Lately, I’m spending a lot of time revisiting the Steely Dan record ‘Katy Lied’ and its associated lore (of which there’s a lot). A few things stick out to me; the first, and what has me listening again, are the drum tracks. Maybe I should’ve been able to detect this, but, of course, it’s a young Jeff Porcaro on the job. He laid it down for ‘Katy Lied’ at age 20, which is pretty astounding. (My mom actually went to Grant High School in LA’s San Fernando Valley with Jeff and some of the other guys who would go on to form the band Toto (they played at the Prom)).
The snare tone is so expert that I keep scrubbing back to listen to his fills. Take, for example, 1:30 in ‘Daddy Don’t Live in the New York City No More,’ an ultra-simple set of open rolls that satisfy to no end. Additional recommended Porcaro fills can be found throughout the duration of ‘Bad Sneakers.’ If you’re ever feeling uninspired and/or unproductive, it’s worth consulting the Spotify playlist ‘Jeff Porcaro session tracks’ (76 hours, 50 minutes) to get in the mood to keep pushing forward with your personal catalog of work, no matter the discipline. Prolific!
What’s also especially interesting about this record is that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker refused to listen to it after its release. In a retrospective review of the album by Mark Richardson, he recounts how the then-revolutionary production processes went on to spoil things for the band members—but, thankfully, not for the rest of us.
The band decided to record ‘Katy Lied’ using dbx technology, a noise reduction system which could pick up a wider range of sounds than any other techniques of the time. Apparently, something got messed up with the master, and the final cut sounded off to Fagen and Becker. In their 1999 liner notes looking back at the album, the doubled down, saying, “A replaying of the Katy Lied album proper, for the purposes of refreshing our failing memories, is out of the question.”
It’s safe to say that, in some respects, ignorance is bliss for me on this album. Though the liner notes, half sincerely, state that you should ‘follow the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) curve’ and meticulously lists all the specs of the expensive gear used to make the final sound, I don’t have any qualms listening on my half-busted speakers at home. Likewise, I don’t really want to read into the lyrics of one of my favorite tracks as far as arrangements go, ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Movies.’ But here’s to re-listens, anyways; wrong never sounded so right (sort of).