By Chuck Yarborough
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND — For much of the band’s initial incarnation in the 1970s, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Steely Dan primarily were a studio band. College buddies and founding members Donald Fagen and Walter Becker preferred recording over the road.
It worked, too, as they produced albums like “Can’t Buy a Thrill,’’ “Countdown to Ecstasy’’ and “Aja,’’ one of the first ever to receive the platinum designation from Billboard for 1 million sales. And it worked for fans, who spent hard-earned money to buy the records of a band who had been dubbed the “antiheroes’’ of the ’70s.
That being said, the 5,000 or so who jammed into sold-out Jacobs Pavilion Tuesday night, most of them also veterans of that era, are glad that the “new’’ Steely Dan has become a touring entity since ending a hiatus that ran from 1981 to 1993.
Fagen and Becker were always known for recording their intelligent, sardonic and sometimes piercing lyrics with the help of some of the best studio musicians in the land. Now, they’re touring with the same.
Drummer Keith Carlock may, in fact, be one of the best ever to wield a pair of sticks. Playing with the conventional grip rather than the matched grip preferred by most of today’s drummers, he more closely resembled an updated version of Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa than the next Keith Moon or even today’s Blink-182’s Travis Barker or the Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins.
And that’s sort of fitting because the one thought that ran throughout the two hours of what really was a special night of music was that this is what big band jazz could and would be if it hadn’t been supplanted by rock ‘n’ roll and allowed to grow. Because despite their 2001 induction into the Rock Hall, today’s Steely Dan bears little or no resemblance to a rock band and has more in common with the bands of Count Basie or Charlie Parker.
That showed, too, in the selection of songs. Absent were the radio-friendly “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’’ and “Do It Again,’’ although in all fairness, one of the band’s most heavily airplayed tunes, “Reeling in the Years,’’ was the “last’’ song of the set, leading up to the encore, “Kid Charlemagne.’’ Guitarist Becker and keyboardist and vocalist Fagen instead opted for tunes like “Your Gold Teeth,’’ “Green Earrings,’’ “Godwhacker’’ and “My Old School.’’
Yeah, those were and are great songs, but they’re the ones best known by true Steely Dan aficionados and not the casual fan.
Still, the luxury of listening to the outstanding Bipolar Allstars — Jim Beard, keys; Jon Herington, guitar; Michael Leonhart, trumpet; Jim Pugh, trombone; Roger Rosenberg, baritone sax; Walt Weiskopf, alto sax; and Freddie Washington, bass; aided and abetted by the Borderline Brats backup singers La Tanya Hall, Catherine Russell and Carolyn Leonart-Escoffery — made it impossible to complain.
Some could say that Fagen and Becker picked the tunes THEY liked vs. the ones fans might have wanted to hear, like “Deacon Blues.’’ But even so, who cares? They’ve earned the right. Moreover, their own musicianship – especially when Fagen picked up his melodica – made it a pleasure just to be in hearing range.
Without having to be in the studio.
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