steely dan - the royal scam (hybrid sacd)

Name: steely dan - the royal scam (hybrid sacd)
SKU: CAPP 138 SA
Price: 43.50 EUR
Availability: InStock

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4 days + Delivery

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43,50 EUR

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Description

Description

MEDIUM HYBRID SACD
CONDITION sealed
CD JEWEL CASE M mint
BOOKLET M mint
SERIALNUMBER No
LIMITED Yes
MISCELLANEOUS Stereo, playable on all CD Players
MUSICIAN HOMEPAGE steelydan.com

Donald Fagen – keyboards, lead vocals, background vocals
Walter Becker – guitar, bass

Paul Griffin – keyboards
Don Grolnick – keyboards
Larry Carlton – guitar
Denny Dias – guitar
Dean Parks – guitar
Elliott Randall – guitar
Chuck Rainey – bass
Rick Marotta – drums (3,8)
Bernard Purdie – drums (all except 3,8)
Gary Coleman – percussion
Victor Feldman – percussion, keyboards
Chuck Findley – trumpet
Bob Findley – trumpet
Dick "Slyde" Hyde – trombone
Jim Horn – sax
Plas Johnson – sax
John Klemmer – sax
Venetta Fields – backing vocals
Clydie King – backing vocals
Sherlie Matthews – backing vocals
Michael McDonald – backing vocals
Timothy B. Schmit – backing vocals
Garry Sherman – horn arrangements

kid charlemagne - 4:34
the caves of altamira - 3:31
don't take me alive - 4:13
sign in stranger - 4:21
the fez - 3:59
green earrings - 4:06
haitian divorce - 5:46
everything you did - 3:56
the royal scam - 6:32

Steely Dan's platinum-selling fifth studio album The Royal Scam, was produced by Gary Katz and was originally released by ABC Records in 1976

The Royal Scam features more prominent guitar work than the prior Steely Dan album, Katy Lied, which had been the first without founding guitarist Jeff Baxter

Guitarists on the recording include Walter Becker, Denny Dias, Larry Carlton, Elliott Randall and Dean Parks

The Royal Scam was certified platinum-selling and peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard 200

The album is known for its intricate arrangements, sophisticated musicianship, and cynical lyrics, and is considered one of the band's most musically adventurous works

The album features a diverse range of musical styles, from the funky and up-tempo "Kid Charlemagne" to the Latin-influenced "The Caves of Altamira" and the jazzy "Don't Take Me Alive"

The lyrics explore themes of deception, corruption, and disillusionment, with characters that are often morally ambiguous or outright villainous

In common with other Steely Dan albums, The Royal Scam is littered with cryptic allusions to people and events both real and fictional

In a BBC interview in 2000, Becker and Fagen revealed that "Kid Charlemagne" is loosely based on Owsley Stanley, the notorious drug "chef" who was famous for manufacturing hallucinogenic compounds, and that "Caves of Altamira," based on a book by Hans Baumann, is about the loss of innocence, the narrative about a visitor to the Cave of Altamira who registers his astonishment at the prehistoric drawings

Musically, the album is notable for its use of complex harmonies and intricate instrumental arrangements, with the band utilizing a wide range of instruments including guitars, keyboards, horns, and percussion

The production is polished and professional, with a clean and precise sound that emphasizes the band's technical proficiency

Rolling Stone, in its review of the album, described The Royal Scam, as Steely Dan's "mostatypical record, possessing neither obvious AM material nor seductive lyrical mysteriousness

It also contains some of their most accomplished and enjoyable music

"... the overall feeling of Scam is one of just that: tension

There is little of the self-confident gentleness that dotted Pretzel Logic, less still of the omniscience that suffused Katy Lied

The Royal Scam is a transitional album for Steely Dan; melody dominates lyric in the sense that the former pushes into new rhythmic areas for the group (more "pure" jazz, semireggae and substantially more orchestration than before) while the verbal content is clearer, even mundane, by previous Dan standards," said the Rolling Stone review

Nearly every song on Scam concerns a narrator's escape from a crime or sing recently committed, the review continued

"Becker and Fagen have really written the ultimate 'outlaw' album here, something that eludes myriad Southern bands because their concept of the outlaw is so limited

Rather than just, say, robbing banks ('Don't Take Me Alive,' in which the robber is a 'bookkeeper's son'), Becker and Fagen's various protagonists are also solipsistic jewel thieves ('Green Earrings'), spendthrift divorcées ('Haitian Divorce') and murderously jealous lovers ('Everything You Did')"

AllMusic gives the album 4.5 stars, saying the best songs on The Royal Scam, "Kid Charlemagne" and "Sign in Stranger" "rank as genuine Steely Dan classics"

The album cover shows a man in a suit, sleeping on a radiator, and apparently dreaming of skyscraper-beast hybrids The cover was created from a painting by Zox and a photograph by Charlie Ganse, and was originally created for Van Morrison's unreleased 1975 album, Mechanical Bliss, the concept being a satire of the American Dream

In the liner notes for the 1999 remaster of the album, Fagen and Becker claim it to be "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill)"

RECORDING November 1975 - March 1976 at ABC Studios, Los Angeles and A&R Studios, New York City
ENGINEERING Roger Nichols, Elliot Scheiner, Barney Perkins, Brian Gardner (mastering engineer)
LABEL ABC
RE MASTERING Bernie Grundman
RE RELEASED 2025
AVERAGE RATING 4.76 Stars out of 5
MADE IN USA
STYLE Jazz / Rock
AVAILABLE as long as inventory stock

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