‘Peg’ Makes Her Big Debut, Told by Steely Dan ‘It Looks Good On You.’

They were like a skeevy Hall And Oates, who rarely left the studio, were way less attractive and whose songs chronicled the seedy cocaine-driven debauchery of 1970's Los Angeles from an outsider's sarcastic viewpoint. Also jazzy. Read on!  

Daggery lyrics skirting just outside of a story, a collection of someone's else's Polaroid snapshots, taken from the scene of the crime. You know the bits of the puzzle are supposed to fit, and then the lyrics throw in something like "drink your big black cow and get out of here" or "my back to the wall/a victim of laughing chance/this is for me/the essence of true romance" and you don't what the hell is going on.  It's that elusive quality that makes the songs of Steely Dan so endlessly keen. Also the jazzy music.

It took seven different guitarists till studio rat/perfectionists Walter Becker and Donald Fagan were satisfied. Add in the close harmony of the ubiquitous Michael McDonald and that shifting, faintly disco, definitely jazzy beat and Fagan's eternally jaded hipster voice, and you've everything you need to know about The Dan. Nothing else sounded quite like it, but you could hear their influence all over the radio. The tune hit number seven in March of 1977 and the album it came from, Aja, sold five million copies and won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical.

As for the song itself, what's going on here? Who is the man promising things to Peg, slathering her in fast compliments. Is she an actress? If so, what kind? It's all like her favorite foreign movie. And why is he keeping her pinshot with that letter? The elusive slipperiness that is Steely Dan lyrics is in full skeev here, and it's fantastic.

And also it's your K-101.7 Song Of The Day.

And, if you so desire, check out this fun video we made for you, The K-101.7 Faithful.