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damontWay back when my LiveJournal account was pretty new and DW didn't exist yet, I made this post, which mentioned the following: "The best sound crew I've heard in almost three seasons was definitely the crew for Steely Dan last year. Whatever they are paid it should be tripled. You could hear *everything* from the brick concession stands, which is the absolute worst place on the site for hearing a concert."
This is relevant now, because of what I found out just this evening. I was almost completely off social media and news for nearly a week in and around Labor Day weekend, so I had not heard until now that on September 3rd, Walter Becker (founding member of Steely Dan) passed away.
Becker and Donald Fagen, the two core members of the band from 1975-81 and of the revived band from 1993 until Walter's death, were pretty much perfectionists in a lot of ways; one of which HAD to be picking the folks to run their sound at live shows. From that 2003 show I can also tell you that, even in what were the early days of their nostalgia-tour era, Becker's musicianship (along with Fagen's and the rest of the band) was superb.
Steely Dan's sound was one of a number of MAJOR influences on me during my formative years of really listening to music; they were getting airtime even on the stations my parents listened to back in the early 1970s, and once I really got going with the modern music scene in the summer of '76, Steely Dan was one of the groups that I really couldn't get enough of. And as many of you know, I tend to be attracted first to the music and the sound, actual lyrics lagging far behind; so groups like Steely Dan were likely to be high in my ratings. Walter Becker, for all that he stayed in the background most of the time, was a big BIG part of that.
RIP Walter Becker. You will be missed.
This is relevant now, because of what I found out just this evening. I was almost completely off social media and news for nearly a week in and around Labor Day weekend, so I had not heard until now that on September 3rd, Walter Becker (founding member of Steely Dan) passed away.
Becker and Donald Fagen, the two core members of the band from 1975-81 and of the revived band from 1993 until Walter's death, were pretty much perfectionists in a lot of ways; one of which HAD to be picking the folks to run their sound at live shows. From that 2003 show I can also tell you that, even in what were the early days of their nostalgia-tour era, Becker's musicianship (along with Fagen's and the rest of the band) was superb.
Steely Dan's sound was one of a number of MAJOR influences on me during my formative years of really listening to music; they were getting airtime even on the stations my parents listened to back in the early 1970s, and once I really got going with the modern music scene in the summer of '76, Steely Dan was one of the groups that I really couldn't get enough of. And as many of you know, I tend to be attracted first to the music and the sound, actual lyrics lagging far behind; so groups like Steely Dan were likely to be high in my ratings. Walter Becker, for all that he stayed in the background most of the time, was a big BIG part of that.
RIP Walter Becker. You will be missed.
