. < >> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Steely Dan paid homage to Duke Ellington back on Pretzel Logic with the only cover song on a SD album, and less explictily so again with the closing track on Katy Lied, “Throw Back The Little Ones.”

Tony Bennett’s warm, inviting delivery would seem perfectly suited to seasonal music — and it is.

This was a near-total crapshoot. I’ve never heard of guitarist Pierre Dorge, but the names Billy Hart (drums) and John Tchicai (soprano and alto sax) were familiar. What I ended up with was something that is mostly straight-ahead jazz, with a fair bit of angularity. Dorge’s playing goes from the ethereal to way out there. He has a Jim Hall-type [...]

The problem any incarnation of this band has faced is getting King Crimson‘s music heard by more than its legion of die-hard fans. The appeal of the music is more in the power of the mathematical precision with which Crimson’s members undertake each piece