Although I was a Steely Dan fan when this album came out, I wasn’t particularly interested in buying a copy, for a few reasons.

First, their previous albums all had at least one radio-friendly song to reel me in, but “Katy Lied” lacked a popular hit single. Second, the album’s artwork put me off. As a kid, I became familiar with my parent’s album collection. They had a fair number of “Hi-fi Demonstration” disks, albums created for people who wanted to show off their audio system, with well-recorded but generic music. With photos of technicians standing around a soundboard, and unrecognizable musicians in a recording studio, the back cover of “Katy Lied” screamed “Hi-Fi Audio disk!” to me. That wasn’t a good sign, and where was the band? 

In 1975, information did not flow instantaneously, as it does now. I didn’t know that Water Becker and Donald Fagen ceased live performances, thus disbanding the group to become a ‘studio collective’, but the cover offered enough hints for me to determine that I did not approve. Technically accurate recordings with generic players were for music geeks, not rock and rollers, so I passed, or rather, I delayed my purchase of “Katy Lied” for a few months.

As it turned out, I discovered that I happened to be one of those ‘music geeks’. “On first listen, I instantly knew that Katy Lied” was as good as any of Steely Dan’s previous three albums – probably better. The song arrangements exuded a technical wizardry, but the lyrics remained wry, clever and convoluted. It’s an album that grew on me more and more with each listen until it ultimately became my all-time favorite album by Steely Dan, and it remains so. Ironically, Becker and Fagen hated the audio quality of “Katy Lied” so much that they refused to even listen to their finished product. So much for my “audio disk” theory.

Featured tracks:

Black Friday

Bad Sneakers

Rose Darling

Daddy Don't Live in that New York City No More

Doctor Wu

Everyone's Gone to the Movies

Your Gold Teeth II

Chain Lightning

Any World (That I'm Welcome To)

Throw Back the Little Ones

March 1975 - Billboard Charted #13