Steely Dan / Can't Buy A Thrill, Vinyl LP abc-758 Gatefold 1972
$
19
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Description
Stock photos are not used. Photos of actual item serve as a description of sleeve condition. Look at them. There is a reflection of light on some of the vinyl ~ not a scratch.
Can't Buy a Thrill is the debut studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released in November 1972 by ABC Records. It was produced by Gary Katz and written by band members Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. The album was recorded at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles.[4]
Background[edit]
Two songs recorded during the Can't Buy a Thrill sessions were left off the album and released as singles ("Dallas" and "Sail the Waterway"). This is the only Steely Dan album to include David Palmer as a lead vocalist, having been recruited after Donald Fagen expressed concerns over singing live. Drummer Jim Hodder also chips in lead vocals on one song, "Midnite Cruiser", as well as singing the "Dallas" single. By the time recording of the next album began, the band and producer Gary Katz had convinced Fagen to assume the full lead vocalist role.
Music and lyrics[edit]
According to writers Marjorie Galen and Gordon Matthews, Can't Buy a Thrill features an upbeat soft rock style.[1] Music journalist Paul Lester said that it incorporates mambo, swing, jazz, and Latin musical elements.[5] Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that "there are very few of the jazz flourishes that came to distinguish their [later] albums", but added that the first single from the album, "Do It Again", incorporates a tight Latin jazz beat, while the second single, "Reelin' In the Years", features jazzy guitar solos and harmonies.[3] Robert Christgau described the former song as a toned-down mambo song with "tragic" lyrics about a "compulsive" loser.[6]
"Fire in the Hole", which features strident piano by Fagen, takes its title from a phrase used by American soldiers in Vietnam, and alludes to how so many students evaded the draft in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Becker and Fagen included).[7]
Cover art[edit]
The album cover features a photomontage by Robert Lockart. It includes an image of a line of prostitutes, standing in a red light area from Rouen, Normandy (France) waiting for clients, chosen because of its relevance to the album title.[8] The title of the album is taken in reference to the opening line of the Bob Dylan song "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry".[9] Walter Becker and Donald Fagen themselves commented on the album art in their liner notes to the reissued The Royal Scam, saying that that album possessed "the most hideous album cover of the seventies, bar none (excepting perhaps Can't Buy a Thrill)." The cover was banned in Francisco Franco's Spain and was replaced with a photograph of the band playing in concert.[10]
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