<<< BACKWARD (“My Waterloo”) ||| ONWARD (“Hat Too Flat”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Back during the time that 11 Tracks Of Whack was new, I’d pop that CD out of the player after “Girlfriend” most of the time; I thought that most of this album’s filler were loaded up on the back end. Even when I’d occasionally [...]

Last week Boz Scaggs issued his first album since 2008′s Speak Low, another covers-dominant record, but as the name makes clear, Memphis is not a jazz crooner record like his prior two, but rather, a soul crooner record.

Al Jardine still struggles to put into words exactly what happened at the end of what had once been a celebrated 50th anniversary reunion tour by the Beach Boys. He seems, in many ways, as surprised as anyone on the outside looking in.

<<< BACKWARD (“Cringemaker”) ||| ONWARD (“My Waterloo”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** There are some things I don’t like about “Girlfriend” and other things I just love.

<<< BACKWARD (“Hard Up Case”) ||| ONWARD (“Girlfriend”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** The real charm of 11 Tracks of Whack is not how much it sounds like classic Steely Dan, but how much it distances itself from it.

<<< BACKWARD (“Lucky Henry”) ||| ONWARD (“Cringemaker”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Throw together a funky, faux-reggae pulse, some dancehall horns, a delectably angular Becker guitar solo and his light-hearted humor about a relationship based on desperation, and you have a “Hard Up Case.”

I’ve always thought of “Walk Like A Man” as a companion piece to Independence Day. Here we have Bruce looking back into the past, drawing a line all the way to when he was a little kid walking in his dad’s footprints

Don Henley says the Eagles are in the early planning stages for a possible world tour — though “it very well could be our last.” He is also readying a new solo project, his first studio effort since 2000′s Inside Job.

<<< BACKWARD (“Surf And/Or Die”) ||| ONWARD (“Lucky Henry”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** A romantic, tear-jerking ballad is the last kind of song anyone would expect from Walter Becker. “Book Of Liars” is a ballad alright, but the other two adjectives don’t apply, not when Becker is telling his subject about what a legendary bullshitter she is.

Again, I had been waiting for it and, for just a few seconds, that kick drum and moaning blues harp had me ready for … disappointment. Out came a furiously-strummed acoustic guitar to frame what felt like yet another shell of a rock song.