Rodota Schmodota

Bike 2: 71.3; 26.1.

That's 2/3 of the way to 100 miles on the week, but I'm actually hoping for more like 120, or at least more than my biggest week so far (108.6).

My average speed over the 26 miles today was a little over 13mph--actually only about 1mph faster than on the old bike, but it feels a lot faster. This route is unpaved, though still not mud or gravel, for about 10 of the 26 miles.

I'm sure all the statistics are scintillating to anyone unfortunate enough to be reading this, but I like to keep track of stuff.

Tonight: Steely Dan! They are one of my many "hero" groups--and were not really a group at all, per se, during their main recording years (1972-82 or so).

I think many listeners got a certain impression from "Back, Jack, do it again" that conveyed an image that didn't really jibe with what the Dan really were. For one, they were more jazz than rock or pop. For another, they were probably the smartest lyricists yet then heard (and maybe still). For still another (another what? another "THING"!), because they weren't a band per se, they had the most talented musicians available in LA-area recording studios, and they could enlist the right group of players for each song on an album if they pleased. They (Becker and Fagen, the core of Steely Dan) were also notorious perfectionists in the studio, so what you heard on those six classic albums was absolutely the best possible sound that could be wrung for the studios and musicians of the time.

Then as if for irony, Fagen's none-too-melodic voice presided over the whole affair.

This might've been the height of what Punk was a response to, in a way, but I bet most music-literate punks would have nothing but good words for the Dan, who after all peopled their songs with cranks, misfits, and downright perverts, in settings that ranged from seedy to creepy to post-apocalyptic. Where the Eagles at their best might've laid claim to some of this territory, it had to have been a strain for them; the Dan at their worst walked all over the Eagles.

In those days, the release of a new Steely Dan album was reason enough to go and buy it, sight unseen.

As I thought about them today riding my bike, I thought of "King of the World" from the "Countdown to Ecstasy" album, with the aforementioned post-apocalyptic setting:

Hello one and all
Was it you I used to know
Can't you hear me call
On this old ham radio
All I got to say
I'm alive and feeling fine
If you come my way
You can share my poison wine
CHORUS:
No marigolds in the promised land
There's a hole in the ground
Where they used to grow
Any man left on the Rio Grande
Is the king of the world
As far as I know

I don't want your bread
I don't need your helping hand
I can't be no savage
I can't be no highwayman
Show me where you are
You and I will spend this day
Driving in my car
Through the ruins of Santa Fe

CHORUS

I'm reading last year's papers
Although I don't know why
Assassins cons and rapers
Might as well die

If you come around
No more pain and no regrets
Watch the sun go brown
Smoking cobalt cigarettes
There's no need to hide
Taking things the easy way
If I stay inside
I might live till Saturday
CHORUS

The verses follow a pretty basic rock chord progression--"All Along the Watchtower" backwards--and then we go practically into free-form jazzland on the choruses, with chords 98% of rockers never attempt (of the groups of whom I know some of their charts, you might be surprised to know that the only other group that went out into this territory beyond 4/4 time and major, minor, and seventh chords, was the Grateful Dead.

Maybe this is my way back into playing music. Must find the old Steely Dan book. Which was funny in itself, because in an introduction to this book, Becker/Fagen themselves claim that they use something called a "mu" chord wherein one adds a full step to the octave note--which creates for example a pretty difficult-to-play barre chord--and I'm still not sure if they were joking, but they said if you tried to play their songs without using these "mu" chords and they found out about it, you'd be in some sort of trouble. (Though neither of these scrawny guys looked capable of beating up Eleanor Roosevelt in a fair fight, they could certainly deliver blistering and withering verbal abuse, if their lyrics gave any indication.)

Here's to Steely Dan! Can't wait to see 'em tonite!