So which one did you vote for?

ugh

Love Chicago.. that Grts. Hits album, you know the one i am talking about, should be in every single music lovers possession.  The Dan however was on a whole different level.

 

except in this poll, Chicago wipes SD with their first 7 albums (ok, 6 was poorer), especially when you know that CTA, s/t, 3 and VII were all double albums (and Carnegie a quadruple)... This alone gives Chicago 10 discs of great music???? something SD was never able to reach.

 

 

and the first disc of VII is miles better than a CDr compilation of SD's best moments.

Pretty much how I feel. I enjoy early Chicago but Steely Dan is one of my favorites. 

Steely Dan

Sorry!  I hadn't even voted.  I ended up voting Chicago though could have also voted neither.  But just the song "Wishing you were here" puts Chicago above Steely for me, and they had a few other good ones

He wasn't castrated. He shot himself in the head. :(

Duh!   The band was castrated when Terry shot himself in the head.  Without Terry's ballsy combo of soulful vocals and raw guitar, Chicago went full on wimp.

I'm not a man who will fight for their honor. 

aye,,, but don't discount how things have changed man.  The condiderable more PROGRESSIVE band is running away with this.  

this .. and the community as it exists today is not what it once was circa 2006. It has fragmented... those that appreciate the same old same old regurgitation of what other had done, and often done better, or those blazing their own sounds and styles.

I was quite shocked by two sepeate but linked occurances when I added SD to the site. One the poisonous attacks by the traditionalists.. which thankfully occured in the collab zone as the one true maxim of PA's is if you pull a knife on the Big Mick..he pulls out out a shotgun.

but the other was the score of PM's I got thanking me for having the forward thinking to add them to the site.

are they prog.. hell no.. they aint' English and they didn't do boring side longs with hyper intellectual bullsh*te... but other than perhaps one other mainstream artist..  I don't consider any other to be more 'progressive'. They did their thing.. and only sold albums out of shear quality.... not painting music by the numbers which unfortunately past 1972 is where much of 'prog' went to. Prog.. but as progressive as my left toe.

As great as Chicago's early albums were... nothing was new there... SD was unique then..and still is today which is quite the accomplishment...  compliment.

Same thing in the APP vs Steely Dan poll where Steely Dan is also doing way better. 

Hi,

CHICAGO for me. STEELY DAN was more about what the whole scene became, the hip this and that, than it was musically important and artistically valuable.

CHICAGO was there when I got my head bashed ... STEELY DAN was there later when I was at the university and its main role was for the stuff to be played while people got stoned and some girls got off on smoking a pipe shaped like a pen__ that had the words Steely Dan on it ... in case you don't know, you really should go find about its literary significance. It was a dildoe!

CHICAGO, had great music, and some improvisations, all the way to the 6th and 7th albums with longer cuts, and it is a shame that it is not considered "progressive" by our contingent here in PA, because all of its merits, from musicality to lyrical material, would all fit the definitions just fine, except that we wanted more solo's and CHICAGO could not invent any more solos as large a band as it was!

Sad to see the popularity of the poll choices ... but CHICAGO fits as one of the originals in the movement in music in the late 60's, and Steely Dan, was just another pop band, with much better music than most radio hits, but all in all, it was just pop music! CHICAGO does not fit that word'age, even though they had a few hits here and there ... hits that said something!

Let's also not forget that Chicago even made a foray into disco. 

It's a shame that you only profess your personal dislike for someone, and not discuss the music of the bands. I did so, and explained why I felt so ... by 1978 when I was at UCSB, CHICAGO was no longer an "important" band, although no one would argue with its level and fame ... and STEELY DAN was hip and funny and had kinda neat music, although to consider it musically great, I would rather refer to things like GENTLE GIANT and several other European bands.

STEELY DAN, was, almost exclusively a radio band, and it was well loved in the LA scene, because running around smoking a a steely dan pipe was very cool with the boys and girls at both high schools (to the upset chagrin of many teachers, btw!) and college folks, in those days ... and at the very least, CHICAGO did not quite come down to that level of idiocy for publicity's sake.

BTW, of course the comments are irrelevant to you ... you weren't around at that time, and knew what it was like to get your head bashed in Chicago in 1968 because a band did not show up, and how much CTA 1 ad 2 were important at that time, and find a couple of known friends gunned down for nothing.

Liking STEELY PAN is fine, but saying that it is more "important" or "valuable" than CHICAGO is a sad comment on the state of advertising and fame ... somehow the image of coolies going around smoking a cheap Steely Dan pipe, is not my image of great music whatsoever ... but you love the fashion behind it all, I bet!

I don't agree. Those first two or three Chicago records were very progressive plus they were an american band. Not many(if any)US bands were doing what they were doing  with suites and what not. Plus the first two were both recorded before the release of King Crimson's first. I'm not saying Chicago were the first prog band but they were clearly doing stuff few others were. Steely Dan were playing jazz rock in a more poppy format but I don't think we can say they were doing stuff that was never done before where as early Chicago was at least closer to that if anyone was. 

I love the early Chicago albums, but even the best ones have their spotty moments.  Meanwhile, the Dan's best albums are strong throughout.  

And I agree with Micky that the Dan was more unique.  Their brand of jazzy influenced intellectual rock has never been matched, or even seriously attempted.  They stand truly alone in the history of music.  

It was not an idea ... it was real. And it was worse at SBCC and UCSB, because many folks would just about walk to the class room with it in hand before putting it away. One professor at UCSB class I was in, threw out two kids that were smoking a SD pipe! A film class ... and of all weird things, it was going to have an early Godard film!

And this is the part that many folks here don't believe ... history has a way of hiding things. And while I do not dislike SD, I did find that their PR around them was a bit of a problem ... however, I am not sure that the Copyright thing about "steely dan" would necessarily apply to the band since the name belonged to something else, by a writer that died in 1997. Williams S. Burroughs. 

Take me back...to Chicago.  

I like both bands quite a bit, but I've seen Chicago live at least 10 times and enjoyed the hell out of each and every one of those shows.  (Unfortunately all post-Terry Kath and Peter Cetera).

Both were excellent, and Chicago was a true band vs. recording project, but both dominated the airwaves in the 1970s.  Love 'em both. 

Larry Carlton!

Unless you refer to the first two Chicago albums which were absolutely brilliant and original and surpass Aja and Pretzel Logic, which were good in their own right, but not as good as the Chicago.

This reminds me of a few weeks ago when I was at a friend's place. He grows various herbs and such, and is often pointing out different varieties such as Thai (or Vietnamese) Basil.

Anyhow he was in the middle of explaining the difference between ordinary or 'English' thyme, and the similar looking 'Silver thyme', and had picked a sprig of one or the other which he offered to me, and invited me to guess which sort it was, based on his description.

Admitting that I couldn't tell the difference, I asked, "Does anybody really know what thyme it is?"

CHICAGO ... because its time and place was way more important than what Steely Dan did later ... when they became the darlings of the pop/disco scene and everyone thought it was cool to smoke some little pipe that looked like a dickie ... which the girls always laughed at the guys who would not, at times, even touch it! 

Steely Dan had magnificent material that filled out FM radio lists really well, but SD was all about clever pop songs ... had nothing to do with the seriousness and beauty of what CHICAGO stood for in their first 4 or 5 albums, which was way more important than SD. AND, in concert, SD stunk ... and Chicago could bowl you over all the way to at least 1077 or 1978 when I last caught them ... they rocked. There was a SOUL behind the Chicago stuff ... in SD it was all about fun, and that was that! Very Californian ... get stoned and have fun!

Chicago all the way!

Well, we know Walter White was a huge Steely Dan fan - but that was Walter before he was cool and homicidal.

I agree Chicago got off to a roaring start then quickly became banal.  SD's main problem for me was a certain aloof drabness.  However I always loved Pretzel Logic (which is probably the dumb persons SD album) but nevertheless on that basis I'll give it to them.