Can't Buy a Thrill

Money can't buy a thrill of excitement and pleasure of re-hearing a long forgotten favourite piece of music that instantly puts you back in the time and place with the people when you first heard it.

According to Wikipedia 'Reelin' In The Years' is a song by jazz-rock band Steely Dan from the album Can't Buy A Thrill. How we love to categorise and how we get it wrong. Personally I wouldn't describe Steely Dan as a band never mind jazz-rock. The combined musical output of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker that went under the name of Steely Dan was performed by a revolving cast of session musicians, some of whom may have also done some jazz-rock. Mark Radcliffe hates jazz-rock but he likes Steely Dan and 'Reelin' In The Years' seemed an appropriate title for a musical memoir covering every year of his life (up to 2009/2010 anyway).

This book is an easy and nostalgic read for music fans of a certain age. I didn't even mind him taking the mickey out of jazz-rock combos like Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra and a few other sacred cows like the Stylistics because I reckon they can look after themselves and I'd rather hear an amusing savaging than bland sycophantic praise any day.

Radcliffe's radio style sometimes suffers from a stuttering rambling delivery but with the written word it all comes out with a flourishing aplomb. Nonetheless there is something lazy about this book (and I don't just mean his inexplicable praise, as a drummer, for 4/4). It is just a list. A top ten. This is what happened in Year X, this is what happened in Year Y and so on. I'd really have liked a bit more of a free-wheeling approach to building up some themes about growing up in the North, the social and political landscape and, crucially, greater depth of musical analysis. This isn't that book. It's a book everyone could, and possibly should, write about their lives and music. Better still make a mixtape/playlist.

Afterword

For fans of trivia, and I don't think you would have got this far unless you were, he berates the specialist music show. Ironic then that he should end up taking over the Folk Show but if someone is going to pay him to do it or to write/buy/read this book then why not? He is a lucky, lucky man. Shame about the hat though.