36 Rules For Bands - The Wit of Steely Dan

Originally posted on the Steely Dan website in the 1990s. Enjoy

 ~36 RULES FOR BANDS:~

1. Never start a trio with a married couple.

2. Your manager's not helping you. Fire him/her.

3. Before you sign a record deal, look up the word "recoupable" in the dictionary.

4. No one cares who you've opened for.

5. A string section does not make your songs sound any more "important".

6. If your band has gone through more than 4 bass players, it's time to break up.

7. When you talk on stage you are never funny.

8. If you sound like another band, don't act like you're unfamiliar with their music ("Oh does Rage Against The Machine also do rap-rock with political lyrics?")

9. Asking a crowd how they're doing is just amplified small talk. Don't do it.

10. Don't say your video's being played if it's only on the Austin Music Network.

11. When you sign to a major label, claim to have inked the best contract ever. Mention "artistic freedom" and "a guaranteed 3 record deal".

12. When you get dropped insist that it was the worst contract ever and you asked to be let go.

13.Never name a song after your band.

14. Never name your band after a song.

15. When a drummer brings in his own songs and asks to perform one of them, begin looking for a new drummer IMMEDIATELY.

16. Never enter a "battle of the bands" contest. If you do you're already a loser.

17. Learn to recognize scary word pairings: "rock opera", "white rapper", "blues jam", "swing band", "open mike", etc.

18. Drummers can take off their shirts or they can wear gloves, but not both.

19. Listen, either break it to your parents or we will; it's rock 'n' roll, not a soccer game. They've gotta stop coming to your shows.

20. It's not a "showcase". It's a gig that doesn't pay.

21. No one cares that you have a web site.

22. Getting a tattoo is like sewing platform shoes to your feet.

23. Don't hire a publicist.

24. Playing in San Marcos & Alpine doesn't mean you're on tour.

25. Don't join a cover band that plays Bush songs. In fact, don't join a cover band.

26. Although they come in different styles and colours, electric guitars all sound the same. Why do you keep changing them between songs?

27. Don't stop your set to ask that beers be brought up. That's what girlfriends/boyfriends are for.

28. If you use a smoke machine, your music sucks.

29. We can tell the difference between a professionally produced album cover and one you made with the iMac your mom got for Christmas.

30. Remember, if blues solos are so difficult, why can so many 16 year olds play them?

31. If you ever take a publicity photo, destroy it. You may never know where or when it will turn up.

32. Cut your hair, but do not shave your head.

33. Pierce your nose, but not your eyebrow.

34. Do not wear shorts onstage. Or a suit. Or a hat.

35. Rock oxymorons; "major label interest", "demo deal"," blues genius", "$500 guarantee", and "Fastball's second hit".

36. 3 things that are never coming back: a)gongs, b)headbands, and c)playing slide guitar with a beer bottle.

See also: Expressions to avoid in a recording studio
https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2019/12/expressions-to-avoid-in-recording-studio.html

Expressions to avoid during a recording session

When Steely Dan reformed in the 1990s, their website was an extension of Fagen and Becker's sardonic humour. This list appeared on the site, together with things like '36 Rules for Bands'. Anyone who has been in a band, or in a studio, should get a laugh or two out of this.

EXPRESSIONS TO AVOID
During A Recording Session

1.     Ready, Freddie (pronounced red-eye fred-eye)

2.     Bingo, gringo

3.     Uno, Bruno

4.     The phones sound O.K. but I need more of myself

5.     We won't need a click

6.     I like what you're trying to do but not the way you're doing it

7.     An excellent first attempt

8.     Was that the sound you had on the demo?

9.     Make the click louder

10. That was a pretty good take for this time of night

11. If you want the tempo any brighter than that, we better wait for a sunny day

12. No dynamics? We're playing as loud as we can

13. I think that's a pretty good sounding take for what were getting paid..

14. That was great, let's do it again

15. Is that about as tight as you boys want to get it?

16. Is it possible the click is speeding up?

17. I'm at the point where I'm making dumb mistakes - before I was making much smarter mistakes

18. So many drummers, so little time

19. Why don't we do the double first and the lead will be easier to get once we've got the double

20. I never had this problem when I was being produced by Lenny and Russ

21. We got some things, we need some things

22. Fabulous

23. Punch in at the section

24. You can't make ice cream out of shit

25. You can't polish a turd

26. Just let your spirit soar

27. My spirit's already sore from the last thirty takes...

28. Close

29. Less is more

30. Less is Paul

31. Less is Brown

32. Less is less

33. That's the way I've been playing it all along

34. I just wish I could get a whole band that sounds as good as I do

35. This will be a great opportunity for me to show off my chop

36. Let's hear the bass, if you can call it that

37. Does your amp have an underdrive channel?

38. You can erase that one, I remember exactly what I played

39. We'll catch that in the mix

40. You guys can fix that in Soundtools, right?

41. I brought my kid along, he's never been in a recording studio before

42. My girlfriend sings great background vocals

43. I know a great drummer

44. You guys want to try some heroin?

45. Your girlfriend's been in the bathroom a long time

46. Please, man, stay away from my faxes, okay?

47. I'm not going to be any more dishonest with you than I am with Donald

48. I'd like a little more of a live feeling on this tune.

49. I also play eleven other instruments

50. Sorry I'm late, I just got through with my blood test (or CAT scan)

51. That vocal's not a keeper is it?

52. That's how I wrote it but that's not how I like to play it

53. I can't think of any improvements that won't make it worse

54. That ground loop is a trademark thing for me

55. That's the new old comp from today - I want to hear the new old comp from last Tuesday

56. That reverb would sound a lot better if it were coming out of a piece of MY GEAR

57. How bout we get rid of these 3M machines and get ourselves a frozen yogurt machine

58. Skunk called, he's on his way down

59. The frozen yogurt machine is broken

60. When was the last time we worked together? Tonight.

See also: 36 Rules for Bands

https://bangnzdrum.blogspot.com/2012/07/36-rules-for-bands-wit-of-steely-dan.html

Automatic Man - cosmic funk prog anyone?

File this one under ‘Buried Treasure’.  In 1976 I bought an album called Automatic Man on hearing their single My Pearl  and in the knowledge that the band included one of my favourite drummers, Michael Shrieve, formerly of Santana. 

It’s an oddity for sure, with its mixture of funk, rock guitar and cosmic lyrics. It still sounds good today though. Last year I heard one of the tracks played over the PA at a large festival, so I figure there must be a few people out there who think the same way.

Mike Shrieve was already a big name from Santana

How did this cosmic funk prog band come to be?

When Mike Shrieve left Santana in 1975, he was keen to develop a band project and so got together with guitarist Pat Thrall and jazz keyboard player Todd Cochran, also known as Bayete.

Shrieve met Thrall when he collaborated with Steve Winwood and the Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamashta on the ‘Go’ albums. Bayete, an established jazz player, had the songwriting skills and it was his influence that would prove to be the greatest in terms of the band’s direction. The fourth member of the band was bassist Doni Harvey.

They were signed by Island Records and moved from San Francisco to London, recording at Olympic Studios in Barnes with engineer Keith Harwood. The result was a collection of songs high on melody and set to a background of synthesiser swirls, wild guitar solos and with Shrieve’s dramatic flourishes propelling the whole thing. The balance of the rock and funk elements was pitched just right, making the album accessible and appealing, potentially, to a wide audience.

The problems came when they tried to reproduce it live.  The band played in Europe and the US in 1976, but by all accounts they struggled to capture the magic of the album. Since much of its dynamic was due to the layered synth lines and the various effects applied to the guitar and drums, it’s easy to see how they might have found it hard to reproduce.

Expectations had been high though; the record was good and the album artwork had been expensive to produce, so Island were looking to recoup. But the single only just scraped into the top 100 and the album failed to capture a wide enough audience. The band, minus Shrieve, moved back to the US. Bayete and Thrall recruited a new rhythm section and recorded a second album, Visitors, which lacked the panache of the first album. Shrieve was the big name in the band and without his distinctive style, there was even less interest in the second album. Automatic Man disbanded in 1978.

Mike Shrieve said: “I put a lot into Automatic Man. We had great players, Pat Thrall on guitar, Bayete, a genius on keyboards, David Rice on bass at first, then Doni Harvey. We rehearsed every single day at my house in San Francisco. I bought instruments for everybody, my girlfriend at the time, Maria Ysmael, cooked wonderful dinners every single night.

"We moved to London to do the record, which we were really excited about. We just couldn’t seem to get it together live, though. We had a falling out and the rest of the band moved to LA and made another record without me, and that was that.”

Todd Cochran's career continued to thrive as he wrote and performed with Aretha Franklin and Peter Gabriel. Pat Thrall went on to work in the fusion field with musicians including Narada Michael Walden and Alphonso Johnson. He joined the Pat Travers Band and later worked with Glenn Hughes.

Doni Harvey continued to play sessions and for a time was a member of the fusion band Nova. I saw Nova play a support slot at the Hammersmith Odeon around 1978. Harvey obviously modelled himself on Jimi (the spelling of his name is a giveaway – and see back cover photo of Automatic Man) and on this night he was pulling all the Jimi shapes and moves. It was remarkable but also faintly ridiculous.

In 2004, a remastered version of Automatic Man was released by Lemon. Tom Karr of Progressive World gave the disc a five star rating in his review:  "People have a strong desire to categorise things, to put them in boxes. In the sense of Automatic Man fitting into a pre-conceived sub-genre of progressive rock, then no, they are not a prog band. But they are much, much more than any label given them could describe. They could just as well be described as a hard rocking funk band. No group I can think of so defies categorisation as does Automatic Man."

I’ll stick with Cosmic Funk Prog.

The track 'Geni-Geni' from the album Automatic Man, 1976

Green is good - in praise of Scritti Politti

There is a school of thought that much of the music made in the 1980s sounds awfully ‘of its time’ here and now, because it was created on the first wave of polyphonic synthesisers and drum machines. The sound of boom-boom-bap with EQ up the wazoo. 

As a drummer myself, I confess that I succumbed to the lure of the drum machine at the time, because I thought it had to sound like ‘I Feel For You’ to pass muster with my peers. I was probably right at the time, but ever since then I have disliked music made without ‘proper’ drums. With one exception - Scritti Politti.

I can honestly say I love just about everything Scritti have ever done. I thought The Sweetest Girl  should have been a massive hit in the early 80s. I can still remember the thrill of hearing Wood Beez  for the first time on Anne Nightingale’s Sunday night show in 1984. 

Green Gartside’s collaborations with Mos Def and Queen Latifah produced some highly convincing rap rock on Anomie & Bonhomie. And on all of his albums of the last thirty years, Green has produced several captivatingly beautiful love songs. Exhibit one: ‘Brushed with oil, dusted with powder’. It's a production job, for sure, but beautifully and soulfully executed. 

The album Cupid & Psyche '85 was such a revelation and it has stood the test of time remarkably well. That's because underneath all the studio gloss is a collection of artfully composed and wonderfully played songs. 

Recorded mainly in New York using the very best session players and singers, the songs have a rich melodic feel and a syncopated funk that became a trademark groove on this and the following album, Provision. 

Green, Gamson and Maher with Miles Davis

The core band of Green, keyboard whizz David Gamson and drummer Fred Maher found Cupid & Psyche hard to reproduce in a live situation. In fact, they never played the album live. 

Even now, the current incarnation of Scritti Politti doesn’t play live much. Green is not the most comfortable performer and it would clearly be a struggle to faithfully recreate the sound of the records. 

But they do a remarkable job considering, in the few gigs they have played in recent years. Green's musical accomplice Rhodri Marsden is surrounded by laptops and keyboard kit he has painstakingly programmed with the original parts. And most remarkable of all, Green really does sing like that in real life; no studio trickery needed.

As luck would have it, while I was in London in December 2007, I saw Scritti were playing one show at the Luminaire, a small club on Kilburn High Road. It was two weeks before Christmas. Green, sporting a red check shirt and Grizzly Adams beard, had decided it would be a Christmas party. So he arranged for each band member to choose their favourite book to be sent out into the crowd as a ‘pass the parcel. When the music stopped, another layer of wrapping could be removed. They passed out mince pies.

On his last album, ‘White Bread Black Beer’ Green showed he didn’t need the production genius of Arif Mardin to craft music of depth and imagination. He obviously has a store of great music still to release, as he played quite a few of them at the Luminaire. He admits to finding it hard to finish songs, so we just have to wait patiently to hear what’s next from the sweet voiced Mr. Gartside.

 Scritti Politti - 'The Sweetest Girl', live at the Luminaire club in December 2007. 

I also filmed them playing 'Merry Christmas Baby', and 'Robin Hood' from the White Bread Black Beer  album. Click on the 'My Videos' button to view them.

This post originally appeared on The Word magazine blog on 16 January 2010. I have re-posted it today in honour of the final shut down of that blog. The conversation continues at a new site   www.http://theafterword.co.uk/