Quantum Criminals

It was a real pleasure to devour this year's Quantum Criminals, a book of song analysis (and musician psychoanalysis) by Alex Pappademas and illustrations from visual artist Joan Lemay.  It really should be for any fan of Steely Dan, regardless of your final verdict.  Despite whether or not you agree with the interpretations.  Inevitably, there are some that will have you shaking (maybe even scratching) your head.  Fans with more than a casual interest in the music of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker tend to have strong, sometimes intractable opinions on the matter.  Yet it is also of interest - to me, at least - to get others' takes on the subtext of "ramblers, wild gamblers, and other sole survivors."   There are plenty of professional and amateur writings about SD online, but I believe this is the first bit of print entirely dedicated to such.

Pappademas has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, GQ, among others.  For a short while he was the executive editor of "MTV News", for what that's worth.  Ever the purveyor of popular culture, he recently wrote a book about Keanu Reeves.  Alex's style is very much in the Steely Dan vein, as snarky and detached as that of his subjects.  And how fun it is to have an outsider offer pointed yet loving observations on not only the twisted tales found in the music, but the musicians themselves and the zeitgeist surrounding them.  

Of course, the more familiar you are with the tunes (and their authors), the better it all is.  Like you're in on some lurid but erudite joke.  A particular lexicon.  When Pappademeas more than once refers to the songwriters as "Mr. Steely Dan" you are constantly reminded of the infamous inebriated rant by former SD emcee/enfant terrible Jerome Aniton on the live version of "Bodhisattva."  The author will repeatedly use quotable lines from one song to comment on another.   His thematic linking among the discograpy is also sound, as he wonders if "Don't Take Me Alive" "might be the missing chapter of "Do It Again". 

Breakdowns of the music are agreeable, rarely ultra technical, at times right on the money. "Cousin Dupree" is described as "the whole track has the bright and hopeful bounce of customer-service hold music, as if mimicking the new found pep in Dupree's step."  "Haitian Divorce" is assessed as "....a dirty joke whose punch line is the appearance of a mixed-race baby, but the joke is on Babs and Clean Willie, a couple of horny idiots who have to live with the consequences of Bab's foray into sex tourism." Another of my favorite tracks, "The Caves of Altamira" is remembered as a "a snazzy, swaggering late-night-talk-show theme whose buoyant horn charts puncture the pensiveness of the lyrics before Donald sings a word."  'Zactly, Alex.  

It's also hard to argue with the assessment that Katy Lied, the album well documented for all the technical snafus during recording and mastering, "sounds like an old cassette tape baked in dashboard sun for three or more summers." 

Fagen and Becker's quirks, predilections, and perceived flaws are not spared.  For all of Pappademas' adulation and affection, this is not hagiography.  The boys' well represented trolling for younger women is examined scholarly and with the slight condescension and stern demeanor of a disapproving parent.  Their unabashed fondness for jazz is described as "culturally white and fundamentally suburban".  When discussing "Parker's Band", Pappademas offers, "...selling you Charlie Parker on a rock album in 1974 as if he's the newest of the new, Donald and Walter are also making a joke out of their own conservatism, and beyond that their own irrelevance to the discussion."

Alex drops references to lots of movies.  For "Don't Take Me Alive" he will cite TAXI DRIVER and TARGETS.  I learned about (and subsequently watched, review to come) Seijun Suzuki's 2001 curiosity PISTOL OPERA as it features Sayoko Yamaguchi, the Asian model wrapped in the darkness on the album cover of Aja.   Pappademas' well researched knowledge base is vast enough to sustain nearly two hundred and fifty pages.  

Many of them feature the work of Ms Lemay.  She lends portraits of Chino and Daddy Gee, Josie, Janie Runaway, The El Supremo, Snake Mary, and even (shudder), Mister Lapage.  And those legitimately (Michael McDonald) and illegitimately (Lord Tariq et. al) associated with the Dan.   Also, inanimate objects like WENDAL and a luger.   The art is very cool: kitschy and entirely worthy of inclusion with anyone's book of numbers and their remedies.  Perhaps also in a Soho gallery retrospective?  I could easily see a Dan exhibit getting some space.  Best appreciated with some smooth retsina, natch.