CITIZEN STEELY DAN

When I first came on to the page for Steely Dan, I was shocked at the low rating for this compilation. I couldn't understand how I was seeing ratings of two and three. Luckily, through the power of reading, I understand and can see the reasons behind the lower ratings.

None of that stopped me from giving them a easy five star rating for this one.

I was born in seventy-two, I was three when Gabriel left Genesis, Return to Forever released their last album when I was four and Steely Dan broke up when I was nine. (Yes, I realize that both Return to Forever and Steely Dan reunited at some point, but stick with me, I'm going somewhere here). Most of these artists were bands that I really discovered many years after the initial peak, and a lot of times the discoveries included the words, 'Oh yeah, I remember, my Dad used to have that tape, we'd listen to it in the car'.

As I insinuated earlier, Steely Dan, is one of those bands. I was looking at my Dad's CD case not too long ago and found the compilation. I said, "Hey, what's this?" I was familiar with Steely Dan, but didn't recognize the set. He explained that his record player didn't work anymore and the cassette tapes had long since bit the dust so he got the set of all their earlier songs. I was pretty impressed and borrowed the set. Every song was like going down memory lane for me, I was still familiar with many of the more popular tunes that still get airplay, but some of the deeper ones were so cool to hear again. "Pretzel Logic", "Josie", "Dr. Wu", "Fez", "Don't Take me Alive" and "My Old School" were just fantastic to hear again. The hits are fantastic to me as well, "Peg", "Dirty Work", "FM", "Rikki Don't Loose That Number", "Hey Nineteen", "Deacon Blues" . . . I could go on.

They are fantastic musically, Donald Fagan is one of my favorite piano / keyboard players, and Walter Becker is no slouch either. Their songs are intelligently arranged with catchy melodies and intricate solos.

You won't find a twenty-five minute epic with multiple costume changes, but you will find crafty, and admittedly, poppy songs. I don't know how proggy I would consider them, but the important thing here is that someone else has considered them proggy enough to be included here. I never had the original releases, so for me, the compilation gets full credit rather than a lower mark as simply a reissue of material that I already owned. For me, this is easily a five star set.