Thursday 3 April 2014

Journey Through the past 6 : Steely Dan : Countdown to Ecstasy

When I was in my last year of high school a group of us managed to persuade our PE teacher that time spent in the snooker hall above His Lordships Arcade was a legitimate substitute. The snooker room was located above a record store as well so we would invariably end up spending time in there as well. Eventually we got to know the owner of the store, an imposing lady whom many school children were scared of.  But like most people when you found common ground (music) things always become easier.  She was interested more interested in Can and more progressive music than I was and she frequently tried to "re-educate me" .  I was interested in punk, Iggy Pop and Bowie.  One of the ways she tried to get me to listen to different things was to give me (or heavily discount) damaged stock.

Anyway one day we were talking about Steely Dan and I mentioned how I did not rate them highly and found them boring and kind of self centred.  She pull out a copy of this album   with a ripped cover and suggested I would find this more interesting than their at the time current output.




Happily she was right!! And while I still struggle with much of the Dan's catalogue this album is a gem.  Some great songs including

They are still pretentious as hell but sometime they rise above that - they do on this album and it is still played from time to time.

Eventually saw them live in 2007 - and like their records sometimes the show just did not gel with me - other times the music was transcendent.



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