You can hear Shorter's solo on Aja. It's a great song, but I would suggest any song without Fagen singing should be left off GH.
Why is everyone dissing Dirty Work?, I like the song, I also like Midnite Cruiser as well which was sung by someone else, the late Jim Hodder. However, I do like the slower Fagen sung, slower demo version of Brooklyn better than Palmers take on CBAT. It's apples and oranges...
I have started to hear it as 'Maruska' instead of 'The Rooster' which is a Germanic (well, Eastern European) name whinh fits the locale. It makes no more sense to have a woman hanging around at a bordello called The Lido than a dude called The Rooster, I guess.
from songfacts.com: Donald Fagan talked about the Haitian divorce in a 1976 interview with Sounds. Said Fagen: "It's a fierce and terrible ritual. I'll tell you that. You wouldn't want your sister to have a Haitian divorce, believe me. It was the quick divorce, without too much red tape. If you can say 'incompatibility of character' in French you're as good as gold. But we added a few elements to the ceremony itself."
I'm not dissing it; my exact words were "it's a great song." The fact remains that Fagen's voice is more integral to SD than anything else, and there's plenty of worthy content for a GH album without resorting to songs he doesn't sing.
OK, so what do we have from the ROT cuttings file - not two, not three but four reviews! I'm so good to you... First from NME.
Never understood why this early demo of Caves is given the wrong title of Android Warehouse? And what the heck is a Android Warehouse anyway?, a place where they make our cell phones?
I had a thought about the non-Fagen vocals too late for the CBAT section while, like many of us, I was reviewing the whole catalog in my car after learning of Becker's death and the start of this thread. Here is as good a place as any to share it. Of course, there are three lead vocalists on CBAT, though Jim Hodder sounds more like Fagen on Midnight Cruiser than Palmer does on the others. My thought was that the phrasing of the lyrics coupled with the prominence and meticulousness of the background vocal arrangements achieves the Dan vocal alchemy even with the different lead singers. Might not be a popular opinion, but I wouldn't have minded Fagen giving up a vocal or two on the later albums as well, despite how much Fagen's singing is a signature element of the Dan sound. His voice is certainly distinctive, but he's no, say, Steve Winwood, if you know what I mean. To me, Dirty Work and Brooklyn are both top shelf Steely Dan, notwithstanding the lack of Fagen's voice.
So funny to see these early reviews that completely blow the lyrics. And the meaning of the lyrics, to the extent we've been able to derive them 40 years later. My favorite: "Kid Charlemagne" is about a negro boxing champion according to ZigZag. Wuh? Just goes to the genius of Becker and Fagen - if you can compose a song that good, that funky and that well played with lyrics that are open to those kind of interpretive swings, well . . . like I said I hope Donald Fagen is around for a good long while. One the last remaining songwriting geniuses of our time. These reviews are, however, a refreshing reminder that once up on a time, there was true rock journalism. Writers who listened to rock and roll records the same way Janet Maslin attacked a Bergman movie. Great reads.
A legit viewpoint for sure, but SD was just starting to establish its identity on CBaT. My own viewpoint is Fagen's vocals are central to that identity. Personally I find his voice richer, more refined and charismatic than Windwood's. And your point about phrasing is hugely important.
Quick impressions: More cover art that would have run me off any other recording. More mis-heard lyrics than any other album (and I actually prefer my versions). One favorite song that is NOT marinated in cynicism, and one song with lyrics so flatly unpleasant I skip it (and I don't even care for the music of this track). Kid Charlemagne motors along. Title cut is interesting, and contains one more mis-heard lyric I prefer to the original ('And they wandered in TO the city of Saint John without a SIGN...'). Many others (Haitian Divorce is one) where lyrics and music combine to an intriguing level. I don't play RS in its entirety as much as, say, PL or KL.
I have the Canadian cd of GH, did Canada ever release a cd of Gold with just the 8 original tracks?, which included the original version of FM. Never was much of a fan of the US expanded version cd of Gold, those two Fagan solo tracks were out of place imo.
Two things that I think I know: The Canadian Greatest Hits CD is the base CD release. There's no digital version of the original Gold. Only the Expanded Edition. Cheers, Paul
Rolling Stone just published this on Walter. Steely Dan's Walter Becker: Inside His Troubled Life, Wry Genius
