Steely Dan -- Peg

 

I remember when an old friend of mine at university went out with a bunch of other buddies for a drink at a nearby bar, and he was still finding his sea legs when it came to drinking stuff. So, he browsed through the drink menu in the cocktail section since up to then, he apparently had only gone with beer and wine. Then, close to heading home time, he hit something called Long Island Iced Tea and wanted to give that a shot (no pun intended). I didn't know anything about it since I was pretty much connected at the liver to my Brown Cow.

My friend drank it down and he drank it down quickly. He proclaimed it was so very tasty and smooth and if it hadn't been for the fact that it came in an unusually tall highball glass, he would have gone for a second. Well, not too long after that, when we were on the subway, he was doing everything except standing or sitting down. It was fortunate that we had our section of the subway to ourselves because he was as high as a kite and acting like one; luckily, the ceiling kept him from achieving orbit. Even luckier was that one of our other friends was willing to drive him home since he didn't live too far away. I don't know what happened after that but I assume that he got to know his toilet even more intimately the next morning. But we both found out how deceptively potent a Long Island Iced Tea was and still is.😉

Now, let's think about one of Steely Dan's famous songs, "Peg". I think it is the equivalent of a Long Island Iced Tea. Indeed for all of their fans, it is truly tasty and smooth, but according to the history of the making of this prize tune, if I were to further analogize with the best version of the famous cocktail, it would call for not only the best of each ingredient: vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, and a splash of cola according to Wikipedia, but also the ones that would work with each other in harmony. So, maybe Belvedere is the best luxury vodka available but for mixing into a Long Island Iced Tea, perhaps Tito's is the one to have, and so on. Try juggling all those ingredients to make the ultimate version.

And apparently that's how hard it was for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker and some of the best studio musicians to come up with "Peg" which was released as a Steely Dan single back in November 1977. Yet, it sounds so groovy and effortlessly catchy (I was grooving again with my shoulders when I heard it a few minutes ago). But through various sources such as YouTube and Wikipedia, I realized that there was the whole thing about the right guitar solo (ultimately achieved by Jay Graydon), how many other musicians were put in and out the revolving door to get the correct combination to play "Peg" to the band's satisfaction, and the certain special chords involved. For the nearly four minutes of pure SD pleasure, everyone probably had to go through some even more major wringers for days or weeks. Such were the famous demands of Fagen and Becker.

I heard "Peg" on the radio of course all the time but the first time I encountered it was, strangely enough, through a TV commercial for some vocational school in Buffalo, New York when I was a teen. I couldn't remember any of the other music that had been playing in the first part of the ad, but then there came the push for dance classes, and suddenly the opening seconds of "Peg" came on. And suddenly, the ad had my full undivided attention as the leotard-wearing kids started to dance to the song.

Ironically though, it wouldn't be until my years in Japan that I finally started purchasing Steely Dan's back catalogue of albums, and it all started from watching a Japanese IBM commercial featuring the ThinkPad and Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." from his 1982 solo album "The Nightfly". And once I got that one, I just had to start collecting SD CDs. Ultimately, I did get "Aja", the September 1977 album that has "Peg". In Canada, the single peaked at No. 7 on the RPM charts while in the United States, it hit No. 11 on Billboard. 

Of course, taking that full dive into City Pop in the last few years of my stint in Tokyo, I and many other City Pop fans have discovered how much Steely Dan has influenced the singers and bands of the genre in terms of their output. Therefore, instead of putting up the usual Oricon leaders or music prize winners of that time, for this ROY article, I will list merely a few of the many songs that contain the Steely Dan DNA.

1. Makoto Matsushita -- Lazy Night (1981)

2. Akira Inoue -- Bartok no Kage（バルトークの影）(1982)

3. Mariya Takeuchi -- Plastic Love (1984)

4. Blue Peppers -- Searchlight（サーチライト）(2017)

Oh, and before I forget...