Welcome back. The world is absolute chaos but hopefully you're focusing on the things you can control and settling into the year as best you can. This week, the Randomizer serves up a bit of old school, Steely Dan's The Royal Scam. This is the copy that'll be on my turntable. It's a record club pressing, if you remember Columbia House.
In the lockdown summer of 2020, I made it my mission to pick up every Steely Dan release from the 70s/80s and not pay more than $10 each. Took me about a month or month and a half. They're out there if you look.
Musically, I like Steely Dan because these main dudes (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen) were super meticulous about recording. These guys are studio wizards. When you're listening to one of their albums, every voice, every instrument and every note is exactly where they want it to be. Like Tetris or something.
To me, most (if not all) of their songs are from the point of view of an observer just describing all the people he has come across. Darkly humorous and very specific. Maybe even a little judgy. Haitian Divorce (widely considered to be one of their best, if not THE best song) is about an engineer's offshore quickie divorce. Kid Charlemagne is about a famous LSD chemist. Don't Take Me Alive is about a dude who bombed a building in Wisconsin and was subsequently arrested. Some of them are from a first person perspective. The Caves of Altamira is about a guy who reminisces about a place he visited as a child. Apparently this also serves as an allusion to the death of art. The Royal Scam talks about the influx of Puerto Rican immigrants. Hilariously, The Fez is simply about wearing a condom. So yeah, these guys got jokes as well. Lots of interesting tales and observations.
I don't think this is my favourite Steely Dan (that might be Aja, although I don't think there's a wrong answer), but this is a superb album and I'm glad it came up, because it's been a while. Great lyrics and precise instrumentation. Lastly, the cover used to scare me when I was a kid. Those skyscraper monsters. The cover for Can't Buy a Thrill creeped me out, too. Good job, Steely Dan.