Saturday, February 14, 2009

Chevy Chase, Fagen, Becker ... and Chamaeleon Church

It's no secret that TV- and film comedian Chevy Chase played in a band with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker before they went on to form Steely Dan. It was one of many constellations in those college days.
Now and then Chevy - who plays drums and keyboards - is asked about those time in interviews. And today we came across a new one in dailycamera mainly about Chevy's involvement in The Boulder International Film Festival. But he does get one question about the old music days:
Camera As a longtime Steely Dan fan, I have to ask about this story I've heard for years that you played drums in an early version of that band.

CC Yeah. We were together in college. I miss all that fun we had. We didn't call ourselves Steely Dan; we weren't ready for that. We were more into the jazz idiom. I was a drummer at the time and I really wanted to learn piano better and that's really what I concentrated on and one of the reasons I didn't really continue with them. It wasn't like they asked me to be part of Steely Dan -- by then I was doing other things. But we had fun and I just think they're terrific. I think they're a real great American band.

If they had wanted to continue talking music they could perhaps have gone on to the group Chamaeleon Church, where Chevy was a member for the single album that the group recorded and released in 1968. A bit pop and a bit progressive.

On the album Chevy sings lead vocals on one song; Here's A Song, and we've added that to the Radio Dupree playlist together with another song from the album.

And here's yet another one we found on YouTube!

1 comment:

Peter said...

Hello Dupree-människor! Jag är med i ett band som heter Reform och vi har precis släppt vår första CD. Tror det kan vara nåt för er. Det är en slags instrumental jazzrock utan att vara jazzrock med lite Spirit of Eden-Talk Talk med lite Chungas Revenge-känsla då och då. Åke "Wasa Express" Eriksson spelar trummor. Man kan lyssna på http://www.myspace.com/reform1.
Kan man skicka ett ex. till er någonstans?

/Peter Å