The best live albums offer something familiar along with something new. Unfortunately a number of live albums give you one or two studio recordings or dress up old ‘B” sides. Steely Dan’s Alive in America falls somewhere in the middle. Most of the songs have never been played live before and a few never played in the arrangement on the CD. The song, “Book of Liars” takes a different spin. Not only is it not a Steely Dan track, but it’s the first song on a Steely Dan CD to feature Walter Becker on lead vocals.  At first it’s inclusion would seem like a unusual choice, but not really. In the 90’s Becker promoted his first solo work, 11 Tracks of Whack and though he perceived the audience had a lack of interest in his material ( he referred to the “procession to the concession”), the inclusion of the new songs added additional validity to the Steely Dan tour .

Actually, this version of Book Of Liars seems a perfect fit for the live SD outfit. The original drum machine was replaced by great rim work from Peter Erskine. Warren Berhardt’s elegant solo replaces the jarring solo on the original version. Perhaps the highlight of the song is Bob Sheppard, who literally takes center stage with his soprano sax to begin the song, then switches to his tenor for the middle solo. A great way to highlight this Becker only composition.

There aren’t many elements in common between the Steely Dan live show of 1974 and the live show on 1994 . However, one element in common between those tours is the song Bodhisattva. The song, rumored to be one if not the only Steely Dan song composed solo by Donald Fagen ( though still credited to Becker/Fagen), was alleged to have been written as a song to jam live. It seemed to have served that purpose in 1974, giving the SD guitarist ( particularly Denny Dias) an opportunity to stretch. The version on Alive In American seems  to serve the same purpose. Georg Wadenius gets the call to play the first solos and he given it a more rock, less bebop feel than the original. Walter Becker acquits himself just fine on the end solo and drummer Dennis Chambers covers the same space as Jeff Pocaro and Jim Hodder and makes it fit. There are a few new touches ( like the 3 piece horn vamp), but Bodhisattva proves what we already know…Steely Dan rocks. 

Preston Frazier is a bass playing lawyer living in Chicago. His First Steely Dan exposure was to a 8 track cassette of Pretzel Logic. He can be reached at slangofages@icloud.com or Preston Frazier@slangofages on Twitter.