08/08/08, Steely Dan and someone’s a year older!
So the other day the date was 08/08/08. Big deal ya say? Well I think it’s interesting when we have such one-off dates that will never come around again. The other reason is that day just happened to be my birthday! 
I’m another year older and thanx to all that sent me b-day wishes. And no I’m not old enough for Geritol. Not yet.
So how did I plan to celebrate this auspicious day? With a concert of course! I had seen a while ago that Steely Dan was playing the Pearl at the Palms that night and snapped up a ticket. It was the priciest show I’ve ever attended but worth every penny. I’ve always been a huge SD fan but this was my first time seeing them. The Pearl is a great venue and the perfect place to see them.
They had stopped touring in the 70’s and just became a studio band. Well more of a duo as all that was left of the original band were leaders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. They focused solely on making records with studio musicians. They’re well known for not only their amazing songwriting, often called the perfect marriage of rock and jazz, but also the flawless high quality production of their records. Several of their releases have won Grammy awards for their production. For years their legendary album Aja was used to demo speakers for hi-fi equipment. (hi-fi? man I am getting old…)
A few years ago they decided to reunite and tour again. I always had the misfortune of somehow missing the shows but this time I was going no matter what! The show kicked off with the band playing a couple of instrumental numbers then Fagen and Becker strolled out to wild applause! They proceded to play for a solid two hours, with the obligatory encore included.
There was only a couple of songs I didn’t know but they did play all the hits with the notable exception of the tune “FM.” The band consisted of three female back-up singers, four horn players, a bassist, drummer, a lead guitarist, a keyboardist, and Becker on guitar and Fagen on the Fender Rhodes piano. They put on a fantastic show and I was really impressed how well they pulled off the tunes live. After waiting almost 30 years to see them it was a good night!
As always here’s some cell pics:
As far as the rest of my birthday, well that’s another story for another time!
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