If you enjoyed this, check out our podcast on Steely Dan! kzread.info/dash/bejne/ZKiCw9WxctXXnrA.html

Larry Carlton was on lead guitar. He played on a lot of Steely Dan songs but this one and Kid Charlemagne are his most celebrated guitar work among us SD fans.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

For good reason!

@taylorjeremy71

2 жыл бұрын

Rites of passage for any serious guitar player

@Enigma758

2 жыл бұрын

Yup, yup, for sure!

@jjdubs13

Жыл бұрын

Oh, wow! I didn't know that was Larry on the Hill Street Blues theme!

Who starts a song with a lead guitar solo? Steely Dan that's who!

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

You know it!

@danielthompson6880

2 жыл бұрын

They also started Reelin In The Years and Bodhisattva with a guitar solo.

Not too many songs you’ll ever hear start out with a guitar solo, especially with this kind of attitude! Larry Carlton is the nuts!

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Larry is the man!

@LarryNeie-lj7zc

8 ай бұрын

Can't argue with that.

Larry Carlton is the lead guitarist for this song. He plays a lot on this album as well as Aja and also Gaucho.

@briangray00

3 жыл бұрын

Larry crushes it.

@sirsuse

3 жыл бұрын

Larry is amazing!

Killer guitar from Sir Larry... great idea to put the guitar solo at the start of the song.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Definitely

@kevinconiston2270

3 жыл бұрын

I think it was Larry Charlton who insisted it was at the start.

@ilikethisnamebetter

3 жыл бұрын

@@kevinconiston2270 Is that Bobby and Jack's little-known brother who rejected football for a career in music? ;)

@kevinconiston2270

3 жыл бұрын

@@ilikethisnamebetter sorry about the Error 😵

@Jack-D-Ripper

2 жыл бұрын

Best Steely Dan guitar solo bar none!

The Royal Scam is their best album.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

So we’ve heard!

@skydogfan4671

3 жыл бұрын

I agree!

@DWHarper62

3 жыл бұрын

Royal Scam is to Revolver as Aja is to Sgt. Peppers...

@sterlingarcher9208

3 жыл бұрын

Aja is their best work. You cannot start the album without finishing it. The most perfectly produced album

@eljefe9020

2 жыл бұрын

Too you

That bass tho!!🔥

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

The bass is killer!

It was a late drive home through the industrial section of Island Park, New York around '77. All I knew of Steely Dan was Ricky Don't Lose That Number which to me was just another radio pop hit. Then this comes on the radio. I didn't know who it was till the end. "This is Steely Dan?!" I say to myself. The rest is history.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

What a story!

To have one album that there's not a track that you skip is an accomplishment. Steely Dan has several. Nowadays albums have 20 songs on them and your lucky to get 3 or 4 killer tracks. I took it for granted. I thought it would always be like that. It wasn't. ✌

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Truth!

Growing up in the ‘70’s was such a joy listening to all types of great music!☮️

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

We ❤️ 70s music!

This album was getting a lot of play at a very rough time in my life. This particularly dark song can still bring back those times and give me shivers. The whole, brilliant album is dark for me, but I love it anyway..

Rick Marotta - drums, Chuck Rainey (Aretha Franklin) bass, Larry Carlton - lead guitar, Dean Parks - rhythm guitar, Don Grolnick - Fender Rhodes

This song stopped me dead in my tracks first time I heard it. Even among the best songwriters ever, the ability to write this kind of POV piece is rare. The danger in trying is people thinking you are writing your own thoughts and not trying to understand a subject.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

This is definitely a master class in songwriting!

The amazing Larry Carlton on lead guitar here. He also plays the leads on opening track, 'Kid Charlemagne'.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Amazing is right!

"The mechanized hum of another world". It's a weird thing to contemplate the steaming, writhing mind of a killer. By the way, that guitar intro is absolutely malevolent, which is what they were going for. On to "Haitian Divorce"?

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Haitian Divorce coming soon!

@lewismaddox4132

3 жыл бұрын

@@SightAfterDark Then "Green Earring", which is another track that is seemingly beyond what musical technology had encompassed at the time. Wait til you hear the spaceship land. I gotta agree with many. This is may favorite album.

@damonhines8187

3 жыл бұрын

"It's a weird....of a killer." Perfectly conveyed thought, mate!

You are absolutely correct about 70s music being the epitome of music. Why? Because the sonic technology finally caught up to the abilities of the players. Imagine if the 70s studio technology was around in the 1940s when Count Basie and Charlie Parker were at their peaks..70s music in all forms, Rock, Soul, Jazz, Blues, Country, Fusion, and World Music all sounded phenomenal because not only the fertile ground of experimentation, but the sonic technology that allowed players to play those organic sounding instruments to the fullest. Growing up in the 70s as a child was absolutely the most amazing time listening to things and when I became a musician at 13 at the end of the 70s, I had such a Rolodex of information in my head from those records that taught me how to play with groove, feel and technical ability as well. When the technology surpassed the musicians in the 80s, it was a disappointment for me. Not to say there aren't or hasn't been good songs from the 80s..It's just that the heart and soul of organic musicianship and the ability to work in that framework without enhancement created a generation of musicians and singers that rely on technology and not their own personal balls and desire to become greatness. Just my thoughts. Thank you for your channel and listening to all sorts of things. Peace friends!

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Great perspective. You definitely have some valid points! Thanks for watching, we’re glad you’ve enjoyed!

@thomascanfield9165

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for that excellent rundown. It confirms again how lucky I was to follow music from the 70’s. Turning 16 in 72’ was sweet, being able to go to concerts and become an aficianado of that era’s music evolution.

@fukawininetynine5999

3 жыл бұрын

I remember my dad talking about Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall and how hopping it was. I liked the music but the recording was not good compared to the 1970s techniques. If only........

@aaronstandingbear

2 жыл бұрын

After WW2 in 1945 the warriors came home as winners and jumped right in to producing a new crop of kids called the baby boomers of whom I am one from 47. We grew up through the 50s and became pubescent by 1960. From that point on romance was the name of the game and it was that passion that fueled the music of those times right through to the late 70s when disco and grunge and metal started to change what was initially innocent and loving and very creative and artistic. We solidified our outlooks as we matured and so the 60s and 70s music was the greatest on account of this palpable romance that colored everything we did. It tappered off as we got into the 80s. This is why IMO that those 20 years of music were the best and could never be duplicated. 60 to 80. The evolving technology became the instruments of our art and we will revere this classic music add infinitum IMO.

My favorite Dan song...

This is a chilling song and you seem to miss the point that this sort of scenario plays out on an almost daily basis in the US. Fun fact: I played in a very early Steely Dan covers band in Australia, and every time we played this song a fight would break out in the audience. If you want another chilling SD song, and one that is very brave and prescient, you cannot go past Chain Lightning.Listen very , very hard to the words. Underneath that laid-back simplicity lies a reference to something very, very bad that has not gone away.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Lol it seems a lot of steely Dan songs go over our head 😬 you can only get so much based on one listen!

@tric5122

2 жыл бұрын

Peg is another ver chilling and dark song.

I was in high school in the early 70's. Once I heard Steely Dan, I was hooked. I could not wait for the next album. You knew there was going to be great guitar no matter who he it might be. Each album was so different yet you knew the first few notes it was Steely Dan.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

SD = So distinctive 😉

Very dark song, but it is a masterpiece.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Indeed!

Such a perfect song. I love how it's not "you won't take me alive" but "DON'T take me alive". A request, not a warning. Brilliant. And yeah, that Larry Carlton guitar: amazing!

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Never thought of it like that but it’s true! Thanks for watching Patrick!

when this song came on - in the mid-70s, i just got my drivers license. This song, and Boston's "smoking' was peddle to the medal. You must remember, no cell phones, no fast way to connect (other than CB radio - big back then and we all had call signs - i was 'chopper' but you had a time to meet somewhere and you got there, otherwise you had to search the rest of the night to find your group- most will never understand this!

@SightAfterDark

Жыл бұрын

Thanks for sharing Preston!

A guitar solo at the start of the song; brilliant! And what a solo two; Larry Carlton is amazing.

While this doesn't get on my Royal Scam podium, or my Steely Dan desert Island it's an absolute banger. Killer guitar, catchy chorus. The lyrics are pretty non-opaque (It's one of your best of breed nutjobs deciding how best to die and who to include), albeit weird for gun phobic Brits. My local Sainsbury's doesn't offer cases of dynamite, but you can get fairly decent Chianti. This might be their finest LP.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

This album definitely has a case for their best! Thanks for watching Brian!

Awesome 🎹🎺🎵🎸🎶🎷🎼🎺🎤🎶🎸🎵🎷🎺🎙,classic intro WOW WOW WOW,JUST GETS ME EVERY TIME, WHAT A TUNE ,ONLY THE STEELY DAN,

At the time I only knew Larry Carlton from his work with The Crusaders. I've been all about progressive jazz pretty much all my life. It wasn't until after Aja that I found out just how much of a session musician he was along with Wayne Shorter from Weather Report.

Any Steely Dan is great music.

The lead guitarist is Larry Carlton. He is highlighted on "Kid Charlemagne" as well which is one of the sweetest guitar riffs of all time in my opinion. Cryptic is a great way of describing some of their lyrics. It is not always clear what the meanings are to many of their songs but that's just one of the reasons that I love their music.

“I hear my inside, the mechanized hum of another world.” Wow. And Larry Carlton!!

Chuck Rainey on bass providing another clinic on feel, note choice, and tone. Walter Becker decided that there was no point to playing the Steely Dan bass parts himself any more after hearing what Chuck could do. Carleton's guitar rightly gets a lot of attention for this song but the rest of the band puts in an equally great performance though under the radar.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Truth! The whole band killed it!

The craziest trick is, I crossed my old man in Oregon, don't take me alive."... and that's why all this shit is going down : )

05:15 Could have been singing about a low-level, local "bookmaker" (Bookie) too. Donald was a suburban kid, and the availability of grey-market dynamite in the '70s would surprise you.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

😆woah

The word on the street, with some documentation, is guitar was played by Larry Carlton. Sounds like him. Best. Leo.

Steely Dan is always choice!

…B & D were so prescient with this jawn by decades…..a score of years if you will

Pretty sure that's Tim Schmidt on background vocals too. Awesome album, one of my faves from SD.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

It’s a great one!

I bought this album waaaaay back when due to this song! BTW, Larry Carlton is a well known Jazz guitar player.

Larry Carlton on guitar.

This and Gaucho are my two favorites from the Dan!🌟

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

We’re excited to hear Gaucho sometime soon!

Best steely song for me

The guitar on Don’t Take Me Alive, along with a number of other cuts, is the Great Larry Carlton.

First, this is probably in my top five favourite guitar solos. Second, apparently this is from a true story. “"Don't Take Me Alive" off of "The Royal Scam" is about David Sylvan Fine, the youngest of the Sterling Hall bombers (at the University of Wisconsin- Madison) who was captured ins San Rafael, California in January of 1976. Despite the title of the song he WAS taken alive, spent three years in prison and eventually became a paralegal in Oregon.“

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Crazy story! Thanks David!

@alansilverman8500

Жыл бұрын

Interesting... today Sterling Hall currently houses the Astronomy Department - at the time of the bombing it was the Physics Department and they were protesting research that was being funded by the Department of Defense...

Larry Carlton has his own catalog, check it out.

There really good live

Probably get a lot of disagreement on this, but, if memory serves me, this is the one that kind of sneaks up and turns out to be the best track on the album, imo.

That song makes one feel the sad confines of loneliness and isolation. And it's somehow psychological because it makes you feel sympathy for what may be an antihero who it has always seemed to me been oppressed by the father who is a bookkeeper and strikes me as so obsessive compulsive as bookkeepers might be in jotting down all numbers correctly, there's no mention of a mother, and has driven his son to pathological rebellion. Hey, I keep forgetting to mention how much I like the opening music to your videos!

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

It’s a very deep song indeed. Thanks for the comment! The opening music is from our song Moongaze :)

As many have already said Larry Carlton guitar intro is superb. Notice the continous flow of notes, no silences. You should react to fagen's solo albums. SD is probable muy favourite band

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Shoutout to Larry! He does a great job. Hopefully Fagen's album will win our Patreon album selection poll sometime!

I've read through the comments and no one knew the true meaning of the song. This song is about David Sylvan Fine. He was the last of four men arrested for the Sterling Hall bombing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus because it housed the Army Mathematics Research Center. They did it as retaliation for the Kent State Massacre of the students there by the Army National Guard. The 'luckless pedestrian' is the only casualty of the Bombing although they never meant to kill anyone. The Agents of the Law (FBI) arrested him in San Rafael, CA five years after the bombing. He was arrested in his apartment and there was no standoff (Poetic License by Fagen and Becker). His father was a bookkeeper in Portland Oregon.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Oh wow, thanks so much for the history Daniel!

If you can't feel this song, have someone run you to the hospital, you may be dead.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Don’t take us alive!

A pretty serious one both in lyrical and musical matter for the two Dans - straight R&B. At first I didn´t like the song as much as the others on Royal Scam. It´s very straight with a typical dark rock groove, no jazzy elements except for a few chords in the interlude. But I´ve changed my mind - guitar, vocals, groovy catchy chorus, lyrics - everything´s top-notch. Is it just me associating their music with (east-)asian sounds at certain points? I hereby don´t think of the song "Aja" specifically. I believe "Don´t take me alive" was the first time feeling that - not out of thoughts, just an association that came to my mind. It sounded really good, but seemed to be very unique and somewhat odd - R&B and chinese music? There would be a lot of Dan songs later that I felt the same way. But I never really could point my finger on it. What was the reason for this association - the harmonies, the rhythms? I didn´t get it. Recently I read - in case I didn´t just dream it - that Donald likes east-asian music and vocals. Strange, isn´t it? But now I get it - it´s his singing style and he probably did this intentionally. Not throughout a whole song but at certain points. It´s hard to describe - this thin, nasal, whining, yowling, elongated pronounciation as in "no sun is shini-i-i-ing, no red light flashi-i-i-ing" or "saying everything is forgive-e-e-n". Like these banjo-like chinese side instruments and your finger pulling the string a half-tone higher and back again several times - Yi-i-i-ng Ya-a-a-ng music. Don´t get me wrong - it is great. But I´d never heard someone sing like that in rock-land. A Donald Fagen with mongolian eye-lid and straw hat. Or bullshit.

Once again Steely Dan uses the news as a song. I remember when this happened. A college student tried to blow up a Police building, killing several police officers and a "luckless pedestrian". He claimed to have a case of dynamite and threatened to blow up the police station across from where he lived. His Father that he crossed was a "book keeper" for the MOB.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Luckless indeed

Larry Carlton from the Crusaders or the Jazz Crusaders. Saw him twice, in San Francisco's Great American Music hall he got me drenched in Ketchup. I was living in small town up the coast, Bolinas. Went to concert by myself but ran into a street urchin from Bolinas in line. He was jamming and she said "he is the most awesomest guitarest she had ever seen" I did not correct her English, because she was growing on me. When he was getting a standing ovation, she started pounding the ketchup bottle on the table. The cap flew off an I ended up with half the bottle on me. Little note: she ended up pregnant from Hughie Lewis's guitar player not to much after this.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Lol what a story! Thanks for watching!

Larry Carlton on guitar. I think Chuck Rainey is on bass. The veteran jazz great Victor Feldman played the vibes, I believe.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the info!

Larry played a bunch with the Crusaders....check it out !!

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

Simply ass-kick knock your socks off sophisticated rock!

Nixon 😂❤

Listen to Larry Carlton play " point it up" off his first solo album.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the tip Dennis!

Criminal activity just saying!😂

I heard this song was about the first first person shooter mass murderer . It think the guy climbed up a tower on a campus in Texas . I could be wrong . I was a child when this took place . I have lived through a lot of history and my recollection is pretty good for someone who drinks heavily. I can carry on a cogent conversation whether sober or drunk . Kinda like Jack Kerouac.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

We’ve heard about that guy! Never would have thought of that. Thanks for watching!

@showshowthecloneclown8428

3 жыл бұрын

@@SightAfterDark your welcome !

If anyone is interested in the lead guitarist (Larry Carlton) on this track, here's a taste: kzread.info/dash/bejne/gp6c1o99abS4dco.html

Larry Carlton has some great solo stuff too. Check out Point It Up!

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks Vince!

don't forget the intro

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

👍

All their albums are great, no doubt.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

We’ve reacted to 7 of them so far, and loved every one of them!

Larry Carlton .++++

Larry Carlton 😊

Please, react to Stevie Wonder - Ma Cherie Amour.

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the suggestion and thanks for watching!

I'm hearing "...crossed my OWN man back in Oregon..." Changes the meaning somewhat, and therefore confuses--or does it?--his acknowledgement of being the son of a bookie. Like you say, Dan, Steely Dan lyrics ain't the easiest thing to decipher.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, definitely not easy

Try solo Fagen albums....

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Will do once we finish the Steely albums. Thanks Paul!

Sorry but anyone would groove to this masterpiece

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

Of course Tyler! What's there to be sorry about!

dirty sound

@SightAfterDark

3 жыл бұрын

You know it

She doesnt look like a fan lol

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

🥰words are reactions too!

Hes all that, but shes like not into him at all.....................JS

You pay too much for soda.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Lol you got that right! We live in NYC 😂

My god, what a boring concept. Reaction to a record. What else next. Reaction to a reaction? "Let us know who played it?" WTF.

@SightAfterDark

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the view Jim!