Saturday Whatever Lyrics: Steely Dan --- Deacon Blues

Fridays were for funk lyrics, and I think I've already mined most of the good lyrical content available, you can only wax poetic about P-Funk so many times. But Saturday's a different day, so until I bore of this project, Saturday will be Saturday Whatever Lyrics.

The main thing will be the YouTube link. I'll only do songs that have something interesting on YouTube available.

Fagen and Becker discuss the song's structure at length in the segment, it's interesting watching the sausage get made. The video of this is a bit jarring at first, as it uses establishing shots of NYC, and the usual establishing shot of peering through the Brooklyn Bridge peering back at Manhattan is used (which means the main thing you see in the shot is the WTC). This song should be everything I hate. It's deeply cynical, over produced, and very, very late '70s

But just cause I hate everything this song represents doesn't mean I hate the song. The craft is too good, the song is light and lush (still very chordally and rythmically complex), yet the lyrics are deeply bitter, not bittersweet, the only sweetness in the song is musically, lyrically there's only bitter.

Here's another clip of just the song, played underneath a slide show of Renoir paintings. I don't get the connection, either, but it looks good, so I include it. Really, the styles couldn't be more different, Renoir's visual style doesn't seem a good fit for a deeply bitter cynical song, but the discordance between sight and sound becomes something either separately wouldn't be, so I heartily approve. Here's a video that uses images keyed to the lyrical content, it's way too literal for my taste.

But, back to those deeply cynical lyrics:

This is the day
Of the expanding man
That shape is my shade
There where I used to stand
It seems like only yesterday
I gazed through the glass
At ramblers
Wild gamblers
That's all in the past

You call me a fool
You say it's a crazy scheme
This one's for real
I already bought the dream
So useless to ask me why
Throw a kiss and say goodbye
I'll make it this time
I'm ready to cross that fine line

CHORUS:
I'll learn to work the saxophone
I'll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whisky all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

My back to the wall
A victim of laughing chance
This is for me
The essence of true romance
Sharing the things we know and love
With those of my kind
Libations
Sensations
That stagger the mind

I crawl like a viper
Through these suburban streets
Make love to these women
Languid and bittersweet
I'll rise when the sun goes down
Cover every game in town
A world of my own
I'll make it my home sweet home

CHORUS

This is the night
Of the expanding the man
I take one last drag
As I approach the stand
I cried when I wrote this song
Sue me if I play too long
This brother is free
I'll be what I want to be

CHORUS