I've listened to this song a thousand times and I still pick up on subtle things I've never heard before. The compositions of steely dan are just on another level.
Back in '74, my dad had gotten a very good job after having retired from the military. About ten years ago, I found a shoe box that had every check receipt he had gotten from that job. The very first check he got had his base pay listed. It was a bit over $5 an hour. In the '70s 15 cents didn't come easily...
I love how they add a voice to each Chorus. Sometimes it's a harmony, sometimes just an additional voice, (doubling, if you will). Little tricks like this I find to be genius level.
Steely Dan are musicians' musicians. So glad I grew up with this music. One of my fav bands. Walter Becker, the guitarist, recently passed, but, man, was he talented. So many more songs from this band.
The instrument in the beginning that’s sounds like bubbles 🫧 is a “flapamba”. It looks like a xylophone with wooden key heads, and the sound is resonated via wooden bases, or tubes, the mallets are usually tipped soft mallets, or even finger tips. It’s a very rare instrument, and recent in its creation, dating back to only 1960.
Sadly, most people have never heard of or know who the Wrecking Crew are and how THEY created 90% of the music we all know and love. Every big hit, be it rock n roll, R&B, pop, country, television theme songs, commercial jingles, they did all them. It didn't matter how talented a band was, record labels and producers wouldn't let the band members play on the recordings. They hired the Wrecking Crew to come in and make the songs hits.
The Rikki in the song is Rikki Ducornet, an older classmate of Fagen's at Bard College. Not only was she an older woman, she was already married. He saw her at a party, tried some lines on her, which she ignored for obvious reasons. She was later amused by the song immortalizing her. She became a published novelist later in life and probably didn't recall their meeting until people kept asking her about the song.
Another great guitar solo from Jeff "Skunk" Baxter. I think this was his last album with Steely Dan. He went on to join the Doobie Brothers after this.
Steely Dan is so deep - you will find at least 20 great songs in their catalog. Most reactors love "Peg", so I guess I'll suggest that one for your next Dan Dive.
This is country blues and Jazz. There's no one better than Steely Dan I am 64 and grew up with them first hand..The band plays all the genres' of music. It's hard to pin them down..
I'm a gigging bassist, been doing it for five bands over 30 years, a big portion of set lists in two of them from the SD catalog. Point being that I want to highlight that the bassist for "Ricki" was (RIP) Walter Becker. His "signature" bass playing is marked with innovative and complex bass lines. Not difficult in themselves, but the bass lines are so unique that I think most bassists, including top-notch hired guns (greats like Chuck Rainey, Marcus Miller, and Anthony Jackson), as superb as they played, wouldn't have ever put together a groove/bass line like Walter's. It's difficult to describe how/why his style was so different, but when learning his bass lines--the most iconic being the mysterious (?) bass in "Deacon Blues"--only then could I appreciate his style, his thought process for creating a unique, yet perfectly suited bass line. He carried on with his unique playing when he transitioned to electric six-string guitar: mysterious, sensual, distinctive smooth soloing is Walter's trademark.
I want to hear and see reactions to these groups: Montrose 1. Bad Motor Scooter 2. Space Station #5 Fastway 1. Stand Up 2. Don't Stop the Fight Blues Image 1. Take Me 2. Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey 3. Clean Love 4. Reality Does Not Inspire Ten years after 1. I'd Love To Change The World 2. Love Like a Man Especially Blues Image, such a vigorous mixture
Elton John warned Queen about this point; "When you record a song, ask yourself this; are you prepared to perform this every night for the rest of your life?"
Fagen and Becker were great songwriters and as many do, they "borrowed" ideas from others. Listen to the opening to Horace Silver's Song for My Father then listen to this opening. Something similar happened with their song Gaucho from the album of the same name. Listen to the opening to Keith Jarret's song "Long As You Know You are Living Yours" from his album Belonging, then listen to the opening to Gaucho. Jarrett did, took them to court and won and is now credited with co-writing Gaucho. This song was a big radio hit for them.
Listen to Jethro Tull "We Used To Know" and then The Eagles "Hotel California". Hotel California was written after Tull's song, but there's no denying the similarities are more than coincidence. But Ian Anderson of Tull gives his take in this video: ruclips.net/video/xny0Uj4--tk/видео.html
I bet if Ryan heard this as a small child he'd of loved it. That was the case with me, I was hooked. It wasn't until years later that I learned it was Steely Dan, as my first boyfriend brought the album Aja for us to listen to. It was like a light bulb moment when I realized that that was the group from my childhood that I'd loved so much. Gentleman, please continue to react to Steely Dan. They're such an intellectual band with a huge catalogue. IMO they don't have a bad or even mediocre song.
I absolutely LOVE Donald Fagen’s enunciation on this hit! “Numbah”, Lettah, and that line… “you tell yourself you’re not my kind, but you don’t even know you’re MINE!”🔥🔥🔥🔥. I’ve been to many Steely Dan concerts and I do not recall them ever playing this song! I’m enjoying these Steely Dan reactions🥰
I grew up, listening to Steely Dan. I fucking love this band so much and I mean so much. I love every song they’ve done, but this is my absolute favorite, the musicality lyrics. Everything about this song is genius.
I love the desperation in his voice when he wants to do something with Ricki and says we can stay inside and play games i don't know. He is desperate to be with her.
"You tell yourself you're not my kind But you don't even know your mind" My favorite line. Not my fav SD song, heard way too many times as a kid but that line always stuck with me.
Steely Dan is best know as Your Favorite Band's Favorite Band. People didn't really know t hem, but knew the music, but ask any musician in the 70s - 2000 and that was it.
I was lucky enough to see them on this tour and they did play this. The title track from this album, Preetzel Logic is one of my very favorite tracks by the Dan.
![GEEK TIMË [OFFICIAL AUDIO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ry-6RvkH880/mqdefault.jpg)
Steely Dan. .... Your favorite bands favorite band.
PLEASE play "Don't Take Me Alive," and "Kid Charlemagne."
Yes and yes!
Two of their best!!
Yes do!
this is my favorite steely dan song
I've listened to this song a thousand times and I still pick up on subtle things I've never heard before. The compositions of steely dan are just on another level.
Like peeling an Onion.👏👏👏
My favortite Steely Dan song!
back in the day a joint was also referred to as a number
"Dirty Work", "Don't Take Me Alive", "The Caves of Altamira"!!!!!
That intro always makes me think I' 'cleaning my palette", like when tasting wines or whiskeys.
The opening bass line was a homage to jazz master, Horace Silver's "Song For My Father"
Exactly 😊
Smooth perfection.
The instrument in question is a flapamba, a variant of the marimba.
Thank you 👍..
Back in '74, my dad had gotten a very good job after having retired from the military. About ten years ago, I found a shoe box that had every check receipt he had gotten from that job. The very first check he got had his base pay listed. It was a bit over $5 an hour. In the '70s 15 cents didn't come easily...
That's what is so great about Steely Dan. Every song is different and amazing!
More STEELY DAN plz!😁
I love watching a budding Steely Dan fan, and three at once is just the cherry on top.
From the request box. Still waiting on Billy Squire. Every song on his first album were a huge hit.
This is a great song. Period.
Flashbacks 😂❤
I love how they add a voice to each Chorus. Sometimes it's a harmony, sometimes just an additional voice, (doubling, if you will). Little tricks like this I find to be genius level.
BTW, Ryan will like "The Gaucho." The sax baby!
Steely Dan are musicians' musicians. So glad I grew up with this music. One of my fav bands. Walter Becker, the guitarist, recently passed, but, man, was he talented. So many more songs from this band.
This is Steely Dan's highest charting single, peaking at #4 in 1974.
More hooky than a fishing tackle shop.
The instrument in the beginning that’s sounds like bubbles 🫧 is a “flapamba”. It looks like a xylophone with wooden key heads, and the sound is resonated via wooden bases, or tubes, the mallets are usually tipped soft mallets, or even finger tips. It’s a very rare instrument, and recent in its creation, dating back to only 1960.
It just warms my heart how the younger generation with ears on get how great they were.
Great to see the younger generations keeping this music alive❤
Huge hit in the summer of '74.
The late, great, Wreaking Crew drummer, Jim Gordon.
Sadly, most people have never heard of or know who the Wrecking Crew are and how THEY created 90% of the music we all know and love. Every big hit, be it rock n roll, R&B, pop, country, television theme songs, commercial jingles, they did all them.
It didn't matter how talented a band was, record labels and producers wouldn't let the band members play on the recordings. They hired the Wrecking Crew to come in and make the songs hits.
You don't know how many people were late to work because this song was on the car radio while in the parking lot.
The Rikki in the song is Rikki Ducornet, an older classmate of Fagen's at Bard College. Not only was she an older woman, she was already married. He saw her at a party, tried some lines on her, which she ignored for obvious reasons. She was later amused by the song immortalizing her. She became a published novelist later in life and probably didn't recall their meeting until people kept asking her about the song.
I thought she was the wife of a professor at the college
It the harmonizing in the chorus for me
They are completely original and so versatile ! All their songs sound like Steely Dan but none of their songs sound like the others
Crunchy "Pretzel Logic"...😂
This song is a Time Machine, It's like a stomach punch, then I'm back there.
You guys got me at big crunchy pretzel - I'm all in now 😄
On the same album the track Night by night masterpiece. CAPOLAVORO 🔝🔝ciao 🇮🇹
The incomparable studio drummer, Jim Gordon. R.I.P. July 14, 1945 - March 13, 2023.
A HUGE hit in the summer of 1974. Almost banned from the radio because people thought it was about a joint. This song made me a SD fan for life..
Please keep going with the Dan, you will not regret a moment of it.
Lettah, numbah, bettah.... this is how I knew it was Steely Dan when I was a little kid. As an adult I cannot live without them!!!
reeling in the years if you havent already reacted to it
Another great guitar solo from Jeff "Skunk" Baxter. I think this was his last album with Steely Dan. He went on to join the Doobie Brothers after this.
The Doobies are awesome too
That one of more from Steeley Dan went to the Doobies makes total sense. The two groups have a lot of similarities and cross over.
Don’t tease us with Steely Dan this far in advance!😂❤
I used to have the refrain as my ring tone.
This song brings me back to being 17yrs old. I can smell it, taste it.
Steely Dan is so deep - you will find at least 20 great songs in their catalog. Most reactors love "Peg", so I guess I'll suggest that one for your next Dan Dive.
🔥🔥🔥
How "clean" is that track? Impeccable on the headphones and stood out at 16 and became a FAN.
Don't matter how you spell it, a pretzle is a pretzel is a pretzel is a pretzle .... pretzel logic!
This is country blues and Jazz. There's no one better than Steely Dan I am 64 and grew up with them first hand..The band plays all the genres' of music. It's hard to pin them down..
I'm 64 too!!
I would dispute country.
My favorite Steely Dan song ever!!
That opening sound is a Marimba
I'm a gigging bassist, been doing it for five bands over 30 years, a big portion of set lists in two of them from the SD catalog. Point being that I want to highlight that the bassist for "Ricki" was (RIP) Walter Becker. His "signature" bass playing is marked with innovative and complex bass lines. Not difficult in themselves, but the bass lines are so unique that I think most bassists, including top-notch hired guns (greats like Chuck Rainey, Marcus Miller, and Anthony Jackson), as superb as they played, wouldn't have ever put together a groove/bass line like Walter's. It's difficult to describe how/why his style was so different, but when learning his bass lines--the most iconic being the mysterious (?) bass in "Deacon Blues"--only then could I appreciate his style, his thought process for creating a unique, yet perfectly suited bass line. He carried on with his unique playing when he transitioned to electric six-string guitar: mysterious, sensual, distinctive smooth soloing is Walter's trademark.
I need you to listen to the Bee Gee's. TO MUCH HEAVEN this music is from my times.
I want to hear and see reactions to these groups:
Montrose
1. Bad Motor Scooter
2. Space Station #5
Fastway
1. Stand Up
2. Don't Stop the Fight
Blues Image
1. Take Me
2. Fugue U/Parchman Farm/Wrath Of Daisey
3. Clean Love
4. Reality Does Not Inspire
Ten years after
1. I'd Love To Change The World
2. Love Like a Man
Especially Blues Image, such a vigorous mixture
Marimba is the instrument you’re looking for
Maybe a vibraphone?
@@jasonremy1627 It is a flapamba.
My favorite Steely Dan song ... 8th grade summer, two-week-long girlfriend at the beach, I'll always associate this song with her.
Steely Dan is a third of my top three band catalogues while stranded on an island.
I'm sure he thought this song would be fast because of Phil Collins' "Billy, Don't Lose My Number".
I've heard this song a thousand times and never knew what it was about. Thanks for the lesson.
Elton John warned Queen about this point; "When you record a song, ask yourself this; are you prepared to perform this every night for the rest of your life?"
Panicking! I only have 30 minutes left to get rid of my company before my guys premiere starts😳 Wish me luck🤞😂😎
So damn cool. Thanks
A really fun and overlooked song by Steely Dan is Show Biz Kids. So great. Haitian Divorce too. But Steely Dan’s catalog is truly amazing.
I heard these songs on the radio as a pre teen and they blew my mind now I appreciate the musicianship
This band was led and played by absolute perfectionists. I'm sure you guys can tell.
Great song, definitely on the radio all the time back in the day
The music of my youth. So good… thanks guys
The DAN is your favorite band's favorite band!
Fagen and Becker were great songwriters and as many do, they "borrowed" ideas from others. Listen to the opening to Horace Silver's Song for My Father then listen to this opening. Something similar happened with their song Gaucho from the album of the same name. Listen to the opening to Keith Jarret's song "Long As You Know You are Living Yours" from his album Belonging, then listen to the opening to Gaucho. Jarrett did, took them to court and won and is now credited with co-writing Gaucho. This song was a big radio hit for them.
Listen to Jethro Tull "We Used To Know" and then The Eagles "Hotel California".
Hotel California was written after Tull's song, but there's no denying the similarities are more than coincidence. But Ian Anderson of Tull gives his take in this video:
ruclips.net/video/xny0Uj4--tk/видео.html
The lead guitar was Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, who also played in the Doobie Brothers.
I bet if Ryan heard this as a small child he'd of loved it. That was the case with me, I was hooked. It wasn't until years later that I learned it was Steely Dan, as my first boyfriend brought the album Aja for us to listen to. It was like a light bulb moment when I realized that that was the group from my childhood that I'd loved so much. Gentleman, please continue to react to Steely Dan. They're such an intellectual band with a huge catalogue. IMO they don't have a bad or even mediocre song.
Reeling in the Years got me hooked at 9 years now old! Blew my head apart❤😂
I absolutely LOVE Donald Fagen’s enunciation on this hit! “Numbah”, Lettah, and that line… “you tell yourself you’re not my kind, but you don’t even know you’re MINE!”🔥🔥🔥🔥. I’ve been to many Steely Dan concerts and I do not recall them ever playing this song! I’m enjoying these Steely Dan reactions🥰
So love Steely Dan ❤
The opening rhythms of the song was lovingly taken from jazz musician Horace Silver's Song For My Father.
Peg peg peg peg........
I grew up, listening to Steely Dan. I fucking love this band so much and I mean so much. I love every song they’ve done, but this is my absolute favorite, the musicality lyrics. Everything about this song is genius.
Rikki, holla at a playa!
Great great song , one of the best guitar solos
Skunk Baxter
This song was it😊. I was 10 years of age
A Flapamba - wooden xylophone/vibraphone instrument.
"These pretzels are making me thirsty!"
Love you guys!!
Their best song, their biggest hit and my favorite by them.
The drumming on this track is sublime.
Jim Gordon
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter was the guitarist on this piece............he is SO recognizable and the whole piece is ultra-memorable. LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!
You guys rock, oh man watching these videos, always makes me laugh. :)
Steely is Dan good !!
This is one of those songs where we tell the hosts ...
get ready !
Marimba, probably. Anyhow, teenage drummer learning Zepp, Rush, etc, heard this, there was always more to learn . Love it. Those harmonies.
Way back when, SD listeners were called bougie, wine and cheese snobs. 😲😎
I love the desperation in his voice when he wants to do something with Ricki and says we can stay inside and play games i don't know. He is desperate to be with her.
"You tell yourself you're not my kind
But you don't even know your mind"
My favorite line. Not my fav SD song, heard way too many times as a kid but that line always stuck with me.
New sub! Thanks for the stroll down memory lane! Love from Texas🤠🤠🤠
Pretzel Logic, the title track, is sooooo tasty! It's crunchy and chewy and salty.
The way you all are moving & grooving, heads bopping, is just the way we were doing it back in the day. Classic song.
Yes, indeed 😊
Not the first time I heard Steely Dan, but this song started my love affair with them. That hasn’t changed❤️
Steely Dan is best know as Your Favorite Band's Favorite Band.
People didn't really know t hem, but knew the music, but ask any musician in the 70s - 2000 and that was it.
I was lucky enough to see them on this tour and they did play this. The title track from this album, Preetzel Logic is one of my very favorite tracks by the Dan.
Back then they am. Radio played at over and over, we got burnt out. Radio did that to great songs. But it was nice to hear it again.💃💃🍀🍀
The cover is from New York.
They still have these guys
That is the sound of the 70”s. 1974 I was 10yrs old
THEE GREAT JIM GORDON on DRUMS !!! He was in a league by himself.
Plz do ‘Hey Nineteen’ (their best song imo) ‘Reelin In the Years’ and ‘FM’. These are 3 of their top 5 and you haven’t even hit them yet. 🔥🔥🔥
Sorry, can’t allow you to call Hey 19 their best song unchallenged 😉.
The flapamba (a variant of the marimba) is the instrument in intro
I'm supposed to be doing dishes, but I'm dancing in the kitchen instead. Arguably my favorite Dan song, love the piano and the guitar solo.😊🥰