I love Steely Dan. I love the grooves they get into, I love the sarcastic, throwaway lyrics. I know there’s a hell of a lot of brilliant writing and astonishing musicianship going on but I just like the finished songs, the product. I don’t relate to SD emotionally, they don’t ‘speak’ to me, so to speak, their experiences in no way correlate with mine but there’s something escapist and very dark that’s (for me) highly attractive about them. They occupy a unique corner of my musical taste, listening to The Fez or Babylon Sisters is like listening to no other band, I suppose I can’t explain why I like them so much, perhaps that’s one of the reasons I do like them so much. When someone else writes and performs a song as great but insane as My Old School... well it isn’t going to happen.
Stuart Lee is, by a country mile, my favourite ‘comedian’ but then I find that a peculiar epithet to describe him with, his work is more like stream of consciousness monologues, although more interactive with the audience responses than the word monologue would usually suggest. There is a similar snobbery surrounding Stewart Lee as surrounds Steely Dan, the tired old ‘you just don’t get it/them’, of course it’s bôllöcks, and band/comic/anything else is simply about each individual’s interaction with said band/comic/anything else and no one persons interaction is any more valid than anyone else’s but there will always be the I’m right you’re not crowd blathering on, it’s why I don’t get involved in the fretless discussions on here anymore.