ON THIS DATE (41 YEARS AGO) October 10, 1973 - Steely Dan: My Old School b/w Pearl Of The Quarter (ABC ABC-11396) 45 single is released in the US. My Old School is a single drawn from Steely Dans 1973 album Countdown to Ecstasy. It reached #63 in the Billboard charts. In its March 24, 2006 edition, Entertainment Weekly details a return trip to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York by Donald Fagen, in which he describes a raid by sheriffs deputies in May 1969. Fagen, his girlfriend Dorothy White, Steely Dan bandmate Walter Becker, and some 50 other students were arrested. Charges were dropped, but the harassment was the origin of the grudge alluded to in My Old School. Fagen was reportedly so upset with the school being complicit with the arrests that he refused to attend graduation. The same article speculates that a Bard professors wife, Rikki Ducornet, was the inspiration for Rikki Dont Lose That Number. Because of the reference to The College of William & Mary in the lyrics, My Old School has long been a favorite of W&M students and alumni, although the song is actually about Bard College. Stewart Mason, allmusic Like humorist and childrens book author Daniel Pinkwater, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker attended the ritzy liberal arts school Bard College in upstate New York in the 60s, and also like Pinkwater, the pair have been publicly mocking the school ever since. My Old School is the pairs most overt song about their alma mater, a sarcastically chipper-sounding remembrance of the time Becker and Fagen, along with several dozen other students, found themselves caught up in a trumped-up drug raid during an election cycle. (The local Assistant District Attorney who orchestrated the publicity stunt was a gent named G. Gordon Liddy, who of course got some first-hand experience with the U.S. prison system himself after the Watergate break-in.) Delivered in a giddy schoolboy tone, the chorus is by far the most effective on the entire Countdown to Ecstasy album, but the real meat of the song comes in the extended instrumental passages, where a pair of spiky Jeff Baxter guitar solos (the second of which is downright eccentric in its rhythm and strangled tone) are counterpointed by Fagens piano and a swinging horn section. The single was a comparative flop, but My Old School has since become a fan favorite and a centerpiece of the Steely Dan live show. Steely Dan
Posted on: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 00:40:00 +0000
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