Song Of The Day 4/20/2014: Steely Dan - "Deacon Blues"

You Pick The Artist: With all the sudden structure (read: employment) that's been imposed on my life, I haven't been able to follow my usual creative process to quite the same extent: no more opium dens, hookah rooms, transcendental projections or basement poker games which I've been using to come up with ideas for theme weeks. So while I get these administrative affairs in order I thought I'd enlist support from my Facebook acquaintances.

Last week I posted on Facebook and asked my friends to name an artist in the comments. Out of all their suggestions I'd pick seven whose body of work I was familiar enough with, choose my favorite song of theirs, and put it up as SOTD. I got lots of suggestions and picked the first seven I could handle. I also promised them all credit on the blog like I used to in the old days when I fancied this place a sort of cyber living room for enlightened music fans. But then everyone got jobs and the City of Seattle started charging for enlightenment. What gives?

Let's go. The first suggestion came from J. Kate Herrick: Steely Dan, which is a good one because our paths have occasionally intersected in the past. I have to break my SOTD policy of going with more obscure material because I have a clear, fairly ready selection for my favorite Steely Dan song: "Deacon Blues." The lyric describes the kind of self-definition I always envisioned for myself as a man of a certain age: excellent artistic references, dashing but coolly reserved and mysterious, unable to be resisted by women in the peripheral world of suburbia, in careening phases of emotionality thanks to smoke-filled chambers, episodes with scotch and a nostalgic yearning that keeps me awake at night. I've felt what "Deacon Blues" tells of since I was twelve, for Chrissakes. Sure made Sadie Hawkins dances edgier than my dates intended.

Thanks, J. Kate! (And if you want to hit me up on Facebook, go ahead, because this is the site of the expanding man.)