A Sense of Doubt blog post #3884 - Mechanized Hum of Another World - Steely Dan Mix - Music Monday for 2510.06

Steely Dan - guessing photo from 1972

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3884 - Mechanized Hum of Another World - Steely Dan Mix - Music Monday for 2510.06

I am a HUGE Steely Dan fan.

Aja, album from 1977, is one of my all-time favorite albums, featuring my favorite Steely Dan song "Deacon Blues." I actually have a character in my sword-sorcery-cyberpunk novel named for that song - Deacon Blue.

In my list of favorite albums, ranked by most listens, Aja made the top twenty, 19th (ha! "Hey Nineteen"). That's only because Fagen's solo album Morph the Cat is in the top ten. I realized while working on this mix that I have never featured that album, which is an oversight, so that's coming up in a few weeks here on the blog on a Music Monday.

I probably love Aja best as it may be the band's "jazziest" album.

If curious, here's that list of albums from the T-Shirt Blog.

I had started out this work intending to update my Steely Dan mix posted all the way back in 2018:

Monday, September 24, 2018

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1312 - Your Everlasting Summer Fading Fast - a Steely Dan Playlist - Musical Monday for 1809.24

The mix features a picture of me in my Aja t-shirt in the basement of our St. Antoine house in Michigan.

The mix has a lot of live versions, some of which feature talking and others actual interviews. It's not all straight music. Also, several of the videos are gone, off You Tube, and so the original 23 cut mix is more like 20 tracks.

I named the mix "Your Everlasting Summer Fading Fast," which is a slight redaction of a line from "Reelin' in the Years."

The mix is okay, and it starts with a live version of "Deacon Blues."

Along the way, I changed my mind, deciding to do a new mix with straight music and as many of my favorite Steely Dan songs as I could pack in. I had aimed for 28 tracks (Dad died on the 28th), but instead ended up with 35 songs (Dad was born in 1935). There's no real connection between Steely Dan and my Dad. Just numbers that are meaningful to me.

Sadly, Becker has died and Fagen is in poor health.

I saw them live at Pine Knob outside Detroit in 2003, and so the mix closes with that live version of "Don't Take Me Alive," which is where the name of mix comes from "the mechanized hum of another world."

Originally, the mix was going to start with "Don't Take Me Alive," also, to bookend the conceptual track. But then as I listened and listened for a couple of weeks, I decided to lead with "Time Out of Mind" and its refrain of "chasing the dragon," a reference to smoking heroin. "Do it Again," first song from the band's 1972 debut album seemed to fit best next. Then, "Deacon Blues" had to be early in the mix, pushing "Don't Take Me Alive" to fourth, which seems fine.

The way Fagen sings "Oregon" in that song sounds a lot like "Aragon."

Many of Steely Dan's songs are stories, narratives, and not self-disclosures of the song writers. This is a method that Fagen went into full tilt with Morph the Cat, even more than his other two previous solo albums. Though the stories are usually cryptic and full of word games.

And for the record, "Hey Nineteen" is not a glorification of an older man bedding a nineteen-year-old but a criticism of it. Listen to it closely.

I decided not to include a song from Two Against Nature but there's one from the final album, the one after that, "Everything Must Go."

I could write about each song, but I will add about one. Something I just learned.

Apparently, the song "Only a Fool Would Say That" was written to mock John Lennon for his hit song "Imagine."

Steely Dan Wrote This Song Just to Mock John Lennon

Just keepin' it real.

Here's my mix.

ENJOY!!

Thanks for tuning in.



Mechanized Hum of Another World - Steely Dan Mix 2025 - Music Monday 2510.06





TRACK LIST

[1] Time Out Of Mind

[2] Do It Again

[3] Deacon Blues

[4] Don't Take Me Alive

[5] Gaucho

[6] Rose Darling

[7] Dirty Work

[8] Any Major Dude Will Tell You

[9] Hey Nineteen

[10] Peg

[11] Only A Fool Would Say That

[12] Green Earrings

[13] Doctor Wu

[14] Josie

[15] Babylon Sisters

[16] My Old School

[17] Haitian Divorce

[18] Kid Charlemagne

[19] Aja

[20] Glamour Profession

[21] Midnite Cruiser

[22] Everyone's Gone To The Movies

[23] Pretzel Logic

[24] Black Cow

[25] The Fez

[26] King Of The World

[27] FM

[28] Third World Man

[29] Night By Night

[30] Any World (That I'm Welcome To)

[31] Reelin' In The Years

[32] Bodhisattva

[33] The Royal Scam

[34] Everything Must Go

[35] Don't Take Me Alive (live @ Pine Knob Amphitheatre - 8.11.2003)

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2510.06 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3749 days ago & DAD = 403 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.