ah, memories...

twas looking up some old usenet posts of mine and found this jewel, my rant on why Steely Dan sucks, Feb 9, 2001.

Steely Dan bores the shit out of me. They are the epitome of blandness.

A major element of good prog is that it defies categorization (aside from "Prog" itself). There are so many elements of blues, jazz, avant guarde, classical, folk, pure-rock (whatever that is) and world music, in rather complex and varying combinations, as to make it interesting and creative and innovative (over the standard "pop" crap we hate so much ;-) ). It never feels like it fits directly into any one of these categories...hence, its impossible to get any airplay out of it...

Steely Dan is the opposite. Instead of defying categorization by being on the edge of so many genres, they defy it by being the blandest example of the center of each of them. They're old enough for the classic-rock stations (and even some "oldies" stations), rock enough for the AOR stations, 70s enough for 70s-only stations, mellow enough for "adult-contemporary" stations, still popular enough for a top-40 station to play them when they feel like playing older music (as they do occasionally), popular enough among college kids to make college radio playlists, and, damnitall, hick-sounding enough to make the occasional country station.

Basically, they were so "playable" that almost every station in the fucking world can play them and not feel like they're breaking their genre.

Don't think i'm kidding. During my university years, there was not one station in the area (Harrisonburg, VA) except for the classical and news-talk ones that wouldn't play at least _1_ Steely Dan song.

That kind of blandness I can do without.

Updated: and even a news-talk station once used a portion of a SD track as a "bumper" between the commercials and getting back to the program.
( and the rants continued... )

you know...

...your celtic music collection might be kinda, sorta, just possibly, and even maybe, too large when you listen through an hour long block in Emerald Voyage on XM Radio's Fine Tuning...

...and realize you had every single track they played.

*sigh*