Upon first listening to Gold, the first
“posthumous” release from Steely Dan (that is, until their reunion
in the ’90s), I found myself asking, “What was the purpose of this
disc?”
Originally released with only eight songs (which is
the version I’m working off of) and later expanded to 12 (including
two solo tracks from Donald Fagen), this disc eventually seems to
be an add-on to the 1979 release Steely Dan’s Greatest Hits,
tacking on additional selections from Gaucho (which hadn’t
been released at that time), Aja and a few other of the
earlier albums.
Now, had these tracks been worked into Steely
Dan’s Greatest Hits, the whole thing would have probably melted
together into a very enjoyable album. But, on its own, Gold,
despite having some great tracks, feels like a totally unnecessary
release.
Come on, anyone who was thinking about picking this
disc up undoubtedly had Aja and Gaucho in their
collections; buying a disc whose eight tracks included five from
those two albums (or, in the case of “FM”, from that period) smacks
of overkill. Admittedly, I never get tired of hearing “Hey
Nineteen,” “Black Cow” or “Deacon Blues,” so I guess getting
another chance to hear these tracks is worth it minimally. (If I
really want to get snippy, though, I could whine about why “Black
Cow” and “Deacon Blues” weren’t on the Greatest Hits
set.)
The fact that lesser tracks from The Royal
Scam (“Green Earrings”), Katy Lied (“Chain Lightning”)
and Countdown To Ecstasy (“King Of The World”) are included
on this makes Gold feel even more like a filler piece, or
merely an add-on to Greatest Hits. If anything, maybe this
was the label’s way of dealing with the then-recent decision by
Steely Dan (or, more correctly, Fagen and Walter Becker, the
brain-powers behind the band) to call it a day. Whatever the
reason, this disc smacks of greedy marketing.
If the label did anything wrong, it rushed
Gold out too early; in three years’ time, A Decade Of
Steely Dan, one of the first compilation CDs (according to
All-Music
Guide) to hit the market, would be the de-facto best-of
collection, making Gold that much more unnecessary. The only
reason I choose to mark it as high as I do is for the presence of
three of Steely Dan’s best songs in their catalog. Other than that,
Gold is less of a greatest hits package than it is a
marketing release of fool’s gold.
