{"id":23557,"date":"2026-08-06T10:37:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T18:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23557"},"modified":"2026-08-06T10:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T18:37:47","slug":"daddy-dont-live-in-that-new-york-city-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/08\/06\/daddy-dont-live-in-that-new-york-city-no-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Daddy Don&#8217;t Live In That New York City No More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Daddy Don&amp;apos;t Live In That New York City No More\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/37oRZIexeWiMQ9sMDvaA48?si=4aff5353b4394d16&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3lOoiJDewd8?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t know this was Larry Carlton&#8217;s first appearance on a Steely Dan track.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Katy Lied&#8221; is the least talked about Steely Dan album, except for maybe the two latter-day twenty first century LPs<\/p>\n<p>I used to think that crown was held by &#8220;The Royal Scam,&#8221; but that album has fans, of the opening cut, &#8220;Kid Charlemagne,&#8221; which also features a Larry Carlton solo, and &#8220;Everything You Did,&#8221; ditto, and &#8220;Haitian Divorce,&#8221; with its reference to the Eagles.<\/p>\n<p>But no one ever talks about &#8220;Katy Lied.&#8221; At least not to me.<\/p>\n<p>It followed up &#8220;Pretzel Logic,&#8221; which sported the surprise hit &#8220;Rikki Don&#8217;t Lose That Number.&#8221; Yes, a surprise. The first LP, which featured David Palmer on some vocals, even had AM radio play. The second, &#8220;Countdown to Ecstasy,&#8221; had none, even though the cognoscenti believe this is the best work the Dan ever did (I don&#8217;t agree). &#8220;Pretzel Logic&#8221; featured jazz elements and was short, only 33:45, in an era when length was a badge of honor and most LPs clocked in at forty minutes or more. As a result, I heard each track more and got into stuff that might never have resonated, especially in the over an hour CD era. And since &#8220;Pretzel Logic&#8221; resonated so much, I bought &#8220;Katy Lied&#8221; upon release, but there were no hits on that, it wasn&#8217;t until two albums later, with &#8220;Aja,&#8221; that Steely Dan reached mass consciousness once again, and that was not as a result of one specific cut, but the work as a whole, an uncompromised album that owned its direction, did not care about the hit parade, was sui generis and ultimately embraced by the public.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;Katy Lied&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>At this point its most known track is probably the opener, &#8220;Black Friday,&#8221; and probably because it is the opener, because what comes next is even better:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Bad sneakers and a pi\u00f1a colada, my friend<br \/>\nStompin&#8217; on the avenue by Radio City with a<br \/>\nTransistor and a large sum of money to spend&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The magic is in how Fagen squeezes all the words in so fast.<\/p>\n<p>But I liked &#8220;Your Gold Teeth II&#8221; even more, even though people only reference its predecessor, &#8220;Your Gold Teeth&#8221; on &#8220;Countdown to Ecstasy,&#8221; which I can&#8217;t even sing in my head, but these words are indelibly printed in my brain, along with the melody:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Throw out your gold teeth<br \/>\nAnd see how they roll<br \/>\nThe answer they reveal<br \/>\nLife is unreal&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And it is. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Your Gold Teeth II&#8221; is the antithesis of the era, it was smooth when bombast ruled, subtle when over the top dominated. Music made to set your mind adrift as opposed to bang you over the head into submission.<\/p>\n<p>And the reason I know &#8220;Katy Lied&#8221; so well is that I transferred it to cassette, and drove back and forth across this great country of ours from 1974-76 with it and two dozen other tapes in the Blaupunkt of my 2002.<\/p>\n<p>And if I&#8217;m being honest, &#8220;Daddy Don&#8217;t Live in that New York City No More&#8221; is not one of my favorite tracks on the album, but I do like it, and I know it by heart, which may be why I was lying in bed, unable to fall asleep at two a.m. last night, and it started playing in in my head.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Daddy Don&#8217;t Live in that New York City No More&#8221; is anything but understated and subtle, its magic is evidenced by the guitar work of both Larry Carlton and Dean Parks, but even more, &#8220;Daddy Don&#8217;t Live in that New York City No More&#8221; just swings, in a way the music of the day did not. It gets in your head and infects you. Puts a bounce in your stride. Subtly energizes you. You can&#8217;t help but nod your head, even if so minorly it&#8217;s barely noticeable to observers. It delivers an inner confidence, you think you&#8217;re involved, part of an inside story, if not a joke. Steely Dan is not grabbing you by your throat but it&#8217;s not exactly separate, rather the listener is inside the bubble along with the band, not quite stompin&#8217; down the avenue, but with a metaphorical pi\u00f1a colada in your hand.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn&#8217;t know this was Larry Carlton&#8217;s first appearance on a Steely Dan track. &#8220;Katy Lied&#8221; is the least talked about Steely Dan album, except for maybe the two latter-day twenty first century LPs I used to think that crown was held by &#8220;The Royal Scam,&#8221; but that album has fans, of the opening cut, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-67X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23557"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23559,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23557\/revisions\/23559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}