what I want to do for you, Matt, and for listeners, is offer a Straussian reading of Steely Dan.

An esoteric reading?

Yes.

I mean, Sam, I don't know if an esoteric reading is even possible because Steely Dan is totally trapped in their historical moment.

No, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it against the historicists, against the harmonious suspicion.

I'm going to grant them the capacity to be entirely in control of the various levels of meaning of their work.

Steely Dan was free within a circle.

Yes.

So let's start with the surface.

First of all, what's obvious.

Steely Dan is jazz fusion.

It's a kind of music that sounds kind of stupid to a lot of people.

The music is, you know, reaching for precision. It's reaching for perfection. I think at its best,

it's riding this line between corny and cool and finding the place where cornyness becomes cool

and vice versa. It's not tossed off. It's the

most prepared and executed music. You love it or you hate it for the same reason. They're basically

employing the best jazz and rock session musicians in the world and they're playing just

hot licks with astonishing precision. This to people who are like punk rockers,

and I think also probably a lot of people like you, like country and alt country fans,

this is the corniest thing you could possibly listen to, whereas for Danheads, it's the best

thing you could possibly listen to, but for the same reasons. And I think this surface level is

where the term yacht rock comes from, which is how they're

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