| Steely Dan – Rikki Don't Lose That Number Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Fagen has said that "Rikki" is one of the few 'Dan songs that is just as it appears: a guy is begging some girl he likes to take his phone number. No double meaning here. There have been rumors that the wife of a professor at Bard College, where Fagen and Becker went, was named Rikki, and one of the guys fell for her. |
|
| Steely Dan – Peg Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Some of the best bass ever is here, on "Peg." Three cheers to Chuck Rainey! :>) As to the actual lyrics, this song seems almost obviously to be about a guy seeing his old lover in a movie, most likely a porn flick, as things that are "inappropriate" are often called "blue." Also, I believe porn flicks were called "foreign" at one point in time. |
|
| Donald Fagen – Morph the Cat Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
"Morph the Cat" has political overtones. Think about it. Fagen is a NYC'er, who was hit hard by 9/11. But he's far from a Bush fan. I read somewhere that originally Morph was a good guy, a guy who creeps into NYC and helps them to be able to forget 9/11, to forget terror and agony and death, for a while. But when Fagen was writing this, Morph automatically took on a sinister edge--becoming, as Arbiter suggests, a brain-washer. To me, "Morph" is a sinister little song about escapism, brainwashing, etc. I think it also takes a bit of a parody on the idea of "the Rapture." :>) |
|
| Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
"Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims and strap your hands across my engines." Ahhhhh.....Were it that I could, Bruuuuuce! Awesome song. |
|
| Steely Dan – Josie Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This song always makes me laugh, and I'm not sure why. :>) Josie seems to be the local "go-to girl" for fun--the gal you go to for, among other various illicit acts, sex. I don't think Josie is actually Catholic, but she's so fervent and wild and generally intense that she may act like a pious Roman Catholic deep in prayer. She sounds like a capricious young lady, which is why she is at both once your best friend and your worst enemy. I heard one person speculating that Josie is a wild child sent away to a convent, or some such thing, for "reform," and though she continues to live a wild life when she comes home during the summer or whatever, part of her is guilty, and so she prays fervently even as she sleeps with every guy in town, loiters around the town center at midnight, whatever. This theory definitely has its merits, and its irony would certainly make it trademark 'Dan. |
|
| Steely Dan – Razor Boy Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I agree with CuteSparkina's assessment, though this song, to me, also has some drug overtones. I know many people see the "razor boy" as the "grim reaper" of narcotic addiction. Whatever it is, this is CTE's best song. :>) |
|
| Steely Dan – Time Out of Mind Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
No, chasing the dragon is definitely heroin: you heat up the stuff, until it turns into a kind of gel which wriggles about like a dragon. When you are "chasing" this dragon, you are trying to scoop it up in order to ingest it through the mouth. Basically it's getting heroin without having to take it intravenously--it's making heroin a "solid." |
|
| Steely Dan – Dirty Work Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Quite obviously this is a gorgeous bit about a "back-door man" who is aware every moment of how he is being used, and yet submits to this strange woman's every will. | |
| Steely Dan – Do It Again Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
This is a song about addiction in all forms--addiction to killing/general craziness and overreaction with a gun, addiction to unhealthy love affairs, and addiction to gambling, respectively. "The vicious cycle of addiction" is an excellent phrase, saucytango. I agree. |
|
| Steely Dan – Deacon Blues Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
To me, this is partly autobiographical for Fagen/Becker. It is literal in that I think it isabout a guy who wants to be a jazzman, and who has very naive standards about what his new, twisted, dangerous life will entail. He becomes a kind of bohemian, a "loser," and because the University of Alabama was the premier football team at this time, he makes a sardonic reference to it in the context of it being a winner. "Hey," he seems to be saying, "if UoA can have a nickname, and all, why can't I, Mr. Everyman, have a nickname, too?" |
|
| Steely Dan – Aja Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
I think this song is both parody and a delusional raving. To me, "Aja" is a person who represents the continent of Asia as the narrator sees it. I think that the narrator is some kind of veteran, probably from 'Nam, who has PTSS or some other conflict-related condition and has been placed in an mental instution "on the hill." Obviously "they just don't care," since it's a place full of raving lunatics. And quite obviously, once you are committed, there is "no return." In this insane place, our narrator falls to daydreaming about his time spent in Asia, specifically about a woman there whom he loved and whom he calls "Aja." It's important here to note that in some cultures, people used to be paid a small amount--a "dime"--to dance with people they wouldn't choose normally. "Dime-dancing," to me, means doing one's duty, going ahead even when you don't particularly want to, because you feel some compulsion to do so. So in his daydreams, the narrator tells this vision from his past that when his "dime-dancing" has been completed--when he's finished doing everything he has to do, whatever that might be at an institution--he will run to her and be with her, since she is what he clings to to keep him relatively sane. "Double helix in the sky tonight/Throw out the hardware, let's do it right" therefore becomes his longing to have sex with Aja and conceive a child--he wants to create DNA (which is shaped like a "double helix"), so to do so, he needs to get rid of all the sex toys and whatever and really get back to basics. This song is truly crazy, no matter what interpretation you give it, but because AJA is such a dark album, and this is the title song, I think that "Aja" must be the epitome of dark, sadistic, twisted, strange craziness. :>) |
|
| Steely Dan – Dr Wu Lyrics | 17 years ago |
|
Like HexKaster said, this song is about heroin abuse. Fagen has said in many interviews online, however, that while heroin abuse is a major part of this song, the FOCUS of the song is on the "love-triangle" between the narrator, "Katy," and "Doctor Wu." I think that it is "Doctor Wu," not "Katy," who is heroin personified. This may seem weird, but stick it out with me. I see this song as being about an addict, the narrator, who is really down on his luck, really poor, a big bum off his friends ("just when I'd spent the last piaster I could borrow") in order to finance his addiction. Then he meets Katy, whom he believes will help him through this time, maybe get him clean, whatever. He hangs out with Katy, and they "sing that stupid song"--probably here that means telling themselves over and over again how everything is going to be okay. They're trying to use a little positive reinforcement, or brainwashing, however you see it. :>) But even then things don't seem right, somehow, so he gets to talking to his dope, his heroin, who, as I said, is "Doctor Wu." The doctor is his old buddy, so the narrator is just checking in, making sure he's still there, still the same old "ordinary" cat as before. Something happens to our narrator while he's talking to Doctor Wu. Sometime during that astounding alto sax solo, Katy has "left" him. It's obvious--he's looking for her everywhere, after all, all through the slums ("Biscayne Bay"), looking for that "song," that bit of reinforcement/brainwashing they gave one another. When he finds her, he finds that she's been lying. She's been a two-timer. She's been betraying him. He finds "Doctor Wu" (dope) in Katy's eyes. In her attempts to be our poor narrator's angel, his therapist, Katy has become an addict herself. So it's all over from there, obviously. The 'Dan love miserable endings, and this is one of their rawest. Katy was just a two-timing little thing after all. She was going to help the narrator, but she got caught "cheating" on him with his own "lover." It really is a "love-dope triangle," as Fagen put it in an interview. So the end, therefore, is just the narrator talking to his heroin once more, after he realizes what has happened to Katy. In the first chorus, he questions the heroin (and, through the heroin, himself), wondering whether things are as bad, as crazy as they seem. In the second chorus, he confirms that things ARE as bad as he thought, and that Katy has finally gotten to Doctor Wu, taken him in, become a fellow slave of addiction. Just my *long* opinion, based on what I've read of what Fagen has said on the song. What makes this song so strange to deal with is the lack of a clear direction on who "you" is. Sometimes the narrator is talking to Katy, and sometimes he's talking to heroin and to his heroin-laden self. He's just another 'Dan protagonist who's been tricked, is all.:>) |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.