I know they didn’t intend it that way, but Steely Dan lyrics are like a torture device for Japanese singers. Forget melisma. They don’t have dipthongs. Steely Dan is a dipthong factory. The song starts with while, for gosh sake. Sake, not sake, I meant.
Did Steely Dan ever dream they’d be a champion in their eyes? They said they did, obliquely, anyway. They testified under oath that angular banjos sounded good to them. But you always hurt the ones you love, don’t you? Careful what you carry is borderline cruel, dudes.
The band is uber-Japanese. No, they’re not in a cab. They apologize in the YouTube description of the video. So much face. So little time:
Sorry for a mistake in the interlude guitar solo. We will update the song soon.
It’s just another thing that Steely Dan got exactly right for the Rising Sun market. I imagine that many a session guitarist looked at Becker and Fagen and said, “Sorry for the mistake in the interlude guitar solo,” knowing full well it would be their last day on the job.
Still, here we are. Steely Dan is worshiped a bit in Japan. They’re not THE God. But they’re gods, surely.
2 Responses
I can't stands no MORE! I turned up the volume to hear it, and then down and OFF.
Japan's another funny place I spent some time in. The whisky vending machines on the street were a hoot.
They have a reverence for Americans that borders on…wait. What does it border on? Silliness, I guess. We did bomb the britches off of them in WW II, and then they turned around and admired us afterwards.
I'm trying to remember why I went there in the first place. Oh, yeah. It was a girl.