Customer Reviews

Gaucho

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"...and why is he standing in your spangled leather poncho and your elevator shoes?"

The absurdity of the lyrics--their audacious swagger--married to such righteous music can only be the work of one great band. Steely Dan doesn't rock. They don't necessarily do jazz. Their music is so unique it can only be described as "Steely Dan" music-- a trademark of quality since 1972.

While Aja is generally hailed as their triumph, I'm personally partial to this one. In fact I would rank it as one of the great albums of all time. It was also their most complex. This is amazing in light of the turmoil the Dan were undergoing during this time. Much of the work on Gaucho fell on Donald Fagen's shoulders since Walter Becker was dealing with drug problems. During the mixing sessions, Becker was largely absent after severely mangling his leg in a taxi mishap.

Gaucho is filled with songs surrounding the seamy underside of society's high rollers. It reveals a world seen through the haze of drugs and despair. It's a cathartic aural experience. If you haven't heard this album, you haven't experienced the full potential of music and the human imagination.

The title track, depicting a gay love triangle, is exquisite beyond description with its precise construction, stately horns, and a tricky melodic vocal line that tests Fagen. But what the heck is a "Custerdome?" Fagen visualized it as a fictional skyscraper with a revolving restaurant at the top. "Third World Man," an off-the-wall sketch of a child as terrorist in his sandbox bunker, features a sneering vocal and Larry Carlton's acidic guitar solo. The song began as "Were You Blind That Day?" which they left of the Aja album.

"Babylon Sisters" is hipper than hip with its funky keyboard run-up, slick horns, and girl singers biting off quick syllables. This is followed by the equally jivey "Hey Nineteen" in which the singer gushes over "The Cuervo Gold" and "the fine Columbian." It's a real hoot, as the singer, an older dude, tries to enlighten his teenage companion about Sixties soul music.

"Glamour Profession" concerns the activities of a coke sniffing basketball player named Hoops McCann. It burbles with synths and sleazy saxes. It's luxuriant tone is intoxicating. The bridge is co-opted from Kurt Weill's "Speak Low," with a dash of disco added.

This would prove to be the last great Steely Dan album. More trouble followed it's release. Keith Jarrett successfully sued the band for plagiarizing his "Long As You Know You're Living Yours" on the title track. Shortly after the album was issued, Fagen applied for a spot in Dylan's touring band. He never heard back from Zimmy. One can only imagine what that collaboration would have wrought!

Unable to top this masterpiece, it would be 20 years before Steely Dan put out another album of new material.

Gaucho is probably the most perfect album ever made. It is in fact so perfect, that you don't notice how much work went into it. It was as if the album was doomed from the start and I bow deep to Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, Gary Katz and Roger Nichols that they eventually got it finished. At the time of mixing, Walter Becker was almost whacked out of life by a car so he couldn't help mixing the record. A technician fell asleep on the job and erased one of the best songs (The Second Arrangement). It took three years and a million dollars to finally get it done. But it was worth it. The musicians on this album are in top notch shape, as is production, engineering and songwriting. An absolute classic.

The lazy decadence of the opening track Babylon Sisters is the perfect music to listen to when seated in a convertible, sun shining and cruising the highway. Listen to the fading chorus at the end: that alone took three days!

Hey Nineteen is a typical Steely Dan approach to telling a story abnout a guy who is feeling he gets older,... Classic stuff.

Glamour Profession deals with addiction to drugs in a funny yet exacting way.

Title track Gaucho is a mean little story about a rendevous with great saxophone playing and abeautiful melody.

Time out of Mind features Mark Knopfler in his first stint as a session musician, an occasion he will not forget very easy. He was asked to play many hours of solos, but eventually saw seven seconds of his efforts mixed into this song. Listen carefully; blink and you've missed it.

My Rival is a song about I still can't figure out what. It is a great song, but if anybody can enlighten me about the subject, I'd be most obliged!

Legend has it that Third World Man is constructed around a solo that was lying around from the Royal Scam sessions (1976). A haunting melody and indeed a GREAT solo by Larry Carlton.

That concludes my review for one of the best albums by one of the best outfits. Buy this one and you'll find it in your player more often then you would think.

Just like "The Royal Scam" was the darker predecessor of the already-grim "Katy Lied," likewise "Gaucho" is the darker sister of "Aja." The last album from the first lifespan of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (better known as the sardonic Steely Dan), "Gaucho" was released a long three years after the stunning success of "Aja" (which is still hailed by many to be their masterpiece). Several factors contributed to this long interval, but most notably was a contractual dispute between MCA (ABC) and Warner Brothers, with whom Steely Dan had signed a new contract. The battle wouldn't end even when MCA won the rights to the new album, as Becker and Fagen fought (to no avail) to stop a price increase for their new record.
Nonetheless, when it was finally released, "Gaucho" gave fans the dose of Dan that they'd been craving for three years. Not surprisingly, a lot of the album's content was substantially more sardonic than that of "Aja." The former album had been just slightly less pessimistic than their previous works; for instance there was the brightness of 'Peg,' and the care-free 'Josie' (the doomsday feeling was echoed best through 'Deacon Blues'). But with "Gaucho," Becker and Fagen had convinced themselves that they had already spent their musical zenith, which understandably made the creation of this album a daunting task. The familiar pessimism of old times was the result, but here it was finally matched with the perfectionist gloss of studio sterility that had made "Aja" such a hit; examples being the death knells of "illegal fun under the sun" in 'Glamour Profession,' the paranoia of the title track and 'My Rival,' and the irnoy of 'Third World Man.' Some moments do resemble "Aja" to a T; 'Babylon Sisters,' 'Time Out Of Mind,' and 'Hey Nineteen,' the view of a man who finds himself out of touch with what's new. Still, even these tracks are executed with a weariness that was even more evident within Steely Dan than before.
"Gaucho" would ultimately signal the end for this first era of Steely Dan; Fagen would find solo success with a Top 20 album, and Becker would pursue low-key projects. Of course, the duo re-united by the 90s and would eventually release two more widely acclaimed and popular albums. Knowing this makes "Gaucho" easier to listen to. If it had been the definite end of Steely Dan, it would be an unsatisfying breaking point, but fortunately for us, it wasn't.

The sardonic brain trust that comprised Steely Dan in this outing, explore with delicious irony and wit various ills and taboo associated with American societal organisation; moreover, in the decade that followed the one undeniable theme that comes from this album and its predecessor (Aja) is that despite the inevitable innovation, production advances and marketing associated with the music industry, that those lyrics and music, which will stand the test of time comes from both individual musician and songwriters whose passion is to tell us a story or to evoke through music both pleasure and pain that has been either masked or embellished. Something the popular music failed to accomplish in the eighties, thanks goodness these musician and lyricist saw fit to utilise, jazz, pop rock and words to suggest to the next generation of musician and songwriters that it is indeed about the music.

Danfans rejoice!! The remastered version of Steely Dan's final album for MCA has finally been released, more than a year after the reissue of "Aja". In the liner notes Becker and Fagen make light of the lengthy delay of this re-release. From the accidental erasing of one of the songs slated for the album(The Second Arrangement) to Walter Becker being hit by a car, and the two plus years spent in the studio making this record, this obviously was a trying time for Messrs. Becker and Fagen, but the strain doesn't show. For years "Gaucho" has been unfairly compared to their previous album(which is a masterpiece, but we don't need to get into that now), this album is just as strong and stands very well on its own. Great songs like "Babylon Sisters", "Time Out Of Mind", and "Hey Nineteen" are classics that have held up well and will sound great years beyond now. An excellent first class reissue.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned. This final album before Steely Dan's storied 20-year hiatus is just as ultra-smooooooooth as it gets, capturing that early-80s cocaine-infused vibe pretty flawlessly. And even after they got back to work, releasing "Two Against Nature" and "Everything Must Go" in rapid succession, they were still head and shoulders above 95% of the pop trash that passes for music these days. How unfortunate that radio programmers won't give them the time of day anymore.

This album was bought on a nostalgic-for-high-school-days jag while far from home. I think this album has some of this group's strongest lyrics and melodies. "Babylon Sisters" and "Hey Nineteen" -- what great stories they are; everything you need for the end of a perfect day. Other albums by Steely Dan have not aged so well and the new stuff by Donald Fagen is a train wreck.

When Hey Nineteen was a song on the charts, I really liked it and thought it was 'different'. I didn't know who Steely Dan were at that point - just knew I liked what I heard. I bought the 45, helping make it one of their few chart-toppers. The way the kick and bass work together is immaculate, and it sounded great, even on the crappy little radios and players we had at that time. 'Time Out Of Mind', a few months later, was still good, but nowhere near as good as "Hey Nineteen". There's some good moments on this album and some bland ones, but nothing that is really dreadful. Tracks like "Babylon Sisters" (a silly song about a menage a trois), "Glamour Profession" (about drug dealers, 'its the glamour profession') and "My Rival" (some weird creepy song, seems to be about a father who becomes jealous of the attention his wife is giving to their new baby) combine a gruesome humour with stunningly original arrangements and a very high standard of recording quality. On the other hand, "3rd World Man" repeats a rather dull tag at the end, long beyond it has become tiresome. And Gaucho, with humorous and dark (and eerily predictive) lyrics about 'bodacious cowboys', is starting to sound like music that plays on tv commercials or something, but its weirdness redeems it somewhat. But despite the flaws in these songs, the album is a sonic masterpeice and never offends the ears. Each note is perfect, the ultra-rich fender rhodes chords and vamping outro in 'Glamour Profession", the subtle horns in 'Babylon Sisters', the funky organ riffs in "My Rival". When I first started listening to Steely Dan's records, I liked "Aja" a lot and probably this one the least. Now, this is one of my favorites, and Aja seems mostly very over-rated and uninspired.

And so we come to what I assume is the end of the Steely Dan remastering project. Aja was the last Dan album recorded in analogue (and apparently Fagen & Becker did consider recording Gaucho digitally).

I was expecting this to be the Dan album that benefitted least from the re-mastering process -- as it was the most recent of the analogue albums -- but no, wrong again. So much new detail is revealed in the mix that it constantly battles for my 100% attention. In the past I could work quite happily with a Dan album playing in the background, but all these remastered versions just insist that I drop everything else and listen. It's almost like listening to an entirely new set of tunes.

Once again we have Becker and Fagen's elliptic sleeve notes. They contribute a vital perspective on what was going on at the time, without saying much about what was actually going on. There is no reference to the copyright lawsuit that Keith Jarrett pursued and won -- compare the opening to 'Gaucho' and then Jan Garbarek's sax opening on 'Long as You Know You're Living Yours' on the 'Belonging' album. What was such a talented songwriting team thinking of?

Allegedly Becker and Fagen made extensive use of a drum machine for this album -- Fagen felt that no drummer could keep a perfect beat -- but a human drummer is given a credit on each track.

Sadly Denny Dias is not on this album. The track listings on the entire remastered series have made the fullest declaration yet of who played what on each track, and I have been astonished to find out this year how often Dias played some of my favourite 1970's guitar solos.

Larry Carlton, one of the the Dan's most stalwart session guitarists, turns up for just the last track, "Third World Man", and boy, is that solo a goodie. Apparently the solo had been hanging around, unused, in the Dan vaults for a number of years, and Fagen finally wrote the song around the solo. It is a fantastic finale to the end of the first Dan era -- seven diamond-encrusted albums from what was the world's finest pop/rock/jazz/whatever band. We will not see the likes of them again.

After Aja, the Dan's first real venture into the realms of smooth, another album followed with even less intricate song structures and rhythms (aside from "Babylon Sisters"). However, the simplicity is very deliberate, accomplished masterfully, and is somewhat called for.

This album is, of course, perfectly produced and still has the same complex Steely Dan melodies and harmonies along with the catchy numbers that they pull out so flawlessly like they do on all of their albums. The A+ quality musicians on this album include guitarists Steve Khan, Mark Knopfler and Larry Carlton, drummers Steve Gadd, Jeff Porcaro and Bernard Purdie, bassists Anthony Jackson and Chuck Rainey, and horn players Michael and Randy Brecker along with Tom Scott and many others (including the one and only Michael McDonald). I was definitely surprised that with this all star line up, why the album was so simple and smooth, and honestly, it put me off a little, but I listened a few more times and if you like Steely Dan as much as I do, you begin to appreciate the smooth, more poppy grooves, because these guys play this stuff soooo well.

There is not much more to say but this:

Gaucho is not a necessary Steely Dan album unless you want to complete your collection. However, I do not regret the purchase at all because the songs on here are still really good, they just aren't the best or most thought out Steely Dan tunes. It's an album to appreciate for the smoothness and awesome musicians pulling off the pure smooth.