Major Dudes

A “thoughtful, loving, and thorough portrait” of the pioneering musicians behind Steely Dan, featuring interviews, essays, reviews and more (PopMatters). At its core, Steely Dan is a creative marriage between guitarist Donald Fagen and keyboardist Walter Becker. It recorded several of the cleverest and best-produced albums of the 1970s, making them one of the most successful bands to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Major Dudes collects some of the smartest and most revealing interviews Becker and Fagen have ever given, along with intelligent reviews of—and commentary on—their extraordinary songs. Compiled by leading music critic Barney Hoskyns, Major Dudes features contributions from the likes of Sylvie Simmons, Fred Schruers, and the late Robert Palmer; plus rare interviews and reviews of Steely Dan’s early albums from Disc, Melody Maker, and Rolling Stone. With an introduction by Hoskyns and an obituary for Walter Becker by David Cavanagh, Major Dudes is essential reading for any rock afficionado.

"Steely Dan was a somewhat unusual band that still inspires unusually strong devotion in its fans. Formed in the late '60s in New York, they released seven albums between 1971 and 1981, two of which were nominated for a Grammy. Part of what's unusual about them is that each of those albums was made by a different group of musicians--founding members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had no issues swapping players from record to record in order to get the sound they wanted. The band stopped touring in 1974, so the recording studio was the only place they needed their collaborators. Those recordings are legendary, especially among vinyl enthusiasts, for their exquisite production. The precision was necessary, in part, because Steely Dan played with form more than most bands, mixing elements of other genres--especially jazz--with pop and rock. And the lyrics are also distinctive. As the authors put it in their proposal, Steely Dan's songs are "exercises in fictional world-building. Each song features its own cast of rogues and heroes and creeps and schmucks, lovers and dreamers and cold-blooded operators, all tempest-tossed by the ill winds of the '70s." This book consists of sixty-some essays, each devoted to one character, and each essay is accompanied by a painting of the particular character that serves as a jumping-off point for the piece, with additional spot illustrations scattered throughout"--

Stephen H. Lekson offers a lively, provocative thesis, which attempts to reconceptualize the meaning of the monumental 11th-century structures in Chaco Canyon and its importance to the understanding of the entire Southwest.

William Gibson continues the visionary Sprawl Trilogy that began with Neuromancer in this frighteningly probable parable of the future. A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfected—out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties—some of whom aren’t remotely human....

This volume provides comprehensible, strength-based perspectives on contemporary research and practice related to navigating mistakes, errors and failures across cultures. It addresses these concepts across cultural contexts and explores any or all of these three concepts from a positive psychology or positive organisational perspective, highlighting their potential as resources. The volume further discusses the consequences of errors and failures at individual, organisational and societal levels, ranging from severe personal problems to organisational and collective crises, perspectives how those can be turned into opportunities for contingent and sustainable improvement processes. The book shows that there are significant cultural differences in the understanding, interpretation and handling of errors and failures. This volume provides practical guidance for transcultural understanding of mistakes, errors and failure through new models, ideas for self-reflection, therapeutic and counselling interventions and organisational change management processes. This book is a must for researchers and practitioners working on mistakes, errors and failures across cultures and disciplines!

Want to amaze and astound party guests with witty repartee, dazzling erudition, and conversational savvy? "The Portable Pundit" covers questions like: What is that whole Director's Cut thing about? Into which Circle of Hell might you place Homer Simpson? How can I use adjectives like "Proustian" and "Joycean"? What influence did Plato have on the film The Matrix? From Art History to Philosophy, Wall Street to the Internet, "The Portable Pundit" has it covered.

'An indispensable compendium for Steely Dan fans' The Wire At its core a creative marriage between Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan are one of the defining and bestselling American rock acts of the last half-century, recording several of the cleverest and best-produced albums of the '70s - from the breathlessly catchy Can't Buy a Thrill to the sleekly sinister Gaucho. In the '90s they returned to remind us of how sorely we had missed their elegance and erudition, subsequently recording Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go during the following decade. They have sold close to forty-five million albums. 'A lot of people think of them as the epitome of boring '70s stuff,' novelist William Gibson said in 1993, when Becker and Fagen toured for the first time in nineteen years. 'They don't realize this is probably the most subversive material pop has ever thrown up.' Now fully embraced by the 'Yacht Rock' generation - semi-ironic devotees of '70s Southern-California slickness - Steely Dan no longer polarize lo-fi punks and studio geeks in the way they used to. In 2001 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Major Dudes collects some of the smartest and wittiest interviews Becker and Fagen have ever given, along with insightful reviews of - and commentary on - their extraordinary songs. Compiled by Rock's Backpages editor Barney Hoskyns, the book's contributors include Charles Shaar Murray, Robert Palmer, Ian MacDonald, Bud Scoppa, Penny Valentine, Fred Schruers, Sylvie Simmons and Michael Watts.