Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
You know what band I like?
Steely Dan.
Just about every time I go out, I hear one of their songs on MOR canned radio, and I smile to myself, because behind the immaculate production and tasty guitar solos are left-field jazz harmonies and Talmudically esoteric lyrics about terrible people with cocaine problems.
No, seriously: you can stick “Hey Nineteen” between Huey Lewis and James Blunt all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a song about a middle-aged man romancing a teenage girl who alternately entices and disgusts him, and with whom he shares nothing save a predilection for tequila and blow. That’s a tune made for the minivan and the Target if ever there was one.
And on that note, I greatly enjoy this site.
