There Must Be Some Kind Of Mistake

The Mojo Interview. REPRINTED FROM MOJO. THE RETURN OF STEELY DAN. Once upon a time, they were the odd couple in rock. They wrote songs that featured knuckle knotting chords and brain twisting lyrics. There Must Be Some Kind Of Mistake' title='There Must Be Some Kind Of Mistake' />They welded jazz and rock into an alloy so smooth and shiny it was impossible to tell where the one ended and the other began. They gave up on live performance a decade before it became commonplace. They sneered at the world from a position of bohemian priority so rarefied it was hard to tell exactly where it was situated. They routinely ran rings around interviews. They havent changed. Separately, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker can be charming, witty, imaginative, accommodating, the most fulsome of interviewees. But put them in a room together and something else takes over the synergy that brought forth Steely Dan still operates its acid magic on the duo. Images/Content-images/Blog-images/2015/Richardoopstf.JPG?la=en&h=360&w=654&hash=CE6D397CC83C5271EF2CFA08E2AC1EE444B644EA' alt='There Must Be Some Kind Of Mistake' title='There Must Be Some Kind Of Mistake' />Diabetes Destroyer Is This Some Kind Of Fraud The 3 Step Trick that Reverses Diabetes Permanently in As Little as 11 Days. DIABETES DESTROYER IS THIS. Ask them a question any question and theyll bat it around for a few moments, testing it for comic potential, before volleying it back over the net, largely unanswered. Faced with the prospect of an in depth interview to promote their new album, Alive in America, they immediately put up the psychic barriers. Walter Becker Weve been doing these interviews now all week. Because its a live album with all these old songs on it, interviewers have used that as a pretext to ask questions about things that happened years and years ago. So weve rehashed things that we barely remember now to a point where were becoming increasingly alienated from anything that could be said to resemble the truth. Donald Fagen So youve come on the scene at the perfect moment. MOJO Stylised lies is exactly what Im after. Fagen We call them Stylies, for short. Becker I think the important thing is to try and stay in the present and not have any painful sorties into the distant past. If you find yourself wanting to ask something about the Brill Building, or questions like Why did you decide to go out on the road again after 1. I think weve heard that one a few times too many, havent we Fagen See, you dont even have to ask any questionsMOJO Well, I think thats the first four pages of my questions gone. Becker Thereve been journalists in here all week that have already gotten better answers to these questions than we could possibly give you, due to repetition. Maybe Gail a PR could hook you up with one of those guys, and you could just download what they got MOJO On the other hand, your answers would be more finely honed now, where before they would have been rough drafts. A Priori and A Posteriori. The terms a priori and a posteriori are used primarily to denote the foundations upon which a proposition is known. In Mormonism, the endowment is an ordinance ceremony designed to prepare participants to become kings, queens, priests, and priestesses in the afterlife. Altar IbnLaAhads Codex was a personal journal written by the Master Assassin Altar. I Screen Recorder V7.0.1.432-Bean. Quartz at Work is a guide to being a better manager, building a career, and navigating the modern workplace. We serve global business professionals and the next. Becker Thus putting the lie to the concept that you cant polish a turd MOJO Youve got a new, or newish, live album coming out. Fagen Thats newish in the sense of distinguishing Jew from Jewish, is it Becker This is beginning to remind me of the joke where the guy from Oklahoma goes up to a New York cabbie and says, Excuse me, could you tell me how I can get to Times Square, or should I just go fuck myselfMOJO Indeed. October 2006 In the Q A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing there gaping for a few seconds I realized this was kind of. Also see SEP, EB, IEP, and ELC. Eratosthenes 276197 BCE African mathematician who discovered a method for identifying prime numbers and calculated the. REPRINTED FROM MOJO. October 1995. THE RETURN OF STEELY DAN. Once upon a time, they were the odd couple in rock. They wrote songs that featured knuckleknotting. Has anyone ever suggested you might be difficult to interview Becker Yeah, that has been suggested, and as I say, it has to do with overload. Yknow the horror, the horror Fagen The guys who came round Monday thought we were, like, sweethearts. But the last couple of days, no. Becker Also, we had to film our EPK Electronic Press Kit over two days. MOJO Oh. And what kind of stuff was in that Becker Shit. Utter shit. It as kind of like another rehash of the same questions. Fagen. that we hired someone ourselves to ask Becker Theyd ask us these things, then wed decide maybe we should do it indoors, and theyd ask us again, then we actually went to the Brill Building So, here we are at the Brill Building. Fagen At one point the director wanted us to read some stuff as we were walking down some stairs, and he said, Say this as though its stuff the record company is making you say, and try to say it with a mocking tone. Assuming that everything wed said previous to that wasnt in a mocking tone. MOJO Have you ever thought you might be in the wrong business Becker Yes, through most of the 8. MOJO Rock music is at least partly about communication, after all. Becker Not in our case its not. Fagen Actually, our new album is going to be called Stand Up Rock n Roll. SO HERE WE ARE AT THE BRILL BUILDING, ITS THE LATE 6. S AND THESEtwo sullen, nondescript youths, fresh out of college, are hustling their songs around the various music publishers in the building. One has wire rimmed spectacles, shoulder length blond hair, and looks a bit like River Phoenix. The other is thin to the point of emaciation. They troop into an office. The thin one sits at the office piano and opens an exercise book of songs. Together, they sing on for the man behind the desk. Its about androids discovering theyre alive, a bit like in that Philip K. Dick book. They sing another. Its about Charlie Parker, and is full of odd, show offy changes. A third, a put down of some place called Barry Town, makes good use of the spiteful undertone in the thin ones voice, but is too nasty. A fourth appears to be about a dildo it even mentions that Japanese one from the William Burroughs book. The man behind the desk sits there, nonplussed. What are these two kids thinking of No one wants to hear songs like this. Do they They troop out of the office, up the stairs and into another office. This was before cassettes, so we would just play and sing, explains Fagen. We met a lot of people in the Brill Building. We met Jerry Leiber, which was great, because he was an idol of ours and there were still some other great songwriters there, like Jeff Barry. We knew about the scene and we were into the craft of the thing. We wanted to become great songwriters. It was almost over then, but at 1. Broadway there were still some things happening. The Lovin Spoonful. Buddah Records had an office there, and there was a lot of one shot soul stuff coming out of there. I dont think we were trying to imitate any of the top songwriters, says Becker, except, in a roundabout way the very arty songs But Bacharach had written for Dionne Warwick. Those were an immense source of inspiration for us, but we werent trying to copy them his pieces had these formal, Stravinskyesque angularities that were reminiscent of 2. We were impressed by how far out he was able to get and still make it sound sort of like pop music. At one point our demo was played for Leiber Stoller, who had an office upstairs. Jerry Leibers comment was that it reminded him of some German art songs brought into the contemporary style. We subsequently learned that it was better to have our songs pass a pop songs and then have whatever else we wanted in them afterwards. Fagen, a jazz fan from Passaic, New Jersey, had already put in a good few years developing an anti social personality when he met Becker at Bard College. Influenced by the hipster humour of stand ups and monologuists like Lenny Bruce and Gene Shepard, and by Paul Krassners magazine The Realists, Fagen hated the New Jersey suburbia, and would take off to Manhattan on the weekends to see the likes of Monk, Rollins, Miles, and Mingus at Greenwich Village clubs like the Village Vanguard. When he was bought his first piano at the age of 1. Red Garland, from Miles Daviss great Quintet. At Bard, Fagen studied literature, graduating in 1.