lot of similar qualities.