STEELY DAN : ROARING OF THE LAMB

 

  1. Android Warehouse
  2. A horse in town
  3. more to come
  4. parker's band
  5. ida lee
  6. Stone Piano
  7. Any world
  8. take it out on me
  9. this seat's been taken
  10. barrytown
  11. oh, wow it's you
  12. charlie freak
  13. roaring of the lamb
  14. a little with sugar
  15. sun mountain
  16. the caves of altamira

Label : Mastertone

Time : 58:49

Venue : unknown

Date : unknown (before 1972)

Quality : Studio recordings (A+)

Review (Dave Connolly) : This turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Having exhausted all of Steely Dan's studio albums, and shelling out for both Citizen Steely Dan and the expanded reissue of Gold to grab whatever scraps remained, I cast my covetous eyes at the band's earliest studio recordings. Mind you, these recordings are available in any number of permutations, but at sixteen tracks over a single disc, Roaring of the Lamb seemed as good a place to start as any. Now for the good news: the songs are much further along the curve than I expected. Rudimentary arrangements (and some flat singing) notwithstanding, all of the cuts are pretty catchy in their own right. Becker, Fagen and (presumably) Gary Katz recorded this music shortly before the Can't Buy A Thrill sessions, yet it includes seminal recordings of songs that would appear on later works: "Parker's Band," "Barrytown," "Charlie Freak," "Any World That I'm Welcome To" and "The Caves of Altamira." Those five tracks are likely to fascinate Dan fans the most, though only "Charlie Freak" and "The Caves of Altamira" capture any of the lightning that the "official" versions had. Considering what the band was able to do with these songs later on, it's a shame that ideas like "Android Warehouse," "Take It Out On Me" and "A Horse In Town" weren't revisited as well. Granted, nothing on Roaring of the Lamb is likely to displace even the lamest tracks on Gaucho, simply because the rich and exotic arrangements that defined the Steely Dan sound hadn't been developed yet. These songs are merely placeholders for future improvement, featuring piano, bass, drums, guitar (usually acoustic), percussion and synthesizers. That last element may have been added after the fact, since I don't recall many people using synthesizers back in 1972, when these were supposedly recorded. In fact, it's likely some recent re-touching was done on these recordings to punch them up in lieu of polish. If so, it's a kindness. What comes through is a glimpse of a major talent in development, from Fagen's clever lyrics to Becker's measured melodies. Given the dearth of supplemental music surrounding the Steely Dan legacy, fans should find a place for these recordings somewhere in their collection, whether it's Roaring of the Lamb or something just like it. However, I'm docking this disc one imaginary star for referring to a standard bifold picture sleeve as a 4-page booklet.

Review (AllMusic) : In the years before they formed Steely Dan and released the band's debut album Can't Buy a Thrill in 1972, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen made numerous demonstration recordings of their songs under the auspices of their manager, Kenny Vance of Jay & the Americans. Vance began leasing these recordings for commercial release in 1983 with the album Becker & Fagen: The Early Years, and since then they have been repackaged over and over in various combinations, appearing on such albums as Berry Town, Sun Mountain, Old Regime, and Stone Piano. Twenty-eight different songs (plus an alternate version of the song "Sun Mountain") have turned up on one album or another, and The Roaring of the Lamb presents half of them. Steely Dan fans who have never heard any of these tracks may be pleasantly surprised. None of Becker and Fagen's vaunted studio perfectionism is present on these primitive and usually spare tracks, but the work comes only a short time before the polished Steely Dan commercial recordings, and it is identifiably by the same performers. In fact, "Barrytown" later turned up on the third Steely Dan album, Pretzel Logic. "Android Warehouse," meanwhile, is basically a demo of "The Caves of Altamira" from the fifth Steely Dan album, The Royal Scam. Most of the tracks feature only Fagen on lead vocals and piano, and Becker on bass and harmony vocals, though some are more developed arrangements presumably including Demian (featuring guitarist Denny Dias, later of Steely Dan, drummer John Discepolo, and singer Keith Thomas), the band with whom they were playing at the time. As long as buyers aren't expecting the usual Steely Dan sonics, they may enjoy a glimpse into the band's beginnings.