Steely Dan – A Decade Of Steely Dan

Missing Haitian Divorce which was one of their biggest UK hits where it reached the top 20.

Steely Dan will always be one of my all time favorites! Even go to see Steely Dan cover bands!

This is not 24 Karat Gold disc it's tinted gold foil and the sound is very loud.

I bought a transitional copy at a thrift store the other day. The back cover says "Mfd. for RCA Direct Marketing, Inc. under license" but the CD says "Mfd. for BMG Direct Marketing, Inc. under license." Matrix matches Variant 4 (10/88) exactly.

As the foremost jazz fusion group of the ‘70s, Steely Dan scored a number of mainstream radio hits following the release of critical favourites “Pretzel Logic”, “Katy Lied”, “Aja” and “Gaucho”. With their ironic humour and enigmatic lyrics, they would be largely inaccessible if not for the hook-laden melodicism and sophisticated production of their compositions. Comprised of core duo Walter Becker and Donald Fagen - the members surrounding them were effectively session musicians, never becoming a permanent fixture - Steely Dan were ostensibly an album-oriented project and did not perform live, instead devoting all their time to the recording process in the studio. Therefore the possibility of condensing their relatively considerable body of work onto a single disc is unfeasible. Well, not quite. Instead of including a litany of deep cuts and consequently devaluing the individual albums from which its contents are drawn, “A Decade of Steely Dan” goes for the non-chronological “promo sampler” approach, with each album represented by one or two standouts. From "Do It Again," "Reeling in the Years," "My Old School," "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," "Kid Charlemagne," "Peg," "Deacon Blues," "Hey Nineteen," and the non-LP single "FM (No Static at All)", each of the fourteen AOR staples contained within exemplifies the distinctive sound of Steely Dan and how consistent they were musically despite their protean line-up. Short of delving into their discography, this compendium is ideal for the uninitiated looking to familiarize themselves with jazz harmonies in a rock context.

Aside from that fact that they embraced digital sound reproduction, it was a given that music as complex, soothing and stylish as Steely Dan’s would be celebrated by the audiophile community. In a bid to achieve reference quality sound, this compilation was one of the first to be released on the compact disc format, not to mention sourced from the original master tapes. In 1985, it may have been designed and sold primarily for the purposes of evaluating the performance characteristics of exorbitantly-priced audio equipment - a far cry from the generic cheap and cheerful 12-track playlist-on-a-disc cash grab that greatest hits collections would end up - but with SACDs and SHM-CDs now supplanting standard CDs in terms of bit rates and multi-channel capability, “A Decade of Steely Dan” functions more favourably as a balanced and comprehensible introduction to their genre-bending repertoire; offering a cogent cross-section of their oeuvre, what it lacks in completeness it more than redresses by virtue of a smooth, satisfying listening experience.

Rating: 4.5/5

Far and away the best sounding digital audio release these tracks will ever have. Bob Ludwig and the late Roger Nichols worked their mixing magic from the original master tapes at the very beginning of the digital recording era. Since then, these tapes have deteriorated somewhat and the second side of "AJA" is completely gone, lost forever! This excellent pressing has fallen out of print and replaced by a newer, inferior mastering job. Get the original whilst you still can!

Seldom does it seem necessary to avail oneself of a compilation album, especially if one is a fan, knows the material, and has everything essential, where it’s easy enough to create your own compilation. For the most part compilations are rather strange birds, and while they certainly exist to give music lovers the hits, these albums seldom follow a linear defined timeline to move through the music, as was the case with the so called ‘definitive’ boxed set Citizen Dan, where as of its release, containing merely four discs, it could have easily been released as a remaster, being inclusive of all the band’s albums, plus bonus material from each of those outings … now that would have been something to wave a flag about.

All of that being said, the now out of print A Decade of Steely Dan should be considered a companion CD to either the compilations Gold or Gold: Extended Version, which will fill in much of the lacking material, with the song “Babylon Sisters” being the only track that is repeated on both albums … there are differing versions of the songs "Bodhisattva" and “FM” on each album.

The early editions of Decade have been well processed, and this compilation is just about the best you're gonna find when it comes to the toe tapping hits that were responsible for making Steely Dan a household name.

Review by Jenell Kesler

My copy of this release says "Manufactured in Japan for MCA Records, Inc." on the CD. Strange as it says "Manufactured in Germany by Record Service Gmbh" on the back sleeve.

A number of entries for this release consider it "remastered." My copy, at least (purchased in 1992), has the worst sound of all the SD discs I own. Mine are all the older MCA releases that came before the remasters. Gold Expanded and the Citizen box both have much better sound than this.