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Friday, August 18, 2006
Are you really just a shadow of a man that I once knew? … have you done all you can do?
Steely Dan open letter to Wes Anderson:
... You may have heard that we have recently made it our personal project and goal to deliver a certain actor of no small importance to your past and present work from a downward spiral of moral turpitude from which it seemed there might be no escape. We are delighted to report that, with the news of Mr. ________’s participation in your new film (which we understand to be entitled, indeed, charmingly, “Darjeeling Limited”), our efforts have been repaid, and How.
This unqualified victory has inspired us to address a more serious matter. Let’s put our cards on the table - surely, we are not the first to tell you that your career is suffering from a malaise. Fortunately, inasmuch as it is a malaise distinctly different than that of Mr.______ , and to the extent that you have not become so completely alienated from the intellectual and moral wellsprings of your own creativity, we are hoping that we - yours truly, Donald and Walter - may successfully “intervene” at this point in time and be of some use to you in your latest, and, potentially, greatest, endeavor.
Again, an artist of your stripe could never be guilty of the same sort of willing harlotry that befalls so many bright young men who take their aspirations to Hollywood and their talent for granted. You have failed or threatened to fail in a far more interesting and morally uncompromised way (assuming for a moment that self-imitation and a modality dangerously close to mawkishness are not moral failings, but rather symptoms of a profound sickness of the soul.)
Let’s begin with a quick review of your career so far, as it is known to us and your fans and wellwishers in general ...
[hat tip: my lovely wife]
Comments
I like Steely Dan but I don’t think Wes Anderson is in a slump and Anderson is good at mining for his own quirky music. His films do come of as having the same 60’s and 70’s wood paneled interior but they are interesting and fun. He’s a young guy, give him a break. Maybe he is a one trick pony at this point. But, hey, it’s better than being a trickless pony.
The Squid and The Whale, Wes and P.T Anderson, the deluge of Americana art-house (Thumbsucker,Junebug, Little Miss Sunshine, etc., etc.) These films could not be more tediously boring. The same wan sensibility envelops them. This aesthetic and emotional lethargy meme is suffering diminishing returns. It’s emo for grown man.
I guess it’s good that they’re approaching it with a sense of self-deprecating humour, but it’s still a little weird and sad to see the Steely Dan guys trying to resuscitate their fame with open letters to famous-er people.
That’s pretty clearly not the intention. Early intenet adopters, they’ve been posting similar writings since the mid-90s.
Also, there’s no way that Anderson’s Q score is higher than theirs. You’re as wrong as it’s possible for a human being to be.
About the probable intent of the writings, I stand corrected. About Anderson and Steely Dan’s relative “Q scores” I’m not so sure, but I won’t press the point.
“we fucking opened for Roger McGuinn in the seventies, so all that “jingle-jangle morning” shit is no big thrill for us, OK?”
Heh. Any schmoes who dig Bunuel and Fellini, while detesting the likes of Mark Devosbaugh and Roger McGuinn, can’t be all that bad. But they do tend to overlook all the rest of the gents who had a hand in their music, be it Wayne Shorter (on Aja) or Denny Dias (Do it Again, etc.)
Viva Citizen Steely Dan
I felt entertained watching Rushmore and Bottle Rocket. Royal Tenebaums was enjoyable. Sure you can poke holes in these movies but at least he is doing something interesting. It’s a distinct kind of pretentious picture book universe, the same one in each movie. But its fun to see Gene Hackman or Bill Murray acting in that universe and maybe you will hear some cool music or some great sets and costumes. It’s not like Steely Dan has moved away its Jazz Rock comfort zone. Maybe Anderson likes quirky universe he created and wants to hang out there a bit more. Perhaps my expectations are too low. But I will save the full measure of movie snobbery for movies that deserve it, like Failure to Launch. Every single copy of that DVD should be destroyed.
I don’t think Wes Anderson should go the opposite direction and make a sword and sandal epic just yet. I am sure Jason Schwartzman in a toga is a great idea. Then again…
Sorry a typo correction. I am “not” sure Jason Schwartzman in a toga is a good idea.
However Bill Murray might just work for Wes in a retelling of the battle of Thermopylae.
Can Steely Dan really be dishing out aesthetic advice? Their pursuit of perfection led them to Yacht Rock. (Google Yacht Rock and get ready to laugh yer ass off.)
And are we really to be impressed that they opened up for McGuinn in the 70s? That’s like saying, “I played alto sax on David Bowie’s *Never Let Me Down” LP.” Bros. Dan, your hipster, “we were there first” attitude has been hilariously lampooned by LCD Soundsystem on “Losing My Edge,” so take your glassy, coke-nose productions elsewhere. (Ever wonder why so many 70s albums have horrible production? Snort a bunch of coke and put on the headphones, and you’ll see why glassy doesn’t always sound brittle.)
Luther, the comment about McGuin is intended to be highly ironical, as I’d falsely imagined would have been impossible to mistake. You should read some of the other letters they’ve posted to get some context.
S. Dan horrible production? I don’t think so. Listen to Josey and the best cuts off of Aja (or Royal Scam): the Dan were producing more cool, complex and innovative musick than about any US/Brit rock or pop of the time (tho Keith Emerson doing “Pictures of an Exhibiton” has a certain charm for some). Apart from a handful of ECM musicians of the time (Jarrett or Corea, Pat Metheny), or maybe a few fusiony riffs of Zappa and pals, SD was about as close to jazz as American pop. music of the time came: and in some ways preferable to all the free-jazz and funk of the 70s and 80s (as well as to the endless pop/rock/-punk hype)--and rather preferable to the John Cage type of art noise of the era. Plus Walt and Don got lots of lit. cred. as most who know the real “beat” derivation of the name “Steely Dan” realized years ago:
Fagen and Becker decided to name the band “Steely Dan” after a steam-powered dildo in the William Burroughs novel Naked Lunch, a nod to the two being avid readers of 1950’s “Beat” literature. Fagen once explained, “We just wanted to give the band a little more thrust than most other bands.” Fagen and Becker were introduced to Burroughs by a magazine interviewer and had a cordial tête-a-tête, although Burroughs later confided that he was less impressed with their artistry than they were with his. In the excerpt of Naked Lunch in which Steely Dan is introduced to readers, the song “East St. Louis Toodle-oo” is playing.
Not bad: a steam-powered dildo now playing rock-jazz for countless soccer mommies in the supermarkets of Amerika. Blessed be Osiris.....
I’m with Chesterton on this. I’ve had to defend my love of Steely Dan to many a friend – and that includes hipster music snobs who ought to know better. Katie Lied, Aja, Countdown to Ecstasy — all great. Sure, I could do without “Reelin’ in the Years” and “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number.” But believe me when I tell you that the sensibility of Steely Dan is far removed from the insipid, pastel-colored yacht rock Luther mentions above. Give “Deacon Blues” a listen—sure it initially sounds like the sonic equivalent of bad ’80s mustache, what with the jazzy arrangement and production sheen. What you have to realize though is that that professionalized, plastic sound is all in the service of capturing the coldest, most nihilistic music ever to crack the charts. The Steely Dan aesthetic is all about shitting on the stuff that rock and pop music is supposed to communicate normally - immediacy, warmth, authenticity. Instead of fist-pumping sincerity, you get irony, sneers, sunglasses and enough coke to numb whatever emotions get in the way of writing bleak songs with killer drum solos and complicated arrangements. With all that said, next to Steely Dan’s music, Anderson’s movies, with their easy irony and color-coded schematics, seem especially lightweight and precious to me - and I write that as a fan of his stuff.
Snort a bunch of coke and put on the headphones
Not such a bad idea, but, man, you do the pair an injustice: maybe a few lines at Happy Hour, but I wager they were, back in the day, a bit closer to the real Beat Aesthetique: i.e. Opiates. “Tonight when we chase the Dragon...”
William Gibson has written some positive things about SD--Mr. Dan-- as well (google ‘er)
Jonathan, I assumed the reference to McGuinn was ironic, but as with so much SD-related commentary, it’s irony with no clear purpose or direction. Are they ironic about being proud about opening for 70s McGuinn, or are they ironic about their “been-there-done-that” hipster attitude about jangly psych pop? As with so much hipster rockism today, SD’s irony is all about it both ways: “We kick Wes in the ass about being a new kid on the block, but all in good fun, of course, we wouldn’t want to have sincere attitudes about art, except that we have sincere attitudes about art and Wes doesn’t hold up to our ideals, but our ideals are rather ironic, so no worry, but did we mention that we were at the first Byrds concert and Wes wasn’t even born yet, so we have authenticity, but authenticity is so silly, but we have it, but not.”
William, SD’s relationship to jazz is precisely what bothers me about them. It’s the irony again: well-packaged smooth jazz for people who realize that well-packaged smooth jazz is for people we don’t like, but we like well-packaged smooth jazz, so we’ll play cold, distant music and make fun of cold, distant people who like cold, distant music without realizing how wrong it is to like cold, distant music (unless it’s us, because we know what’s really likeable about cold, distant music).
And I’m not sure I include the ECM crowd under “ the best jazz of the 70s.” Jarrett is a great performer, Metheny is ridiculous (especially when we tries to prove his “out” authenticity with Coleman or Bailey), and so much of that Euro-jazz crowd sounds like a reaction to the challenging jazz that was burning up Britain and Germany and America: the AACM, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brotzman, Steve Lacy, ROVA, 70s Miles Davis, etc.
And don’t get me started on the “lit cred” aspect. I’m so sick of defenses of pop music that assume that knowledge of literature somehow elevates, rather than bogs down, the pop. Walter Pater was right: all art aspires to the conditions of music. But today, all art should aspire to the conditions of pop music. Literature needs more pop, not the other way around. Dylan was *not* a poet, and thank God for that. All those people who think pop needs high art justification (or ironic distance) need to reverse their thinking: Updike needs more T.Rex, while T.Rex needs no Updike (and T.Rex certainly needs no Mussorgsky or Wagner or any of the other prog pretensions).
Which gets me to SD’s 70s peers, who I much prefer: Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, David Bowie, T.Rex, Roxy Music, The Stooges, The New York Dolls, Can, Neu!, Kraftwerk, King Sunny Ade, Fela, the Jamaican sound systems from Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites” to Althea & Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking,” Stax Records, Georgio Morodor, Donna Summer, Judee Sill, Tom Waits, Parliament/Funkadelic, etc.
Ultimately, I’ll take Wes Anderson, whose films thematize the ways in which irony is just a childish response to the fear of sentiment and sympathy, to SD’s childish fear of sentiment and sympathy.
Referring to Steely Dan’s product as “smooth jazz” is about like calling Captain Beefheart’s complex, eccentric lyrics and music “blues.” Really, sir, I am not up to some long-winded, vaguely marxist or Baudrillardian “aesthetics of authenticity” type of chat, but one aspect of the Dan’s appeal, along with the irony (a concept few if any rock bands ever really understood), is the low-key, occasionally snide, even cynical approach: while agreeing that one, yes, does encounter some schmaltz in the Dan’s oeuvre (though even something pop. like “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number” was quite immaculately-crafted and above 95% of most radio noise), there is a lot of “authentic” and even moving music, especially on the first 2 albums: I find Countdown to Ecstasy as a whole quite more subtle and powerful than about any rock music before or since. And there is some jazz, or at least a type of Ellington-meets-Henry Mancini type of rock-jass on CTE (whether Gold Teeth, King of the World [nealy PK Dick-like narrative as well], Bodhisattva, Boston Rag, etc.) that makes the Beatless or R n B or David Bowie sound like a Bowery talent-nite in comparison...It may have become a bit formulaic by Aja, but the over-produced, druggy studio-sound and the loungy chromaticism has a sort of the cyber-noir appeal as well: the best cuts on Aja seem like a soundtrack to the Blade Runner LA yet to arrive, high-tech tango for a later-day Raymond Chandler- on-heroin film that was never made…
Luther: “Literature needs more pop, not the other way around.”-I’ve been thinking about this same idea for a long while and I think this is a true statement.
While I enjoyed Philip Roth’s latest novel Everyman I would be a liar if I said the last two Flaming Lips albums did not stick with me, inspire me, or move me more than Everyman.
Yeah, Christopher, if a novel could capture late 70s NY music, from disco to Latin dance to hip hop to punk to no wave to loft jazz, we might have a halfway relevant novel. The key is not to *set* the novel in that scene, but draw from the energies.
I’ve been planning a high school novel that will gorge itself on girl group sounds and rockabilly. It’s called *Fascist High!*, and I picture it as Kathy Acker with heart. And in it I’ll answer the age-old question: why do students need permission to have a piss? What kind of social control are we talking about here?
Luther,
If a Flaming Lips album were transformed into a novel it would be a pretty stupid novel. But, when novelist channels the energies of pop music I don’t think this is a bad thing.
I also thought about this idea of putting the immediacy of rock music into literature. I wanted to write a coming of age rock star novel that had a cover title scrawled like a mix tape. Each chapter was a “track” in the overall “demo tape” format of the novel. The chapters would be quick and to the point and not overstay its welcome, like an AC/DC song. But it lost steam after a while after I tried to write the lyrics for the protagonist’s album and they were pretty silly and I felt old.
Joyce tapped the energy of music so you would be in good company. Good luck with your novel.
Steely Dan did emit its fair share of “kipple”; but less than most rock or pop hucksters and hustlers emitted. What music (or text) is not “kipple” (PK Dick’s term for rubbish, debris, disorder etc.), however, if listened to enough (or read)? Or what makes some music--say Charlie Parker--seem non-kipplish, and others--say, the Beatles or AC/DC--pretty kipplish? This is sort of obvious to some, perhaps (and “obviousness” itself is an ingredient of kipple). Harmonies are used up, as are rhythms or motifs: Bach becomes sort of dull rather quickly, tho a lot less quickly than most pop: and many would agree that has to do with complexity of some sort, but not mere complexity. Steely Dan’s music IS more complex than that of David Bowie’s. Stravinsky ‘s musical domain is far wider than that of Eric Clapton. But most humans seem to like a constrained musical domain, except those fortunate to reside in like Ivy League college towns. Popular culture wants the old diatonic, major/minor hymn harmonies; except for the sort of noir chromaticism that itself becomes a cliche, dissonance and atonality rarely makes it out of like symphony halls.
So without getting Adornoish about it, what is or what isn’t acceptable complexity? I suspect most music students now find a Debussy or Stravinsky predictable (and the same might might apply to what was known as avant-garde literature of a few decades past). Art is to be consumed, and without any real criteria (other than that, certain complex forms [harmonies, melodies, rhythms, etc.] seem to provide more gratification than simpler forms) there are no good reasons for saying any art is superior to any other art. I do think such reasons exist--that some music (say Debussy’s La Mer) is quite superior to other music--say the Beatles. But who could describe not to say prove that? Maybe La Mer makes plants grow better than does some McCartney ditty.
I followed Luther’s advise and watched most of an episode of Yacht Rock. I nearly smiled twice, but my ass is still firmly attached.