PRETZEL LOGIC STEELY DAN (reaction)
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- Check out Sight After Dark reacting to "Pretzel Logic" by Steely Dan!
We've reacted to the entire "Pretzel Logic" album, so check out the rest of those reactions as well!
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A time travel saga.
He stepped up on the platform to travel to the past and had on the wrong type of shoes!
A song about time travel... brilliant!! :)
WHAT DO WE WANT!???
TIME TRAVEL!!!
WHEN DO WE WANT IT!???
IT'S IRRELEVANT!!!
Superb lead guitar work by Walter Becker.
Indeed!
Me thinks they over thinks SD too much lol
Like 'Black Friday' and 'Chain Lightning' from 'Katy Lied', the tune 'Pretzel Logic is a Blues w/ altered chord changes. But this one is a minor key Blues. I say the title also alludes to 'twisted logic', despite the 'Time Travel' theme also fitting. I also think they would occasionally disguise some of their own 'real feelings' into fictional, allegorical lyrics, so to speak. On this one I see verses going more or less into stuff they wouldn't really be willing to do, if they could choose, but at the time had no choice and had to submit to.... They did it because that's what it took to make a living in the music industry of the early 1970s...They hated touring back then. They were not into showbizz and TV celebrity culture, they were not into fancy clothes. They were nerdy, bookwormy dudes into beatnik literature and Jazz-R&B-Soul-Pop-Rock music. For sure they wanted to be 'successful' and respected as composers, but neither Donald nor Walter was really 'dying to be a star'...
Love this song. Have had the pleasure of SD performing Pretzel Logic live several times - no one can sit still and the place is always rocking! Donald Fagen has one of the best voices of all-time.
Suggest you check out the Dukes of September tour. Fagen, McDonald and Skaggs are the Dukes. They perform Pretzel Logic with each one taking a turn at the lead vocals. Fagen’s keyboard skills are on full display.
Thanks for the info John, glad you enjoyed!
As a musician I have to say you guys have great ears and make some impressive observations. This is in fact a very cool twist on the blues with the way it switches to major tonalities in the chorus...wasnt expecting you to point that out haha!
Thanks so much Tim! We appreciate your kind words!
Bodishattva, Chain Lightning are other examples of "twisted blues" in SD's catalogue. I love it when they do that.
It’s great seeing a new generation listening to this great music. Great observations 👏🙏
Thanks Jason!
Ok, just watched your other video of "With A Gun". This is my favorite song on this album. So damn catchy.
Such a f
Hard not to love it!
The lyrics are absolutely brilliant!
Great analysis, as always. Love you guys!
Glad you enjoyed! Thank you Charles!
Wurlitzer electric piano.
Concert wrap up song, here. Always gets a big cheer from the SD nuts in the crowd when it begins with that hook.
Would’ve loved to see this live!
@@SightAfterDark
Fagen puts on a big year-end show in NYC every year. Better go to the next one: he’s getting on in years and Becker is already gone.
Man this song takes me back to my young, thank you sooo much for the great memories, love Steely Dan and your channel ❤
Thanks for watching!
@@SightAfterDark ,l've been binge-watching for a while now, love your channel ❤
This is one of my favourite songs of Steely ..straight out blues with the shuffle rhythm..One of the best people to understand time is to read some interviews with Zappa..he explains it is not what ,where or how but when..so it is the perspective of when you look at something and I think this song is more perspective of how one sees something rather then a time travel...you know the electron experiment where two electrons appear..there is only one being seen from two whens...he stanks out that guitar solo at the fade ,,simple in colour but exactly in frequency.
Those Harmonies
love this album, it's my go to at the mo. I got into this album only this year even though I was familiar with many of their songs. I would subscribe to you again if I could
SD's recorded this live a few years back. It's just as good, possibly better. A killer bluesy shuffle with a NYC edge.
Gotta love it
A. Minstrel shows were mainly an 1800s phenomenon as of course was Napoleon.
B. Don’t be fooled by the TV allusion. It’s the narrator trying to explain to someone in the past why he has odd shoes. He’s from an era with tv and shoe commercials. Good luck!
There are records of Minstrel shows lasting until the nineteen seventies in the USA. Can you believe that? The video recorded versions from the 1920’s are so much creepier than the paintings of the 19th century. Check em out if you haven’t seen them! Lol I cringe every time.
Great bass line
It's either a Wurlitzer or a Hohner Pianet. I've owned and played both over the years and am still on the fence. Wurlitzer would have more sustain but it isn't really pushed in this particular song. I've seen video with Fagen playing a Hohner. Both keys would have been out and about around that time. Bragging rights: back in the 70s I paid $150 for each. The pianet was a bit of a beater, but the Wurlitzer was a vintage chipboard which is probably worth real money today. Wish I had them now. If anyone finds a citation, I'd love to know for sure. Best. Leo.
Love the sound of a Wurlitzer! Either way, you can’t go wrong!
Good call there. In the few live videos that exist from the Dan playing live ‘72-‘74 Fagen is playing a Pianet with a few other keyboards setup (an organ of some sort). He and the other key players they used didn’t really start playing Rhodes until Royal Scam I believe and then that was used almost exclusively as the electric piano choice from then on. You can really hear the Pianet on Black Friday and also Everyone’s gone to the Movies
Walter Becker recorded the solo literally one bar at a time.
That’s intense!
A killer groove by the Dan like only the Dan can do. I think they are talking about minstrel shows when they were a black thing and before it was co-opted by white guys. Those minstrel show musicians were the fountainhead of black music in America. In fact most people don't know that the banjo that you see today was a modern version of the primitive hand-made instruments that slaves built from whatever materials they could find when they were brought to this country against their will. Do a search of early folk instruments and you'll see what I'm talking about. This album really makes a bow to African Americans and their contribution to this country's musical legacy (Jazz to be specific). And early music of slaves on plantations was the root of the "Blues" and all that came after.
What deep and amazing history, thanks Squidkid!
If you love this and Night by Night, you will LOVE the funky Royal Scam album!
That one will definitely be next!
The song title basically gives it the "meaning" of it's lyrics. Pretzel logic is used to describe inconsistent, illogical thinking that, once scrutinized, doesn’t stand up. It’s similar to the term illogic. Many of the lyrics fall into the literal meaning of the term "Pretzel Logic". The lyrics and not intended to fall into the category of "linear thinking".
love this song!
Us too!
70s interview they said one of the songs on this album referred to Nazi’s. I think this is it. Pretzel (twisted) Logic. References/clues to Napoleon, the Southland, where did you get those shoes (jackboots), sound just like a record on a phonograph, say the times are changing but I just don’t know, traveling minstrel show is their put-down metaphor for Hitler/Nazis, etc. That’s Becker on solo guitar.
You nailed it all.
It was chain lightning that carried references to Nazis.
@@stevegirardmedia2255 Yes but different album.
Great shuffle
I bought the album decades ago. It wasn't until I got heavily involved in Marxist politics in the '70's and then went back to listen to this song that I understood it. I remember I was cleaning my apt and it was playing in the background and it suddenly hit me what the song is about.
I had done a lot of reading about the rise of fascism in Germany by then.
The song is about the rise of Hitler in the 1920's, early '30's.
*Pretzel Logic--Nazi Germany. Can it happen again? Here?
*Southland--Southern Germany where the Nazis started in the late teens, early '20's.. More rural and traditionally more conservative part of Germany.
*Travelling minstrel show--the recently formed Nazi party going from town to town and farms to hold rallies in the '20's. It was formed in about 1919. Hitler became the head in about 1921.
*I stepped up on the platform, joking, where did you get those shoes--Many Germans did not take the Nazis too seriously in the beginning. (After the Great Depression, 1929, everything changed).
*Napoleon-Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party.
I suspect that part of the inspiration for the song was the excellent movie Cabaret. It came out two yrs. before the album came out. 1972. I highly recommend it. And I am not a big movie person.
Also, Becker and Fagen were voracious readers so it may have come from reading the classic "The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich" by William Shirer (spelling). That book was hugely popular and influential. Used in college courses in the late '60's, early '70's.
Thanks so much for the in depth analysis! We appreciate it!
This is simply your own fabrication/interpretation which may be fine for you, but Fagan himself has stated that it is about time travel.
@@Enigma758
I've heard a number of interviews with Donald about his songs over the past 30+ years. Long ago I noticed that he changes things up a lot.
Got to do "The Royal Scam" next!
It’s on the list!
@@SightAfterDark Yes please, The Royal Scam is my favorite! Brings tears to my eyes watching you listen. I would love to be able to hear all this for the first time. :-))
would love to hear your thoughts on gaucho. my favorite album by my favorite band
ruclips.net/p/PLrQk6HwcCOFetZ257IR0dkOBiKNYxERWk :)
@@SightAfterDark oh snap didn’t see this originally ! bless up
Nice review, some interesting comments. I think this is part of their genre of college boy intellectual journeys into such things as disputed histories, their explorations of jazz of the 20s, 30s and so on and an overlay of modernist existential pathologising and self-criticism. They are posing as cosmic philosophy nerds, they would love to "meet Napoleon" (eg, read more about him) but they didn't have the time, too busy wasting their college and after-college years making music, trying to get that TV show (they didn't really want one, too cool for that) and getting their shoes shined by wisecracking poor guys in the New York they were leaving for LA. The best band of the 1970s but sometimes hard to follow.
Interesting take! Thanks James!
The NY Rock & Soul Revue from the early '90s has a version of this with DF on lead vocals, Michael McD on the stop-time and backing and various other whiz kids (ruclips.net/video/wt2zKrx0iYE/видео.html). I heard that first, but the original cannot be beaten!
Yeah, this song is about time travel (the platform)
Maybe mentioning the song's "blues-shuffle" format as at least as important as the lyrics, which fortunately most of us never studied back in the good old days of actually "listening to music." Watch their video "taxicab confessions Everything Must Go" for their opinion of lyric-analyzing.
Definitely loving the blues shuffle. Thanks for the video suggestion Ron!
This song is literally about time travel. Donald Fagen says it is" "i stepped up on the platform (time trave) the man gave me the news (newspaper with different date) I said you must be joking son where did you get those shoes (different time, weird shoes) "
Definitely makes sense! Can’t believe we missed that
Just so you know, Eric Clapton did not write crossroads. It’s an all-time Robert Johnson song. Check out the folklore. The story goes Robert Johnson went down to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil and an exchange the devil gave him the blues. Good job on the video. You’ve cut down on the interruptions and shown that you understand music. Stay healthy
A well known fact. This version sounds way more like Eric’s version however. Check it out if you haven’t! Eric semi credits himself with having founded The Bee Gees. Hence the joke ☺️
Thanks for watching Dave! appreciate your kind words!
BTW, Steely Dan isn't really a rock group. Or even a group. They are an R&B/jazz fusion group played with rock instruments.
Actually, 'stepped upon the platform" refers to platform refers to platform shoes.
Ahh that makes sense!
People pull their hair out trying to figure out SD lyrics. Sometimes it's challenging. They get criticized for that. My advice? Just enjoy the sounds!
Guys SD lyrics are very cryptic, I wouldn't read a whole lot into them. As far as the minstrel show reference, that has to be taken from some obscure author/poet and doesn't imply any negativity. Last the song is very close in structure to Black Friday, slower but same lick except for the chorus.
Yeah it’s fun to try to analyze, even though we understand we’re probably not even close 😂
Pretzel Logic is about life in an insane asylum.
He's talking about the 1800's because he's fantasizing about the 1800's. But he is living in the present day.
Thanks for watching Christine!
as pretty much always with the Dan, not a note out of place
You can say that again!
Nobody knows
Proving once again that nobody really wants to hear with someone under 50 thinks really.
Thanks for the view Billy SBC!
@@SightAfterDark
Anytime bro! You know I'm here for you!
%^)
Of course music is very subjective, but for me, this is one of their most overrated songs.
It’s right up there in the overrated category with “Night by Night” and “Dirty Work”.
The good news is this song and it’s sound foreshadow the huge step up and forward that they would make on the brilliant Royal Scam/Aja/Gaucho albums, so I look at this as a transitionary song and album for them.