Steely Dan: The Furry Years
My 20-odd-year-old dream of meeting Donald Fagen was realized last Sunday night when he and wife Libby Titus popped in for a late night dinner where I was having a drink. Today I was poking around on their web site and found this humorous note written by Walter Becker.
Hey Craig:
I was over at Tower Records last night, buying CDs for the Radio Free Steely Dan thing - and when I checked the SD bin it was once again choked with all kinds of fake SD records — bootlegs and the same set of crummy old demos, just renamed and repackaged on all sorts of little fly-by-night labels* (list of titles below). I feel sorry for the fans who buy these stinkeroos thinking they are getting the new Steely Dan CD but I also feel sorry for us, because as you are aware we don’t get a penny in royalties from any of these old repackages. It’s just not fair - we work our butts off doing the guitar solo on “Jack of Speed” and some newbie runs out and buys “I Can’t Function.” Is there no justice in the world? In the words of Warren Beatty - is there no protest? Is there no outrage?
Look, I have an idea that will help us get our foot in the door of the booming fake SD market. My engineer at Hyperbolic Sound in Hawaii, Dave Russell, has made a childrens’ album called “The Singing Mongooses.” He sells them in stores in Hawaii and on the internet. It’s a spinoff on the old chipmunk records, with sped-up voices and all - but this time they’re not chipmunks, they’re mongooses, like the ones you see all over Hawaii - get it? They sing cute little songs about living in Hawaii. See what I mean? Dave did all the vocals and played all the instruments too, and he did a great job.
Anyhoo, sales of The Mongooses have begun to slack off a bit and, although Dave hasn’t mentioned anything about this, I couldn’t help but notice that there are several large stacks of unsold Mongoose CDs stashed in his office. My plan, Craig, is simply this: we buy out the remaining stock of The Mongoose CDs. We slap a sticker on the front of the things that says “Steely Dan: The Furry Years.” We promote the hell out of them here on the internet, sell ‘em through the website, maybe even send a couple down to Tower Records in NYC to see what happens. Of course neither Donald nor I are on the record but, what with the sped-up vocals, who’s gonna know that for sure? Nobody, that’s who. I mean, what the hell - it’ll be a rip-off, but at least it will be OUR rip-off. For a change.
W 1/19/00