Special Report -- Steely Dan Concert

First off, this was an amazing concert in an incredible venue. I will talk about the music in a moment, but the run-up to the band was hot hot hot. The temp at concert time was 91 degrees.

Barb waiting in line, 91 degrees!

One drives up this little goat trail of a road above Saratoga, CA to the original Paul Masson winery, perched high above Silicon Valley. Why up here, I don't know -- he grew his grapes on the impossibly steep hillsides and entertained crowds in his chateau and its surrounding deck with spectacular 180 degree views of the "big basin."

After parking and picking up our tickets, we beat a path to Masson's chateau for a fine dinner on his famed party deck. Like last year, it was a sweltering affair, dining in 90 heat (the heat wave that had followed us down from Washington was peaking about 5:30pm).  Good food, and good, cold Chardonnay helped, but only when the sun dipped behind the trees did we stop sweating rivers.

Dinner on the deck.

Here's the first amazing part: while we were dining on the deck, with the amphitheater behind us, we could hear Steely Dan warming up and rehearsing. This went on for a good hour and a half! And in retrospect, they played a number of tunes that we would not hear that night! Here we were, out to dinner, with SD as the house band.

If you have never experienced Steely Dan live, you are missing something very special. You may know that the principals, Becker and Fagan, are perhaps the most exacting recording artists of our time, demanding perfection from all musicians who play for them, perfection from the instruments they play, and perfection from the crew who mixes the sound for the audience.

We finished desert and set out to find out new seats. We had received an email the day before informing us that our seats had been upgraded. The SD horn and rhythm section play a good 15 minutes before the concert, so we found our seats and no sooner were we settled than Becker and Fagan strolled on the stage.

What struck us immediately was how close we were -- I mean, I could hit them with a ping pong ball, or so it seemed. Just average Joe's in jeans, looking like they wandered in by mistake. We were both taken aback at how close we were to the band. They opened with "Gold Teeth" and it was all good from there.

Here's the set list:

Your Gold Teeth
Aja
Hey 19
Green Earrings
Everything Must Go
FM
Time Out of Mind
Godwhacker
Show Biz Kids
Black Cow
Dirty Work
Night By Night
Josie
Peg
Reelin In the Years
Bodhisattva
Kid Charlemagne

Green Dot is where our new seats were!

Sonically, it was another amazing mix, augmented by the fact that we could hear the amps from the stage. Everybody on stage is a great player, and all the horns distinguished themselves. Once again, though, their drummer stood out -- he may be the best drummer I have ever heard.

Sorry, no pics from the show -- no cameras allowed at all, and it is strictly enforced. So it goes.

It was one of the best sounding concerts I have ever been too. The band was awfully tight, but loose at the same time (lots of jazz improv on the horn solos). They funked up a lot of their tunes, notably Time out of Mind, Show Biz Kids, Everything Must Go.

Becker did most of the talking, telling a smart-aleck story about why it is one reaches for the Cuervo Gold these days. Fagan introduced FM by saying that SD has nothing to do with movies and TV, but wrote this song because "somebody talked us into it, years ago."

All in all, an amazing concert.