Liner Notables #1 - Steely Dan - Can't Buy A Thrill

Why, it seems like only yesterday [cue harp and wavy, out of focus visuals] when you could pore over an album's liner notes and not have to squint to garner an embarrassment of riches and a treasure trove of tidbits...

"The superlatives commonly found in liner notes are often as empty as the music they applaud. This is not the case on your new Steely Dan album."

Congratulations on your purchase. But how is one to ultimately construe this hyperbolic, damning-with-faint-praise insinuation from the liner notes of Can’t Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan’s 1972 debut album? Judging from a closer reading of the blurbal essence on the cover — surely, any caveat emptor inapplicability strictly related to books, right? — the PR-putsch as advertised is not as vacuous as the end product it heralds.

Whichever way your promotional bread is buttered, we’re not exactly talking high praise here, and some mischievous or misguided copywriter must certainly be out of a job. How do you ask such a question and still come out not smelling like it’s not all a ruse?

With the jazz-rock group Steely Dan, you don’t. These sly words, written by an apparent unknown and unusual suspect named Tristan Fabriani, are dubious in more ways than one. For one thing, it’s 1972 we‘re talking about, largely a time of liner note limbo. We’ve got a ways to go before the advent of the compact disc wreaks compacted squinty-eyed visual havoc with attempts in trying to decipher on a CD the credits and song titles, let alone any frills and flourishes.

And we’re beyond the ‘50s and mid-‘60s heyday of hoopla and hucksterism in which liner notes graced, or disgraced, albums with inartistic overstatement, a far commercial cry from today’s more subdued incarnation in artist commentary, usually on anthologies and retrospectives.

So when the expressed “crisp and exacting music of Steely Dan” was released during a transition from one promo-less era to another — from one of late-'60s concept albums and overly-serious post-Sgt. Pepper pomposity, to faceless and polished corporate rock seen in groups like Journey and Foreigner (who didn’t even put group photographs on their albums' front covers), record buyers took notice. The sudden and audacious appearance of crassly and overtly promotional prose on their release of the up and coming pop-rock purveyors of “Do It Again” and “Reelin’ In The Years,” stuck out like T. Rex at a tea party.

The parodic tip off for all but the most cursory skimmer of record text might be the first line in the liner notes which states, “It has been said many times and in many ways that what the world needs now is another rock and roll band. This could very well be the one of which the pundits spoke.”

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
…

Visit Gordon Hauptfleisch's author page — Gordon Hauptfleisch's Blog