I am not working today and I don’t particularly have anything to do. That isn’t to say there aren’t things I could do. I could do a lot of things, some of which would even count as constructive. But I’m just not up for constructive today. That is why I went on a bender of reading Steely Dan lyrics.
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen as Steely Dan — they once formed a band called “Leather Canary” — have put out a good number of albums over the years. So I did have to limit my lyrical bender to those works up to “Gaucho” in 1980. Still, they produced a plethora of mind-boggling lyrics during that period such as:
“I fear the monkey in your soul.” From “Monkey In Your Soul,” the album “Pretzel Logic,” 1974.
That line strikes terror in my inner mojo. For I fear monkeys in people’s souls as well. Also I fear, when I see a monkey up close, that it is going to fling some sort of bodily material at me.
Here is another SD favorite:
“Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears? Well, look at mine.” From “Any Major Dude,” the album “Pretzel Logic.”
Quite frankly, no I have never seen a squonk’s tears. I didn’t know that squonks cry. Hell, I didn’t even know what a squonk was until I looked it up on the site Steelydandictionary.com. Here is their definition:
“A mythical woodland creature, originating in Pennsylvania. Squonks spend much of their time crying due to their ugliness, and when captured, will dissolve into a puddle of tears. Also the subject of a song on the 1976 Genesis album A Trick of The Tail.”
Well what do you know? They do cry. But a mythical woodland creature from PENNSYLVANIA? Of course, one of my all-time favorite rhetorical questions is posed in this lyric from the title track of the 1980 album “Gaucho:”
“Who is the gaucho amigo
Why is he standing
In your spangled leather poncho
And your elevator shoes”
Just posing the question “who is the gaucho amigo” sounds a bit funny by itself. Perhaps it would not be particularly humorous to some one from Argentina or Uruguay. That is unless someone was making fun of a pseudo-gaucho, what we call a “drug store cowboy” here in Texas. But a gaucho wearing a spangled leather poncho and someone’s elevator shoes? I mean that is quite a freaky image, don’t you think?
Some SD lyrics are not as cryptic as others but still have something in them that leaps up and slaps me. An example:
“I’m a bookkeeper’s son
I don’t want to shoot no one” From “Don’t Take Me Alive,” the album “The Royal Scam,” 1976.
One has to ask: Would he want to shoot someone if he was a doctor’s son? The son of a Wal-Mart cashier? The son of a preacher man?
Finally, this from “Night by Night,” the album “Pretzel Logic,” 1974.
“Yes, I’m cashing in this ten-cent life
For another one”
Is he cashing in a ten-cent life for another ten-cent life? A five-cent life? An eight-cent life? Who knows. Always a great mystery (and great fun) listening to Steely Dan.
Oh by the way, Steely Dan is going on tour with former band member Michael McDonald beginning in July. I don’t know if I’ll get to see them on July 14 at the Cynthia Mitchell Woods Pavilion in Houston. But stranger things have happened. Check Steelydan.com for a listing of the shows they are playing.