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I love Steely Dan so much and I'll never get the hate. I used to talk about doing a short story anthology inspired by Steely Dan songs (yes, one appeared in 2019, but I was literally talking about this in the '90s/early aughts) and decided against it because the whole point, it seemed to me, was having one's own private narratives for the songs. I don't want to know your version of, say, Katy Lied, I've got my own.

But my favorite/bittersweet Steely Dan memory was when Two Against Nature was released in 2000. This is going to sound like the Boomer'iest Boomer thing ever, but two colleagues and I set out that day to go to what we still called the "record store" on our lunch hour to buy the CD on its on-sale date, chatting happily there and back about how much we loved Steely Dan. One of those colleagues was Rob Hiaasen, killed five years ago in the mass shooting at the Annapolis Capital.

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I miss going to the record store the day something is released. I once camped outside for a midnight release of a CD. Wild!

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you just reminded me of that time my friends & I spent the night outside a suburban record store on ogden ave, waiting in line to buy tix the next morning for the first lollapalooza.

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I saw Steely Dan in 1973 at Tampa Stadium. They opened for Chicago. Remains to this day the best concert I've ever seen.

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The book is just terrific, isn't it? Looking forward to tomorrow's event!

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