STEELY DAN : RENT PARTY IN BOSTON

 

Disc One

  1. Teenie's Blues
  2. Black Cow
  3. Aja
  4. Deacon Blues
  5. Peg
  6. Home At Last
  7. I Got The News
  8. Josie
  9. Donald's Chat
  10. Kid Charlemagne
  11. The Caves Of Altamira
  12. Don't Take Me Alive
  13. Sign In Stranger
  14. The Fez
  15. Green Earrings

Disc Two

  1. Haitian Divorce
  2. Everything You Did
  3. The Royal Scam
  4. Hey Nineteen
  5. Band Introductions : Love Is Like Ichin' In My Heart
  6. Black Friday
  7. The Boston Rag
  8. Dirty Water
  9. My Old School
  10. Last Tango In Paris
    Bonus Track :
  11. Pretzel Logic (with Steve Winwood)

Label : Project Zip

Date : July 22nd, 2009

Venue : Wang Theatre, Boston, Massachussetts, USA

Review (BigOZine) : Fans who have been following Steely Dan's current Rent Party tour were in for a treat during their Boston gig on July 22. While these shows have been dedicated to set lists consisting of individual albums, the July 22 gig not only featured their best-selling Aja album (1977) but also the previous The Royal Scam (1976) which the Dan duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker dubbed "the most hideous album cover of the 70s, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy A Thrill)." It featured a man sleeping on a park bench with skyscrapers behind him morphing into monsters. What's interesting is that this gig featured the best of both worlds for Dan fans. Those who love the duo for their jazz roots got it all in Aja while those who never converted from the Dan's rock beginnings were blasted by The Royal Scam, the Dan album which featured the most prominent guitar work. Like true perfectionists, each track still maintains their original form (in terms of time). Aja still runs around eight minutes while Josie clocks in about four-and-half-minutes. There's more soloing but it never descends into a jam. Which explains why The Royal Scam could be accommodated. Beside the contrasts in sound, both albums had different characters, Aja being smoother and more mellow while The Royal Scam had scathing darkness with the drug dealer in Kid Charlemagne and the murderer under siege in Don't Take Me Alive. Yes, even if it's not Larry Carlton, the guitar solo in Kid Charlemagne, by Jon Herington, still deliciously hooks you in. [Larry Carlton will be joining Steely Dan for six shows starting July 31, 2009.] Even after The Royal Scam, the band managed five encores with The Boston Rag and My Old School lifting the audience out of their seats. Here is a band who are clearly enjoying playing the music in its pure perfection.

Review (Butmanos) : This show is special indeed. One of a kind, really. To hear it in all of its soundboard glory is like a wish granted. I'm sure my friends here on TDD feel the same way. The only show where they played two *whole* albums. And The Standells' Dirty Water. Rare indeed. The Boston Rag : Not played since 2000 and to my knowledge not after this show. Thank you, Ports, for procuring. Enjoy forever.

Note : Bonus Track "Pretzel Logic" is probably from The Entertainment Centre, Adelaide, Australia, October 30th, 2011.

Concert Review (Boston.com) : How ironic - Steely Dan is on a four-city tour delivering front-to-back live performances of albums that to this day stand as the rock era's quintessential studio spawn: impossibly clean, obsessively calculated, meticulously crafted. Oh yeah, they're also brilliant. Say what you will about Steely Dan's extreme insularity, "Aja'' is a jazz-rock masterpiece. 32 years after its release, Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, and a pristine 11-piece band played it to perfection at the Wang last night. Fagen was miked so crisply it sounded like he was singing in the next seat, and Becker's fleet, gleaming guitar tones fairly bounced off the stage. (I'd bet money these guys have the lengthiest sound check in the business.) The pair were flanked not by the gurus who recorded the original tracks - Wayne Shorter, Steve Gadd, Larry Carlton, the list goes on - but those musicians' descendents, and in truth this band brought vitality to the preternaturally polished proceedings that has been missing from Steely Dan concerts in recent years. In a band as devoted to measured virtuosity as this one, the subtlest surprises go a long way. Fagen's witty twists on the microphone during "Deacon Blues'' and "Peg,'' a few insidious tempo shifts and fresh chord voicings during "Home at Last,'' a new coda for "I Got the News'' - those discreet nods to the passage of time humanized the music's relentlessly cool, complicated textures. But the real surprise came after "Aja'' was finished, when Fagen announced that - thanks to a provocative interview several weeks ago with Globe music critic Sarah Rodman, during which she complained that the band wasn't dedicating a night in Boston to "The Royal Scam'' - Steely Dan would play "The Royal Scam.'' The audience erupted, and so did the show. It's a snide, mean-spirited, whip-smart collection, and from the opening bars of "Kid Charlemagne'' through the sinister closing title track, the concert was transformed from classy to cranking. By the end of the main set, Fagen wasn't reaching for notes; he was biting them, shaking each one in his jaw and spitting it out with a sneer that you could hear. Meeting deadline meant missing the encore, but according to a friend the final run of songs included "Hey Nineteen,'' "Black Friday,'' "My Old School,'' and a pair chosen expressly for the local crowd: "Boston Rag'' and a cover of "Dirty Water.''