Steely Dan - The Royal Scam (1976)

Dan:

I suppose there might be skeptics who would not wish to include Steely Dan as prog artists. If there were an existing category for cynical, slick, American rock, that's where the Dan would belong. But there is no such category I know of, so the more logical classification is "sui generis" (which, of course is not really a category). With no precursors and no successors, Steely Dan remains an original. (Incidentally, I reject the pejorative classification of Steely Dan as "yacht rock" for reasons that should become obvious in our analysis of song content below).

The Royal Scam earns its way into our blog for two reasons. First, consider the program of songs, which serve up sly, oblique social critiques of the so-called "American Dream." The title track deals most directly with the false hopes of immigrants coming to America in search of opportunity while ending up on the streets like the homeless man in the cover photo. "Kid Charlemagne" traces the rise and fall of a drug dealer who ends up on the run. "Don't Take Me Alive" profiles an armed fugitive bent on self-destruction and possible collateral damage to "luckless pedestrians". "The Caves of Altamira" fantasizes about hiding in a secret cave. And so the stories continue - strange, creepy, and weird - good grist for the prog music mill.

Second, songs contain a variety of rhythmic foundations, many allowing instrumental solos that could easily belong on a jazz album. (The jazz inclinations appear on almost all Steely Dan albums, but most notably on the sublime Aja). The straightforward rock of "Kid Charlemagne" features a dynamite guitar solo by Larry Carlton, who is best known as a fusion jazz player. Carlton has claimed that this solo, although stitched together from many takes, is his absolute best. On other songs, the layers of studio tracking produce the sounds of a large ensemble that feels neither over- nor under-produced. The eclectic mixture of themes and musical styles is literally music to my prog-sensitive ears. 

Steely Dan is also unique because they shunned live performances for most of their career. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the only permanent members of the band, were experts at writing songs and assembling musicians like Carlton to play them or to sing background over Fagan's lead vocals. The key to their success was not improvisation or jamming on stage, but rather crafting hit albums in the comfort of L.A. studios.

Sporting a string of seven best-selling albums in the 1970s, Steely Dan joined in on the rising popularity of prog record albums. The time had finally come in the mid-70s for progressive rock to be fully accepted; albums by Genesis, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Yes, and Santana, among others, sold in huge numbers as did the Dan. Prog subcategories began to proliferate to accommodate the seemingly endless variety of rock. "Prog for the Masses" was now upon us and ready to be celebrated!

My Steely Dan LP collection began with Aja, which I bought when it first came out in 1977. I then worked backwards and forwards so that I owned all seven of the 1970s output. That was enough. I never sampled the live album or the reprised version of the band in the aughts. My albums were played frequently at home, provoking both glee and protest depending on the family members present. One memorable Steely Dan fest was the lip-syncing, tennis racquet-playing air band of Steve and his cousin Thad (aka Shade Bro). Thankfully, both have grown up to become perfectly normal adults!

Steve:

Perfectly normal, my foot. Any kid who grows up reading Steely Dan lyric sheets is bound to come out the other side a little bent - a fact of which I am proud. I do remember the tennis-racket-air-band sessions at our house, an activity I took quite seriously. While it may have been enough for others (such as "Shade Bro" or my dad) to simply hop around and loosely mime their performances (the fools!), I took special care to make my lip syncing, tennis racket fingerings and strumming as precise and as close to the music as possible. At the time I thought I must have been pretty impressive to watch, but in retrospect I probably could have gotten away with less. Such are the ways of the music business. 

I mention the lyric sheet first because I think that The Royal Scam has some of the best lyrics I've ever heard - so vivid, so grotesque and fanciful, and yet so human. To add to what Dan said above, each song is a look inside the life and soul of a different character - and although it's most likely not meant to be a concept album per se, one does get the feeling that all these little stories are taking place in the same city, the desperately oppressive urban dungeon depicted on the album cover. 

One of the most compelling scenarios occurs in "Haitian Divorce", in which a woman takes a temporary trip away from her husband with whom she's always fighting, has a drunken liaison in Haiti, and winds up getting pregnant, with the truth only coming out after the baby is born ("Tearful reunion in the USA / Day by day those memories fade away / Some babies grow in a peculiar way / It changed, it grew / And everybody knew"). 

Appropriately, the following song ("Everything You Did") is from the point of view of a man who suspects his wife of cheating on him, after finding clues lying around the house ("I never knew you were a roller skater / You're gonna show me later"). Adding a slice of realism to the argument, one of them realizes they might be overheard by their neighbors and tries to take corrective action: "Turn up the Eagles / the neighbors are listening" - my favorite lyric on the album. The Eagles returned the favor with a Steely Dan reference in their song "Hotel California" - "They stab it with their steely knives, but they just can't kill the beast", according to Glenn Frey in the liner notes to an Eagles best-of CD. 

Song after song The Royal Scam delivers amazingly vivid renderings of people in dark and desperate situations, but the clever and witty details help to turn it into a dark comedy rather than a bunch of depressing stories. Musically, The Royal Scam is Steely Dan's densest, darkest album, a trait that may turn off fans of the band's lighter material as on their more popular tracks like "Rikki Don't Lose That Number", "My Old School", or even "Do it Again". Like it or not, the dense atmosphere is appropriate for the subject matter of the songs. 

When pressed, I consider The Royal Scam as my favorite Steely Dan album, but all of the albums in their initial run are essential.