Jerk Music Critic: Steely Dan, Katy Lied

Being the glittering cosmopolitan and erudite jerk that I am, I foolishly believed that Fagenbecker might have been trying to make a German pun or something with the title ("Katy Lied" = "Katy Song," get it? nein? well, ich kann dich nicht riechen, so there), but I suppose I expect too much from a band that continues to bill itself as an exceptionally durable object of the bedroom. (In the reissue liner notes, instead of a studious retrospective study of its production or interesting notes about the tour, Beckerfagen instead leads off with a complaint about the propensity of the backup singers to boink the roadies instead of them. So there.) In spite of all their frustrated lechery, "Katy Lied" at least begins in top jazz-rock fusion form, starting off strong with the hep and rhythmic "Black Friday" and then the layered smooth contrast of "Bad Sneakers." Around about "Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More," though, the jazz starts to interfere with the rock, making compulsively produced but somewhat inaccessible tracks like "Doctor Wu" (on which Katy does not tell the truth), and then sneaking in more furtive R-rated references with "Everyone's Gone To The Movies," but you know, those movies, wink wink nudge nudge, so ready to make their unseen companion come of age that I could swear the jacket got slobbered on in the studio. I'm also not sure what to do with an album that not only has a song about gold teeth, but continues it from a song two albums prior. "Chain Lightning"'s dead-on blues and the pensive "Any World" somewhat rescue the second half, but it ends on the baffling "Throw Back The Little Ones," another exercise in wondering what socially unacceptable subtext Fabeckgener is sneaking in ("throw back the little ones"? "pan fry the big ones"? "gently squeeze them"??), made more disordered by their suspect choices of time signature and the Zappa-esque bridge. I'm not sure if I just have too large a stick in my butt to really enjoy this album, and if so isn't the band name a terrible coincidence, but must their work always make me weather the conflict of the puerile and the sophisticated when I listen to it? (Content: drug and sexual references.)

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Express Yourself

The Jerk Music Critic is a collection of amateur music reviews I wrote largely non-professionally between the 1990s and today. Some of these reviews are contemporary and some are retrospective, and a few are rather dated, but all are intended to be free-standing and permanent records of my completely worthless musical opinion. They are presented in no particular order and "new" reviews that occur may actually be simply prior ones I've only now transcribed. Older reviews have been edited to hopefully remove inaccuracies later revealed, as well as add brief content advisories (see "Smash the PMRC") and, where reissues exist with different tracks, brief commentaries on these later additions (the actual star review was not altered).

If you're looking for a specific artist, or just interested to see what I really liked (or really didn't), "When I Break Down" indexes reviews by artist and by number of stars awarded (see "Star Chart" for an explanation).

As we move deeper into the Internet music age where the album format might seem hopelessly antiquated, there is still some artistic value in the LP to those artists who still take advantage of it, and some of these recordings can only be properly appreciated in that context. I hope you enjoy these reviews and recommendations, and don't take them too seriously. — Cameron Kaiser

Star Chart

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
An instant classic. Substantially advances/d the state of the art, either technologically, stylistically, or (preferentially) both, and is outstanding music besides. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟
A excellent album. Nearly every song is a gem; nearly every piece is a winner. Falls short of 5 stars for want of that certain special something, but the difference is in impact, not in musical quality. Buy it.

🌟🌟🌟
Solid. Mostly good songs with a few clinkers. Salvageable with a good playlist. Buy it cheap.

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Mixed. Some good songs stand out, but not enough to make it listenable as a whole. Buy the good songs on iTunes.

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Bad. One or two tracks of even decent quality. Buy the good songs cheap on iTunes.

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How did this get released?

Smash the PMRC

I don't advocate for censorship or unnuanced black and white stickers, but I do advocate for parents being able to raise kids in the way they see fit, which might include introducing albums of controversial yet artistic merit at a point in their child's life when they can better appreciate it. The content summaries are intended to be a very general guide, reflective of only my own personal sensibilities and mine alone, and do not substitute in any way for a parent actually sitting down and listening to the album themselves. If you excessively rely on my content advisories, then I'm the one raising your kid, and you really don't want that.