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BOOK REVIEW! MAJOR DUDES - A STEELY DAN COMPANION EDITED BY BARNEY HOSKYNS (Constable Books, 2017)

Maybe or maybe not, but some of you just might be surprised to hear that for a whole longer time that you could imagine I wasn't exactly what you would call a rabid loather of Steely Dan. Shee-it but I even kinda liked 'em, perhaps in a passing "oh, they're good" sorta way but I liked 'em nonetheless. I'm even brave enough to 'fess up that I lent plenty of ear to "Do It Again" and "Reeling in the Years" back when they were incessantly being spun on the radio, but then again that was during my non-discerning pre-pubesprout days when I seemed to like just about everything that I heard on the radio. Didn't hone the aesthetics nodes until much much later.

Weird 'nuff, but stuck in my usually sieve-like mind's their appearance (with Donald Fagan strumming the strings of his piano post-performance) on AMERICAN BANDSTAND back when Dick Clark revealed to us that their moniker came from "a device" that was found in a novel by William Burroughs. Or did he say Henry Miller? Gotta check on that but it wasn't until sometime later, around the days of AJA when you just couldn't escape "Deacon Blue" (a song I enjoyed at first before my better senses took hold of me) that the Dan were seen more as one of those progenitors of that oxymoronic term they now call "lite rock" or even more accurately "yacht rock". Sheesh, but even an outta-the-loop kid such as I wouldn't've believed that it would ever come to this group producing chi-chi wine and brie music back when they were starting out and the kids used to gab about the durty pictures to be found on the cover of CAN'T BUY A THRILL (y'know, the prostitutes and the nekked gal, and of course that shirtless guy whose lower excited half was fortunately edited out).

Well they did seem somewhat gnarly at first. Take a gander at their early promo pix (one of 'em directly below) which makes 'em out to look like some rough and tumble decadent white blues band, one almost on par with those other scruffy white blues bands that proliferated in the seventies (15-60-75 even!). And a lotta people whose opines I respect actually like these guys so maybe I should be giving 'em another honest appraisal, me being generous and considerate of everyone's tastes like I'm sure you already know.

But as someone like myself who has reviewed albums by merely looking at the covers and getting grief for a load of inaccuracies, looks can be deceiving and in no way were Steely Dan quite the grubboid local greasy haired bunch doing the wafrican-american (a nicer way of saying "wigger") game so common with the usual worn leather types of the past. Once you got down to the plain and horrid truth the team of Donald Fagan and Walter Becker were nothing but late-sixties snoot collegiate kids on that drug 'n cooze trip so typical of the upper class pampered menial of a snob youth, and we all know what kinda music them kinda brats used to go for before the advent of amerindie rock, eh?

No big surprise that I find MAJOR DUDES about as exciting as the vast majority of the music that the group produced. Edited by Barney Hoskyns (a scribe that I never had any beef over although I must admit I'm not all that familiar with his works), this anthology of interviews/articles/record reviews covers the Fagan/Becker Danglomerate that was ultimately so flatliner in the realm of music in general that it was no wonder these guys became rock critic faves. It collects a smattering of features, reviews and interviews from o'er the years and well, if you think I would have snatched this 'un up if Charles Shaar Murray and Jonh Ingham weren't included than you're way way off target even more'n you usually are regarding my own tastes, opinions and goals.

An interesting fact about this book is that, although this was by and for Steely Dan freaks both Murray and Ingham's contributions are what one would call less than favorable. That's one good thing (at least for this anti-snob rock maven) about MAJOR DUDES --- Hoskyns wasn't afraid to slip a little negativity into the mix but that still doesn't stop the onslaught of perhaps somewhat overboard platitudes that are to be found therein. Not that it's anything that would be uninteresting let alone downright upsetting, but if you want to read a passel of interviews with the usually detached (and at times boring) Fagan/Becker team and wade through the same kind of rock writing you've been trying to avoid your entire life then I'd tell you to spend your shekels on the newest Gwandanaland collection for a way more satisfying back brain rubdown.

Much of the time the scribes who appear are just as boring as their subject. I mean, I have nothing personal against MELODY MAKER's Chris Welch, a guy who beefed that paper up with his emphasis on progressive rock which, fortunately for them found a certain niche in the minds of the 70s record buying public, but that doesn't mean that I have to enjoy what he has written here. Actually his entry's one of the better articles to show up in MAJOR DUDES, but despite that I'd guess you'd hafta be a really diehard fan of this act to really get down to brass tacks enjoying those tales of Bard College and the hard life as staff writers at ABC/Dunhill records.

BUT ONCE YOU DIG DEEP INTO THE CORE OF IT ALL...despite the Burroughs ref, eye catching album cover art and Cathy Berberian namedrop, Steely Dan were ultimately just Ivy League decadents who chose the highfalutin' path to musical fun and big bux martinis and munchies jamz while, for the most part, pianist Fagan got his notoriety with some rather yawnsville Ray Charles impressions that only make the entire white guy doing the black groove thing stink even more to high heaven. Maybe an appraisal of those earlier efforts which did house some singles that sounded good in the early-seventies mix of AM hitting its stride would be in order, so who knows what the future holds in store regarding an eval of CAN'T BUY A THRILL or even its next few followups. After all, if Russell Desmond can name his fanzine after it maybe I can ooze some snide decadent early-seventies fun 'n jamz outta the things.