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Bad Sneakers
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And a couple of triangle beers, lamping with security at VIP parking with a transistor and a large sum of money to spend… .
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Whereat Verb-Ops reviews the Steelyard “Sugartooth” McDan and the Fab-Originees.com show, featuring Steely Dan with Michael McDonald on the Garden State Parkway, somewhere in August.
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I have a friend. A web designer in…well, let’s call it the “security” field. He works for a big company that has offices in New Jersey and all kinds of VIP action at the renowned PNC Bank Arts Center (you may remember it as the Garden State Arts Center from the days before Brendan Byrne Arena
in the Meadowlands became the Continental Airlines Arena). So, when the tickets were on the table and the schmucks were jumping on Aerosmith and Motley Crew, my man—let’s call him Joe—slid in and got the VIP Steely Dan tickets for himself and his ol’ lady. Let’s call her Audrey.
The company I work for is different. I paid top dollar for two seats in the 99th row. But Maureen and I, hanging with our friends, at least got to experience the VIP lifestyle right up to seating. Which ain’t bad. It made for very posh tailgating in the upper parking lot, for example. That called for nothing less than Bass Ale all around and some of that grapefruit wine for the lay-dees. The big fun started on the way in when we were allowed to zip right past the scruffy kids in the white T-shirts directing traffic. We dealt only with the scruffy kids in the black suites that call you “Sir.” Uh-huh.
We didn’t know how to behave. After making the big jump from the back door of Joe’s SUV to the pavement, I had a suggestion: “Yo, Security! What say we open up the backside and crank Pretzel Logic on your state-of-the-art. Like, …make it a real wing-ding®, you know what I’m sayin’?” Joe obliged as I tore open a bag of those designer chips. We were belonging in the lower lot and loving it.
Maureen and I watched, tears welling up in our eyes, as Joe and Audrey headed off to their free VIP seats. We found a PNC teen sherpa to take us to ours. We sat and the lights went up on stage for the opening act.
Most people first heard Michael McDonald when he fronted the Doobie Brothers in the late 1970s. But his first serious recordings were as a back-up singer with Steely Dan a few years earlier. He debuted on Katy Lied, SD’s fourth album. McDonald was also on the legendary 1974 Steely Dan tour, leaving shortly thereafter with guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter for the Doobies. McDonald went on post-Doobie to a successful solo career, recently recording two albums of Motown covers. Skunk is now a weapons analyst and government contractor.
Steely Dan producer Gary Katz once observed that having McDonald sing background instead of lead vocals was an enormous mistake. I repectfully disagree. Up front, McDonald’s low-riding soul delivery can be a little overbearing. Maybe too much of a good thing? It certainly wasn’t long after joining the Doobies that McDonald was parodied and in some cases just plain ripped off—most blatantly by a cat named Robbie DuPree (Steel Away) who also nicked the keyboards. We became saturated with McDonald’s sound.
His set was, indeed, a little too much. Beyond the vocals, his barrel house/church style on the badly-amplified Yamaha piano stretched into the banal, especially when he and his organ player did a l-o-n-g musical intro to the closing number, Takin’ It To The Streets. Once the piano workout morphed into the hit, however, the crowd was on its feet. I was. Hooting! The Doobie songs were the best. The Smokey et al covers were commodity soul. One highlight in the act was a singing drummer—that rarest of specialties, rarer still for being a woman. Big up Yvette “Baby Girl” Preyer. From Memphis!
I was reminded that McDonald is a great lyricist. “You don’t know my kind in your world,” he sings in Takin’ It To The Street. And he sells it. What a Fool Believes–You’ve been tuning it out for years. But listen to the lyrics. “What seems to be is always better than nothing.” Amen.
Steely Dan’s performance was as good as ever, despite the fact that the great Cornelius Bumpus is no longer with them (or us), and the linebackers (background singers, yuk-yuk!) have been downsized from three to two.
Vanx to Dan: Bring back Victoria Cave, SD 2000!
Still, the line-up was killer, with many alums. John Herrington, holding tight into year-seven on the most coveted rock guitar gig on earth, excelled. And young Keith Carlock (’03) lived up to SD principal Walter Becker’s accolades. Becker and partner Donald Fagen stole
Carlock from label-mate Sting. All to the good. Becker’s jazz guitar licks were in order, of course, and his stage presence, pure professorial snark, hit on every beat. And Fagen, having grown into the metaphysical love child of Ray Charles and Dracula, transcended nature as always.
Fact—Over half the band were playing in the state of their nativity. Fagen was born in Passaic, though he grew up in the suburbs outside Princeton (see Nightfly, 1982). Walter Becker, representing Queens, NYC, laid it on thick, though, emphasizing during the band intro that most of the Jerseyites now live in Manhattan. When he got to the Oakland California-born bassist he let us have it: “How’s this for a syllogism. New Jersey is to New York as Oakland is to San Francisco!” Droll. Very droll. I liked that Walt Weiskopf, the Nosferatutian tenor sax player, is from Pequonic, NJ. Becker had a lot of fun saying Pe-quonic…asking the crowd if there is such a place.
There is. Becker had a lot of fun. I used to see him from time to time when I lived in the Chelsea Hotel in 1981. He ran when people made eye contact. But that was 1981.
The band opened with Bodhisattva from the second album, Countdown to Ecstasy, signaling that we might hear older things. In fact we did. Nothing at all from the two post-Y2K albums–one of which, Two Against Nature, won them a Grammy for best R&R album in 2001. Nothing from Fagen’s new solo record, Morph the Cat.
Alright… That’s cool…
They played most of their masterpiece, Aja, including the album’s name sake. That beautiful suite. “Up on on the hill, people never stare. They just don’t care.” Carlock did the job on that one, and I know you know what I’m talking about.
Fagen always hams it up for Hey Nineteen. This year, he’s having trumpet player Michael Leonhart and trombonist Jim Pugh come up front and settle a backstage argument. They go at it in jazz with mutes in their horns, back and forth, until Fagen breaks it up. He then asks the lady singers, including Leonhart’s sister Caroline, the name of that drink they’ve been trying to turn him on to. Some kind of tequila. Oh, …right—Cuervo Gold!
Say it again!
I was happy to see the crew setting up Yamaha keys center stage during Becker’s band intro segment. McDonald sat in and sang for the rest of the show, proving, I think, that he really is most effective as a background singer–filling in, making the chorus interesting, and doing the heavy lifting in the upper register. Not that he can’t take the lead from time to time. Fagen passed the spotlight on Show Business Kids and Do It Again. I get the feeling that Fagen has always been happy to outsource the catbird seat on Do It Again—it has a lot of sustained muscle tones on the high end. Having McDonald come up front occasionally made for really special performances. It was great to see such a stellar alum of the class of ’74 back with the fellas.
And, hey! I heard Peg with McDonald in the background. It is only right!
Toward the end we got the big guitar in Don’t Take Me Alive—the song’s topicality just won’t go away. It’s a real crowd pleaser among the guys in the audience. But the ladies got theirs too. And plenty.
On the way out, Maureen wisely waited to hook up with Security Joe and Audrey so as to get a Man-In-Black escort to “The Ladies.” Thus she avoiding a crowd rivaled only by the long line of elder fans that one finds at the Men’s at a Steely Dan concert.
We were soon breathing the rarified air of the VIP lot. You know the one I’m talking about, its…
“Up on the hill…”
Etc.
Worry the bottle, Mama,
Vanx
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