{"id":85663,"date":"2019-03-17T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T12:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=85663"},"modified":"2019-03-17T07:53:49","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T11:53:49","slug":"four-from-the-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=85663","title":{"rendered":"Four from the Road"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be nothing new from DPAA this past week in terms of MIA accounting.  So here&#8217;s something off-topic in place of the usual Sunday \u201cNo Longer Missing\u201d article.<\/p>\n<p>Longtime readers know I travel a bit.  And last month\u2019s trip was a long one \u2013 long, as in well over 6,000 mi over a span of 2 weeks.  <\/p>\n<p>On the road, I listen to music.  This past trip, I had a chance to listen to Steely Dan\u2019s first 6 albums in detail.  <\/p>\n<p>Without further ado:  here are four from Steely Dan \u2013 one from each of their first four albums.  They weren\u2019t hits, so they didn\u2019t get a whole lot of airplay.  But they\u2019re IMO absolute gems nonetheless; they compare well with anything the band ever did, including their best works. <\/p>\n<p>1.  From their debut album <em>Can&#8217;t Buy a Thrill<\/em>:  an absolutely gorgeous little tune about one of NYC&#8217;s boroughs.  <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gm_1ezIPKpU\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>2.  From the follow-up album <em>Countdown to Ecstasy<\/em>:  a wonderful, complex song about a truly dark subject.  <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Ay8tPN8Rys\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>3.  From their third (and perhaps their best) album, <em>Pretzel Logic<\/em>:  a beautiful song about coping with difficulty.  <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kND8TRZap8Y\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>4.  From the Steely Dan album that was nearly ruined by technical issues, <em>Katy Lied<\/em> (see note):  here&#8217;s the gorgeous little tune that gave the album its title, albeit indirectly. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ImtdntJQfSs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Any number of artists have made music as meticulously crafted as Steely Dan.  But I\u2019m personally convinced no one other than the late Walter Becker and Donald Fagen could have written their material.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><i><u>Author&#8217;s Note<\/u>:  during the recording of <\/i>Katy Lied<i>, Steely Dan used dbx noise reduction technology &#8211; which at the time was cutting edge and substantially superior to that of the more common Dolby noise reduction technology.  They were trying to produce an album with even better sound quality than their three previous ones (which were already superb).<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, when attempting to produce the final mix of the album the band discovered that the dbx unit used <u>on the album&#8217;s master tapes<\/u> had malfunctioned horribly.  Even dbx engineers called in to help couldn&#8217;t figure out what had gone wrong &#8211; or how to fix it.  <\/p>\n<p>The band had two options:  re-record the entire album, or attempt to salvage the damaged master tape &#8220;by ear&#8221; via adjusting various internal filters and other settings in an unlocked version of the dbx unit manually to produce the best sound they could from the damaged master tape.  They chose the latter option, and were only partially successful.<\/p>\n<p>The band actually apologized to their fans on their next album, <\/i>The Royal Scam<i>, for the poor sound quality of <\/i>Katy Lied<i>.<\/p>\n<p>The moral of the story:  there&#8217;s a reason that cutting edge technology is often referred to as &#8220;bleeding edge&#8221;.  (smile)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There seems to be nothing new from DPAA this past week in terms of MIA accounting. &hellip; <a title=\"Four from the Road\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=85663\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Four from the Road<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blather","category-who-knows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85663\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}