it was her copy of their greatest hits that hooked me at the age of 12 or so...

I'm a 42 year old bloke, so all I can contribute is that Steely Dan music genuinely makes me feel queasy. I don't intend to start any my-band's-better-than-your-band nonsense, but in this case we have a band who actually make me feel sick. My loss I'm sure.

Psst. "As Lerner and Loewe put it...".

As long as they play till dawn
Nothing but blues and Elvis
And somebody else's favorite song

Give us some funked-up music
She treats you nice
Feed us some hungry reggae
She loves you twice

The girls don't seem to care tonight
As long as the mood is right
No static at all, no static at all
FM--no static at all

etc etc (clipped from web, may well be slightly wrong)

----------------------------------------

Sorry, couldn't resist that ;-) Actually my SO has much better taste than me ... but not the Dan, alas ...

...Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" comes up on my shuffle!

I care not a jot whether my wife likes either version or not.

My wife couldn't care less if I don't watch Corrie, Casualty etc....

We're compatible it seems.

loves Steely Dan and has even been with me a couple of times to see Nearly Dan.
I like Steely Dan very much but think their music is a bit cold, like a windy winter's day in New York.
Mrs L hates "romantic" music - could this be why she likes SD? Could this supposed coldness be the reason and many other ladies don't? Bit of a generalization, I know.

boring group.

My wife loves the Dan.
I’m indifferent.
They don’t strike me as a particularly girl-unfriendly group. Although girls tend not to like smart-alec clever dick music as much as boys do.

is obviously an over generalisation same as all women like george michael but its broadly thereabouts

reasons why

it is rather clinical, played and sung without emotion
it leans towards jazz and i find few women like jazz -although my ex mother in law is a shining example to the contrary.
it is light on for bass

But that doesn't change the fact that not in a million years would two women musicians get round to making music that sounds like that. Rickie Lee Jones was the first person to point this out.

liking Rod Stewart, Greg Lake, Donny Osmond and Mark Ellen.

Given the hangarfuls of cash generated by the Mamma Mia! franchise, I think there is definitely a market for something along similar lines targeted at men.

I propose a "jukebox musical" show/movie called Do It Again!, based on the works and world of the mighty Dan. Just as the ABBA show now features "singalong" screenings, DIA! will have a "jamalong" version, where audience members take turns to play phrygian-dominant solos on the fold-out Fender Rhodes keyboard that delighted theatregoers will find on the back of every seat.

Synopsis and songs:
Dan Pretzel (married to Peg), Den Deacon (separated from Josie) and Don Dupree (still unmarried) are three Total Blokes who haven't seen each other for 30 years. When the curtain rises, Dan, Den and Don meet up, quite by chance, in the Very Complicated Angling Apparatus section at an idyllic garden centre in Port au Prince, Haiti. Much arguing about the tensile strength of nylon ensues. Cue first production number, "Reelin' In The Years".

Er, I need a lie down. Over to someone else.

That's my considered opinion and I'm female.

(well I have a few, but then again...). She likes them a lot, well did when we were together, when I didn't, apart from Do It Again, which is not typical of course, but I do now (like them a lot that is). Perhaps we would co-exist harmoniously if re-united with our new shared musical love, then again who knows if she likes them anymore. Best leave it. Anyway I'm married now.

Actually, I wonder if Classic Albums is more a male thing. All that detailed analysis. Then again for every supposed male specialist area there are females who express a liking and contradict assumptions, generalisations always being wrong.

That was when I was introduced to Steely Dan and it was via my then girlfriend. I wan't too taken with them at the time.
Over the years I came round to them and I can confirm that Mrs P likes them and has bought Donald Fagen solo albums to boot.

Thanks Declan and one or two others (ageinghipster, earlgrey jr)for the kind words on my musings on the Dan - as any true Dan Fan Man or Woman must learn to call them.

But I think it's the band themselves that makes us think. That's a good thing and a rare one too.

They do have their comedy aspect - uber-geek, supercillious,muso jazz noodlers - that Mr Valparaiso nailed so wonderfully well - but I believe there is soul - a soul - in there too. It's the persona of their best stuff - troubled, questioning, sensitive to nuance - that sets them apart.

Put a stun dart in me and haul me off to Pseud's Corner but I think you learn as much from Dan about America as you would from Roth, Updike or De Lillo. The City on the Hill. The Dark End of the Street. The Dan live on the inter-section.

i'm a 27 year old female, and i'm one of the biggest steely dan aficiandos i've ever encountered. even my friends who also dig steely dan can't deny how deep it goes with me.

i've been absolutely 100% hooked and transfixed by their musi since i was 12 years old. technically very much still just a GIRL at that point. now i'm a woman, and i'm still as much of a devotee as ever. more and more all the time, probably, as new layers are revealed in their songs gradually the more i grow as a musician and mature as a person.

becker and fagen have been the most influential musical teachers in my life, and i do believe that if there was genetic material in music that could be passed on, then i'd surely be some kind of weird offspring of theirs (probably combined with some stephen sondheim and the free design, too).

if you want to see for yourself what a woman composer/ arranger/ producer who claims them as her greatest source of inspiration sounds like, please check out my music online here:
www.myspace.com/TheLucklessPedestrian

(i even named my band after them.)

it always irks me when people make statements like "girls don't like steely dan" because i'm female and i am such an enormously dedicated listener. but i do have to admit- when i look around me, the truth is obvious: to fall into both categories makes me a member of a very, very small demographic.

i think it has to do with the complexity of their music. on the surface it sounds "easy" to some- almost like "easy listening." but there is an undeniable uneasiness about the music at the very same time- some people here have even referred to feeling ill while listening! i think that's because this is "queasy listening" music at its most complex. it waltzes in giving the impression that it is simple, and then completely messes with your head, whether you are even aware it's doing that or not. (at the very least, it does so on deep music-theory levels, playing tricks that the average listener is not faced with in most day-to-day listening, and that they might even find physiologically disruptive to their inner ear and balance, for all i know). the songs come off as squeaky clean (i.e., "waiting room music") but are simultaneously riddled with hints of dirtiness, be it conceptually, lyrically, and/or music-theoretically. to be frank, at least in my experience, i think a lot of women find this uninteresting, distasteful, and too complicated to bother with.

not me though. it's right up my alley!!

best wishes to everybody reading.
- gwen thomas

...gets their name confused. Every time a Dan track comes on she says, "Oh, is this Asia?" So near but yet so far!

Mind you when "Whenever God Shines His Light" came on the radio once she also asked, "Isn't this that song by Cliff Richard and Van... erm... Van... erm... oh yeah, Van Halen!!" So I guess she has form!

Hmmm ... it's strange, that. My wife was a confirmed Dan-sceptic until she heard an excellent album from 2006 of Dan cover versions sung by two female Swedish singers ("Fire in the Hole - Sara Isaksson and Rebecka Törnqvist sing Steely Dan"), which she absolutely loved. So there it is: it's not the Dan's songs that are unappealing to the ladies, it's Donald Fagen's vocals.

Anyone looking for a band that were really unappealing to the fairer sex need look no further than the Albert Ayler Trio...

There's just too many chords in Steely Dan's music; brown corduroy wearing jazzers, is never a winner with the ladies, unless women are attracted to the "Geography Teacher" look of Steely Dan. Personally, I love their musty cords and all those their thirteenth and sharpend ninths chords.

This is just lovely. Thanks Ducoo1

I brought my wife to see Steely Dan in Wembley Arena in September 2000.

I had been like a child for about 3 weeks before the concert. I had waited so long to see them live that I was between bursting in to tears and silly grins every few minutes.

Anyway, we got to Wembley , got our seats, I got enough merchandise to fill the spare room and the concert began.

Amazing.

Fifteen minutes in to the show my wife reached across and whispered in my ear:

'When are they going to sing Maneater?'

Even now, I am stuck for words to describe how the life flowed out of me.

Anyway, every cloud....

Went home, bought ONE ticket for the show at Hammersmith the next night and had a great time!!!!!

Where do transvestites stand in this debate? Not that I am one.

I am female, and love the Dan. My husband dislikes them immensely. I have been to see them twice in recent years, and took a different guy friend with me each time. No need to endure my love's slouching indifference while I lean forward, enraptured by every clever turn of phrase and perfect saxophone line...

What?
I LOVE Steely Dan!