During my daily workouts, while I'm ellipticalling (or whatever one calls walking/jogging/stairclimbing/pumping on the so-called elliptical machine), I often listen to my favorite Steely Dan album, Alive in America, the live album of their tour umpteen years ago (1993-94) when they proved 1) they weren't dead yet, and 2) that they were not just a studio band (actually, they had toured in the early days and still do, but it became a legendary truism that "Steely Dan never tours"). They visited the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in The OC, and I snapped up a couple of tickets for us as quickly as they went on sale. There's just something about their music I've always connected with, and I was screaming my lungs out with cheers at this outdoor concert venue when they performed, particularly on their hi-test version of "Bodhisattva."
Like many live albums, Alive in America is peppered with the crowd's reactions--at the beginning of a song, when the sneaky intro gives way to a few recognizable bars and sends the audience into paroxysms of joy, and at the end, to reward the band for besting the concertgoers' embedded memories of the tune.
At the end of "Bodhisattva," I am thoroughly convinced after many listenings and won't be dissuaded otherwise, my own "whoo-hoo" cheer during a nanosecond lull in the other cheers, can be distinctly heard on this album, digitized for posterity.*
Until next time...
Rick
*(Alas, according to their notes on SteelyDan.com, the album's "Bodhisattva" was recorded at a concert in Detroit. So what! That doesn't prove a thing. I know they mixed it with the Irvine concert crowd response.)
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