Steely Danned

As you can see from the photo above, last night I took a vacation from my problems and went to see Steely Dan at the Beacon Theatre here in scenic New York City. Predictably, the show was crawling with lots of hot, young chicks. There were also a few older dudes with glasses and mustaches. Actually, now that I think about it it was mostly older dudes with glasses and mustaches, most of whom kept drunkenly singing the opening guitar riff to “Reeling in the Years” in between songs in hopes that the band would play their popular hit. Unfortunately for the guys with the glasses and mustaches though, it never happened. Me, I was okay with it.

You might not be able to tell from the photo above, but I totally wanted to bone one of the backup singers for Steely Dan. She was singing and dancing and looking really boneable, which is pretty much what one looks for in a backup singer I guess, and by about a couple songs into the show I was totally sitting there thinking “I totally want to bone that backup singer.” It was this kind of thinking that got me through those times in the show when Steely Dan decided to play a song I didn’t recognize.

Having seen such music veterans such as Barry White (twice), Neil Diamond, and Ozzy Osbourne in concert in the past (for real, this isn’t, like, some ironic sentence or anything), I’ve learned that if an artist is around for over 30 years there is usually a good reason for it and Steely Dan was no different. They were super good and even if you don’t really like Steely Dan you can’t help but think to yourself “You know, these guys are actually super good” at least for a moment before you go back to thinking about how much you want to bone the one backup singer.

An interesting thing about the Steely Dan concert was that most of the audience remained seated throughout the performance. I kind of enjoyed this since I had just eaten a bunch of scallops- something I almost never order- right before the show and was feeling like I might have an incident if I moved around too much. Occasionally, however, a drunk woman or two would get up and dance during one of Steely Dan’s more popular songs and look around the theater with an expression on her face that seemed to suggest “I am totally dancing to Steely Dan and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.” Usually the people behind her would get all mad after a few seconds and have looks on their faces that seemed to suggest “How the hell am I supposed to see Steely Dan when they start playing ‘Reeling in the Years’ right after this? Sit down you drunk bitch or I’ll punch your husband right in his tweed blazer!” Eventually though Steely Dan would start playing some song that was never on the radio and the drunk lady would sit down and everything would be okay with everybody except for the fact that Steely Dan wasn’t playing “Reeling in the Years.” I was okay with that since I was really busy thinking about how much I wanted to bone the one backup singer and couldn’t really get bogged down about Steely Dan’s setlist as I had all sorts of imaginary boning to do throughout the show and that is really enough to keep one man busy.

Another interesting thing about the Steely Dan show is how much Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (the Steely Dan guys) looked like dentists who shop at Sam Ash on the weekend. Then again I guess they always kind of looked like that. Still, they rocked it and that’s what really matters in the end. Also, they are good at hiring highly boneable backup singers so there’s that too.

Dave Hill