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GO TO ARCHIVE QUESTION 1

This Weeks Question

Dear CESG-

Why is it that Steely Dan, a band named after a dildo, sucks so bad? And while we're at it, who left the design office in the 70s thinking that bringing back a ridiculously oversized Mansard roof on ANY building was a good idea??
Sincerely,
Two Pet Peeves

Dear Two Pet Peeves-

I’ll begin with education. For our readers who think Steely Dan is only a boring rock band from the ‘70s, think again. It’s also the name of a dildo from the novel Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. (And for anyone about to protest that Steely Dan’s music is not boring, I submit “Reelin’ In The Years” and “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” as exhibits A and B - arguably the musical equivalents of counting sheep.)

For the non-architecture buffs, a Mansard roof, to quote Wikipedia, is a four-sided gambrel-style hip roof characterized by two slopes on each of its sides with the lower slope at a steeper angle than the upper. (Google photos of almost any boulevard in Paris and you are sure to find an example of said roof.)

While I admit that the music of a band named after a dildo should be, at the very least, sexy, not to mention be able to make you moan, if not scream with pleasure, I think where you’re short-changing both the band and the roof is in their production and functionality. The Mansard was designed to create more usable space in buildings—the roof area as an extra floor, if you will—and who couldn’t use a little extra habitable space, especially if it comes with romantic little dormer windows?

In defense of the band, while I do think listening to them is about as exciting as watching a faucet drip, to accuse them of sucking may be extreme. For help on this point I turn to Bright Antenna’s producer and engineer, Sep V, for his professional opinion: “Scientifically speaking, at a time when high fidelity, low noise recordings were hard to produce in the analog world, what Steely Dan brought to the table was the ability to create sonically perfect music. They revolutionized the methods of recording and taking in sounds. And rarely are creative people put in a position where they can revolutionize the technology to capture their sound by exploring new technical processes.” Sep begins to walk out of the room, then pauses to say, “Were the songs cheesy and dull? Yes. But technically they were dope.”

In conclusion, I think it’s safe to say that one thing we both agree on, Two Pet, is that sonically perfect or not, we’d take the William Burroughs version of Steely Dan over the musical version any day of the week.

Shine on...