Over nine studio albums and one live album, Steely Dan put to wax some of the most indelible, in-the-pocket, sarcasm-infused jazz-rock of the 1970s and beyond. This short book spotlights each of the band’s ten albums, with facts, figures, chart positions, personnel, fun facts and more. Especially as so much music is listened to digitally these days, liner notes can be a pain to track down. Here, in one place, is information on the musicians who played on each and every Steely Dan album, along with detailed information on the records themselves.
I wonder how long it took to put together this compilation? An hour, or two, maybe more. I read Brian Sweet’s book twice, which is now updated. So, there’s not any thing here of value for Dan fans.
The author makes no pretenses that most of this book, so-called, is anything more than information that can be obtained from the albums themselves. He does present “Fun facts,” which are informational tidbits taken from albums, reviews and google sources.