Royal Scam by Steely Dan (CD, Apr-1986, MCA Records USA)

So this was the album where Donald and Walter really peaked when it came to that blend of jazz and rock. That does not detract from previous or later offerings, it is just to say that this was the highpoint of the jazz/rock sound before they went more jazz/blues and after they were jazz/rock.

The Royal Scam contains some of the greatest unknown songs (by that I mean the morons at the label and the radio stations don't give it airplay). By far the greatest collection of songs you are not likely to hear on the radio. To be quite honest, I don't think one of these songs was released as a single and I cannot figure why. Each song is crafted in the same Fagen, Becker style with jabbing lyrics and punchy tunes that take aim at anyone that happens to step in the crosshairs of their sarcastic canon. This is probably SD's most heavily guitar favored album.

We begin with Kid Charlemagne, a bizzare and intriguing worship/denial of a drug maker who's life is going down the tubes as his customers slowly disappear, the music is pure SD; Caves of Altamira, about a cave in Spain with outrageous carvings from the paleolithic era, and a boy who would rather spend time with the drawings than with real people; Don't Take Me Alive is truly strange tune about a guy that would rather die than go back to face the father he stole from, but again, the music is awesome; Sign in Stranger is, again, pure cynicism about how to disappear when you have taken the path that leads to prison; The Fez (almost proof of how far ahead SD was, at least figuratively) is a safe sex song, get it, a fez, a hat, a condom?; Green Earrings, Haitian Divorce and Everything You Did are about as standard as you can get if you are looking for pure SD, with HD and EYD being cynicism and sarcasm at their finest; the title track, the Royal Scam really caps off (in my ever so honest and humble opinion) SD's most lyrically dark album, a song about foreigners coming to the states in search of the American Dream and finding something quite different.

Anyway, reviews aside, you really just can't go wrong with SD and like I have said on my other SD album reviews, IF IT IS STEELY DAN, BUY IT. PERIOD.

So, What are you waiting for? This bunch of negative jerks isn't going to ask you any favors.

A GREAT, ALBEIT SLIGHTLY DEPRESSING IN A HAPPY SORT OF NONSENSICAL WAY, ALBUM. Know what I mean? Me either, I think I'll just go listen to the album again.