Song Of The Day: Oct. 30, 2017
When Walter Becker died, I sampled a lot of his and Donald Fagen’s solo stuff and, of course, listened to a lot of Steely Dan.
While this song was on a Greatest Hits collection, (a) it wasn’t a hit; (b) never made it onto an album (written when the Dan were preparing The Royal Scam for release, it didn’t fit the Dan’s Bronx Cheer to the bicentennial); but (c) hits my musical sweet spot as much as any Dan song this side of ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ or ‘Dr. Wu’. The lyrics may well allude to Becker’s drug issues (some people think that virtually every Steely Dan song was about heroin). According to someone who knows the language:
Silver key = Syringe
Red door = Vein
Jackson = $20.00 bill
Sweetness you’ve been crying for = Heroin/cocaine.
Nevertheless, it’s an instantly memorable song and deserves to be heard, so today it is:
Here is one of my Steely Dan favorites. Not as big as some of their hits, it was from the soundtrack of a mediocre movie of the 70s, FM.
https://youtu.be/HV3zWSawJiw