Customer Reviews

Steely Dan Countdown To Ecstasy

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How bizarre it is that Steely Dan's brilliant second album, 1973's "Countdown To Ecstasy," wasn't exactly a hit upon it's initial release. Maybe it was the weird watercolor painting on the cover. Or maybe it was the first single, "Show Biz Kids," which contained the f-word (though the naughty word was edited out for single release). Or how about bad marketing on MCA Records' part...who the heck knows? Thankfully, time has proven "Countdown" to be one of Steely Dan's very best albums. Dan masterminds Walter Becker & Donald Fagen, along with guitarists Jeff "Skunk" Baxter & Denny Dias, as well as drummer Jim Hodder, totally cook on this magnificent set. Practically every single cut here is a Dan classic: the outstanding jazz/rock blowout that is "Bodhisattva," the cocktail pop of "Razor Boy," the awesome melodic rock of "The Boston Rag" (tell all your buddies that it ain't no drag!), and the salsa-esque "Your Gold Teeth." But it doesn't end there---there's also the slinky "Show Biz Kids," in which the band get into a single groove, stay there for the whole song, and jam into the heavens. This is followed by the masterful piano bopper "My Old School," the tasty, country-flavored "Pearl Of The Quarter," and the groovy finale, "King Of The World." The songs are amazing, Becker & Fagen & the gang are superb (both in their musical chemistry and studio skills), Fagen's vocals are very soulful, and the street-sensibile lyrics are intruiging. YOU will be in total ecstasy listening to Steely Dan's "Countdown To Ecstasy," one of the Dan's most supreme offerings.

Is it possible there is someone for whom Two Against Nature will be their first Steely Dan record? If so, this one should be their next. Before Aja, Steely Dan actually was more rock than jazz, and this album (along with Royal Scam) was the deepest into hard rock they would ever go.

I would submit "Bodhisatva" is the ultimate jazz-rock fusion number, fuzz tones and great "air guitar" lines over a truly swinging beat. They also hit their pop-rock peak with "My Old School" and their country-rock peak with "Pearl of the Quarter." "Your Gold Teeth" is a cool jazz-rock jam. "Show Biz Kids" is hard to classify, but it's got some great slide guitar.

Fast-forwarding 27 years to the smooth textures of 2 v. Nature, you can see that Steely Dan of today is not the same band it was in 1973. In fact, by the time of "Aja," just four years later, they'd abandoned this path, abolishing the fuzz tone forever. Perhaps this music has a more juvenile sound to it, rock being by definition more "childish" than jazz. But "Countdown to Ecstasy" is by no means a lesser achievement.

So there are more people with high opinions on this album. I think there is no other album that I've liked so much in the last three decades. Regardless of my varying tastes (punk, new wave, industrial, disco, grunge, whatever) I've always been excited by this masterpiece. Not for sentimental reasons or to be musically correct.
I've played it more than 500 times and still it sounds fresh to me (and still I don't understand the lyrics ...)

How many lonely nights did this album get me through?

How many long road trips were made shorter by this album?

How many hangovers were turned from unbearable to tolerable by this album?

Many, many, many...

It might be hard to understand for you East Coast/Left Coast types, but being a Dan fan in Montana circa 1975 was a very cool, private, exclusive thang. Oh, we were seen as weird, all right...embracing this music that was not country, not Z.Z. Top, not the Bee Gees. And whenever we tried to proselytize, the first thing we always heard was, "I don't like the singer's voice. It's weird."

So we just dug the Dan. They broke through on the radio in Great Falls, MT (!) with "Do It Again" but nobody else got too excited. For us, though, Can't Buy A Thrill provoked the same kind of aural excitement I later felt the first time I heard the Sex Pistols. This was honest-to-God NEW MUSIC. We wore out the Thrill vinyl and waited for the next release -- and, we assumed, the next radio hit.

Well, the album arrived and the hit didn't. We had no clue what this 2nd Dan album contained. We were too scared -- not to mention financially challenged -- to take a flyer on an album we hadn't heard at all.

It was Todd who finally bellied up to the bar and bought the 8-track and played it for us on his maxo-cheapo stereo. The sound was so bad, we thought the girlie backups in "Show Biz Kids" were singing "pop sweet kids."

But now we're older and more affluent...and Pop Sweet Kids is the perfect description. Countdown to Ecstasy is a perfect pop album -- years ahead of its time, for sure -- and if I ever get to hear a disc's worth of lyrics that are as memorable as this one...I'll pinch my aged self to make sure I ain't dead.

"Well I've been around the world And I've been in the Washington Zoo And in all my travels As the facts unravel I've found this to be true"

"I walked alone down the Miracle Mile I met my baby by the Shrine of the Martyr... She loved the million-dollar words I'd say She loved the candy and the flowers that I bought her.."

Martyr...bought her? Only Fagen could pull off a rhyme like that and make it sound perfect.

"Song-cycles" were the big thing in '70s "progressive" albums...the artist(s) had a grand vision that we peons were only too privileged to glimpse, as long as we laid down the cash. Countdown is still one of my 10 Desert Island Discs because it's so anti-that. So anti-Svengali. So anti-Werner Erhard. So anti-"I've got everything figured out." Even today, when I punch this beauty in, Fagen comes across as by turns amused ("My Old School"), bitter ("Show Biz Kids" -- THEY GOT THE STEELY DAN T-SHIRTS), remorseful ("The Boston Rag"), weary ("Pearl of the Quarter"), and wise ("Bodhisattva")...but never preachy and overbearing. Except for "King Of The World", which seems to me just a song that parroted the "nuclear scare" groupthink of the time, complete with synths that sound like game-show background music. Reagan took care of that problem...

But "King" doesn't stop me from loving this album like my wife. In our current remote-control/switch-off-what-you-don't like society, Countdown gets The Full Monty, start to finish, whenever it's selected from my collection.

In fact, I'm gonna put it on right now...

COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY is a masterpiece. It's Steely Dan's best album, I've always thought, (Donald Fagen agrees with me!) and one of the best pop/rock albums of all time. "Bodhisattva" -- what needs to be said? It leads off like a rocket, and you're in another world, faster, shinier, smarter. "Razor Boy" -- a supernaturally clever arrangement, samba with castanets and xylophone, and a dreamy bridge between each of three sets of verse and the chorus:

"Will you still have a song to sing when the Razor Boy comes and takes all your fancy things away? Will you still be singin' it on that cold and windy day?"

A steel guitar kicks in on the second verse (steel guitar?), and then takes a solo for the first half of the third verse. Absolutely brilliant. In the middle of "Your Gold Teeth" is an amazing instrumental passage with stop-start fusion jazz and an incredible guitar solo. Then, the kicker -- "King of the World"... A three-note ascending bass pattern, then manic snare drum, (foreshadowing the jungle/drum&bass of 20 years later), and an insane guitar trill. The perfect sound of a society hurtling into the abyss, cruising in chrome-plated comfort, going nowhere fast. The chorus still knocks me flat:

"No marigolds in the promised land, there's a hole in the ground where they used to grow... [western guitar figure] ...Any man left on the Rio Grande is the King of the World as far as I know..."

The synth figure just DRIVES the song into the terminal sunset, accompanied by a deranged, jazzy guitar. The apocalypse, what could they ever do to top it?

Steely Dan's four best albums were COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY, THE ROYAL SCAM, PRETZEL LOGIC and KATY LIED. But of the four, ECSTACY is the El Supremo! Don't miss it, or the others.

Finally got this album recently, and was knocked out by it. I already knew the famous tunes (Bodhisattva, My Old School, Show Biz Kids), but was unprepared for the excellence of "King of the World", "Boston Rag" or "Your Gold Teeth." Great production: clean and crisp, but never fussy. For someone who was originally so unsure of his vocal abilities that he brought in another singer for the first album, Fagen finally comes alive as a great soul vocalist on "Countdown."

"Bodhissatva" is the one track on the album that makes it worth the money. A wonderful guitar solo and drum performance. If they stretched the song out, or recorded it live to make it 30 minutes long, i'd still listen to it.

"The Boston Rag" could be the most underrated song ever. Includes the most beautiful guitar riff i've ever heard.

Other highlights are "Show Biz Kids", "My Old School", and the highly underrated "Your Gold Teeth"

I bought this album to enjoy Show Biz Kids, a cool funkie piece, that remains one my favorites. After many years, I forgot how tight King of World sounded. A fine showcase for serious electric guitar sound mixing. This was a great Steely Dan CD that was under appreciated when it was initially released, but now I think people are just realizing it is a gem.

Although a commercial failure as the follow up to "Can't Buy a Thrill", "Countdown to Ecstacy" is, to me, the only album where Steely Dan was more than a project for Walter Becker and Donald Fagan. Later albums would produce bigger hits and sell better as Becker and Fagan brought in the best studio musicians of the day, but those albums lack a cohesive theme and feel disjointed when viewed as a whole.

"Countdown" is a great album because it represents 5 guys working together as a unit to produce great music.

Fagan, Becker, Stokely Carmichael, et al, wrote, played, and produced this tribute to Buddism and early 70s sensabilities. It sure is one of the best rock offerings ever. MY OLD SCHOOL is THE mantra shouted at graduations all over the Western world. Boddistava is a prayer to the Buddist angel who watches over people currently alive. The jazzy rock sound is so easy on the ears. KING OF THE WORLD is about nuclear annihilation, and SHOW BIZ kids.....is about all of us. Energetic, feel good, and quite simply among the very best.