Monday, June 15, 2009

The "new" Steely Dan album

As we wrote a couple of weeks back (May 29 to be exact) the next album from Steely Dan is near. It is in the form of a Greatest Hits package and naturally released in time for the ongoing summer/autumn tour.

What songs make up the collection this time around and what will the cover look like? Well, here are the answers to both those questions:

Disc 1:
1. Do It Again
2. Dirty Work
3. Reelin' In The Years
4. Only A Fool Would Say That
5. Change Of The Guard
6. Bodhisattva
7. The Boston Rag
8. Show Biz Kids
9. My Old School
10. Rikki Don't Lose That Number
11. Night By Night
12. Pretzel Logic
13. Any Major Dude Will Tell You (Album Version)
14. Black Friday
15. Bad Sneakers
16. Doctor Wu
17. Any World (That I'm Welcome To)
18. Chain Lightning

Disc 2:
1. Kid Charlemagne
2. Don't Take Me Alive
3. Haitian Divorce
4. The Fez
5. Here At The Western World (Album Version)
6. Black Cow
7. Aja
8. Deacon Blues
9. Peg
10. Josie
11. F.M.
12. Babylon Sisters
13. Hey Nineteen
14. Time Out Of Mind
15. Third World Man

Release date: June 29.

We just got this info and have't had time to compare it to previous Best Of/Greatest Hits-collections. But a quick glance says that this is not aimed at covering the whole career of the group. Not a single song from the two latest albums; Two Against Nature (2000) and Everything Must Go (2003).
And it's yet another Steely Dan album without Donald and Walter on the cover.

UPDATE: After a bit of should we or should we not bother to, we decided to look at the string of compilations and compare them to this one.
There's the first Greatest Hits (1978), Steely Dan (1978), Steely Dan (1981), Gold (1982), Gold, Expanded Edition (1985), A Decade Of Steely Dan (1985), The Very Best Of Steely Dan: Reelin' In The Years (1985), The Very Best Of Steely Dan: Do It Again (1987), Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story, 1972-1980 (2000), Steely Dan: The Definitive Collection (2006) and The Millennium Collection (2007). Phew! That's a lot of compilations! Eleven. Plus the new one which basically is a repackaging of the 2000 Showbiz Kids. Same songs in the same order. And it looks like its an European/non-USA release. Neil McCormick - well-known UK music critic - has written some new liner notes.

kl.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous03 July, 2009 07:05

    Why they don't come up with new material, beats me. Walter and David are a tremendously talented duo and its time for them to bring out some new songs. A rehash serves no purpose and it isn't going to sell.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous03 July, 2009 07:07

    Is this the end of Steely Dan and have they nothing more to say ?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous26 September, 2009 04:29

    oh I'll buy it.....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nebukadnessar Stephenson and Sigurd Huckle04 January, 2010 23:27

    As it is now what we have to look forward to is another Fagen solo album, but we rhink it likely there will evetually be a new Steely Dan one as well:

    http://www.cleveland.com/popmusic/index.ssf/2009/11/after_steely_dan_tour_donald_f.html

    "Walter and I keep tossing around ideas for another Steely Dan album, but there's nothing set yet," Fagen said during a recent phone interview.

    Up next for him: another solo project.

    "I have a bunch of songs that I'm set to record sometime in the spring," Fagen said.

    No, his next solo outing won't pick up where his "Nightfly" trilogy (including 1982's "The Nightfly," 1993's "Kamakiriad" and 2006's "Morph the Cat") left off.

    "This will be something lighter, just a one-off."

    ReplyDelete