“Babylon Sisters” (Gaucho, 1980) is probably my favourite Steely Dan song, with “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” “FM” and “Reeling In the Years” close behind, and I suppose part of the reason is that I listened to “Babylon Sisters” a lot at one time, having taped it from the Hobnail Takkie Show on Radio Good Hope, as it then was, in 1980. At this time, not knowing much else about Steely Dan, I thought of them as a tuneful, jazz influenced pop band specialising in sophisticated, literate lyrics and in general they, and this type of music, were not my cup of tea. I preferred loud, fast and not smooth, sophisticated and intellectual song writing craftmanship. repeated listening to this one, very catchy tune, converted me.
I’d vaguely recalled “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” (Pretzel Logic, 1974), which had been a small hit in South Africa as a soul pop tune, in the vein of J Geils Band’s “Must of Got Lost,” released in the same year, and thought that “Babylon Sisters” represented a progressive move to a higher degree of musical sophistication and, as I’ve mentioned, the influence of pop overlap with jazz funk, a style that was quite popular in late ‘70s pop and that I mostly loathed.
I was never motivated to buy any Steely Dan records because loving one song was one thing, listening to an entire album of the same kind of thing might’ve tested may patience. However, around 1993 or 1994 I found a discount price copy of A Decade of Steely Dan and bought it, mostly because of “Babylon Sisters” and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” on the premise that collection of hits would be the only Steely Dan record I’d ever want, or need, to own.
Over the course of the next year or two, and repeated listening, I came to know the other tracks well and came to love them too. A Decade of Steely Dan was a regular on the CD player, especially when I wanted to have quieter, more ruminative background soundtrack to my day. Having said that, it was not as if I played the album every day.
In mid-1995 I moved in with Karen Gagiano, who had only a small CD collection of her own, whereas I already owned a couple of hundred albums.
One of the things in respect of which I’m indebted to Karen, was the introduction of Tom Waits to my musical world, and specifically The Heart of Saturday Night and Raindogs, with she’d become acquainted through Daryl van Blerk her lover and father of her child, which I helped rear for about the first 18 months of his life. I’d known of Waits, from the NME and because Sean Rosenberg had a double album anthology of Waits’ early music and Sean, being a jazz afficianado too, punted Tom Waits to me. However, it was only because of Karen’s enthusiastic proselytising that I bought the two aforementioned albums and became smitten.
I don’t recall whether I owned any of the Waits albums when I moved in with Karen, but I did own A Decade of Steely Dan and, also, Maria McKee’s You Gotta Sin to be Saved.
For the period of six months that we shared a house, Karen played these two albums virtually every day, not necessarily always both on the same day, though it seemed like it, but at least one of the other. I got to know A Decade of Steely Dan far better than I’d ever wanted to.
It was like listening to Top 40 radio in the ‘70s. By virtue of listening to the same pop songs too many times over the period of a day, I starting loathing many of them and it took years, decades even, before some were rehabilitated to the extent where I now enjoy them. The same thing happened to A Decade of Steely Dan. it went from being a favourite album, when sparingly applied, to a record I couldn’t bear to listen to.
I suppose a part of it had to do with the unhappy relationship with Karen and that my unhappiness in the situation was reflected in, and amplified by, the daily dose of Steely Dan, like a continuous musical torture, so to speak.
It was so bad that I couldn’t bear to listen to the album at all for at least ten years afterward (it was a very pointed reminder of a very unhappy and disastrous period of my life) and even when I dipped into it again, it was only very occasionally, until 2021, when I downloaded the album from Apple Music because, for some unexplained reason, I suddenly wanted to hear “Babylon Sisters” again.
A Decade of Steely Dan has been rehabilitated for me. Once again, I enjoy listening a superb collection of superior pop rock tunes with thoughtful lyrics and a good beat. The slinky-funk style of “FM,” “Hey Nineteen,” "Peg" and “Deacon Blues” are almost the best Dan tunes and the more “rock’ oriented stuff seems stodgy in comparison.
I will still probably never own an entire Steely Dan studio album. A Decade of Steely Dan is still extremely satisfying and I’m quite happy, though it took the better part of 26 years, that I can listen to it, and think of 1995 in historical terms without being mired in depression about bad choices and stupid decisions, and without any taint to the music anymore.
