CITIZEN STEELY DAN

Steely Dan, as much as I like a lot of their music, is one of those bands that make me scratch my head when I find them included here. Sure, they have more jazz influence than most other rock or pop bands out there, but they are way too poppy to be fusion, and the prog moments are few and far between.

There. I got that off of my chest.

For the Steely Dan newbie (are there any?), I guess if you can find this set at a good price, it's worth picking up. It contains everything from the seven original LPs, plus a few B-sides, a live recording of Bodhisattva, a demo version of Everyone's Gone To The Movies, and of course, the track FM, originally released on a movie soundtrack. If you already own all of the albums, there's not much to draw you to this collection.

So, there are some very good songs on this, although by the time they recorded "Aja" and "Gaucho", their sound was becoming formulaic, and often boring. But there are plenty of good tracks.