THE ROYAL SCAM

When I saw this great love-of-my-life-band was added to the site I was overjoyed. Because now I had the chance to review all their albums. I started rating them all because even though I love them to the bone I don't believe they made a true masterpiece (my standard for that is very high) but there appeared to be quite a lot of 4 star efforts amongst their releases.

One of those is this great one called The Royal Scam. Starting off with Kid Charlemagne, a very famous and very popular song, I like it a lot but it's not even one of my very favourites of this album. Next two: The Caves of Altamira and Don't take me alive are 2 songs I discovered when I bought the disc a few years ago, They sound very jazzy and very nice too. 4th track is Sign in Stranger, that one I know for a very long time, since 1976 actually because it was the B-side of Haitian Divorce, the vinyl single back then (those good old days !). I didn't think too much of it in those days but this song has really grown on me the last decade. Next is The Fez, a nice funky/jazzy track. Followed by Green Earrings, like track 8 (Everything you did) and the mentioned 2nd and 3rd track relatively new for me, is another funky one showing once again the versatility of the band. Steely Dan is truly brilliant for me, right now I'm listening to the whole album once more but at times I can hardly believe my ears. Because track 7 is Haitian Divorce and that's a true evergreen as we all know and in fact the only single I bought in those days, it was one of the few SD-hits in Holland. Everything I did is more of a regular track, mediocre for SD-standard almost, but still good. Last and very very best for me is the gloomy title track "The Royal Scam". I simply can't get enough of this one, a very intriguing song again showing the diversity.

Along with Aja this is probably the best Steely Dan album ever. It deserves 4 stars but to be more specific: 4,25.