At ninety seconds, it’s the briefest of all Steely Dan songs, and one of only a couple SD recordings where strings accompaniment was used. But while the strings on “FM” was just a background wash, on “Buzz” it’s the main instrumental attraction of the song. As Renaissance men, Becker and Fagen dig classical music, citing Stravinsky as an influence, among others. You can find classical underpinnings in some of there more complex song constructions, but only this song sounds “classical” to my ears.
For this track, the violins more or less take on the rhythm guitar role. Mixed in with piano, bass, drums and electric piano, the arrangement makes them nearly a equal with Fagen’s vocals, adding punctuations to his lines (“maybe he’s a fairy” being perhaps a little politically incorrect line but it being 1974, probably didn’t cause much of an uproar).
In the final analysis, “Through With Buzz” puts forth an interesting idea that makes one wonder if Steely Dan could have gone a whole lot further with it. As interesting as it is, it’s too short for me to think of it as much more than a segue from “Parker’s Band” to “Pretzel Logic.”
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