What are your thoughts on this bands' music? Try not to critique from a drummer's perspective. Just from a listener enjoying or disliking what they created musically.

Imho, Steely Dan (Walter Becker and Donald Fagen) are one of the best song-crafting duos from the USA. Period. I think they rival Lennon/McCartney in terms of song-craft, yet with their own, obviously more jazz-influenced style. I fell in love with their music about seven years ago and everytime I hear it again I'm amazed at how great it is. Just my opinion. I want to hear what other community members think about Steely Dan's music.

My all-time favorite group. Can't do a road trip without "Deacon Blues" going in the CD player.

They're incomparable. Their control of their craft and their truly huge musical vocabulary is unique.

The tunes are @$%# good, too.

Always loved the music, never saw them live.
Would love to catch them live.

i like a lot of their music. never bought their albums when i was growing up, but i knew a lot of the tunes all the same. so much of that stuff is really timeless. great mood music. i really have a thing for that tune 'peg'.

great band with a great players--especially the drummers!

Ditto. 

always loved them from the get-go.

back in the day, i guess i really didn't know why. maybe it was because their recordings sounded cleaner than anything else on vinyl in its time.
 
fave album? not a popular choice, but gaucho. though, of course, this band is really about tunes, not albums, necessarily, with the possible exception of aja.

one caveat: women, at least most of the ones i know, do not care for steely dan. why? i don't know. too cold? too clinical? but i think it's always been a white guy thing kind of band. just like a miata is a girl car.

These days I can't listen very long to music for just "great drumming" or for that matter just "great players". The songs have to be good to keep my attention.

Granted there is a bit of work when trying to be rounded and of value as a pro in listening to or learning music, regardless of whether you like it or not.

Steely Dan is one of those bands that happily combine songs I like with excellent playing and often engineering landmarks. 'Aja's' already been mentioned but also Fagen's solo 'The Nightfly' album represent many things of what is good in popular music. They also include state of the art playing and somewhat timeless engineering and production.

Personally I've been listening alot to one song off of the Fagen 'Morph the Cat' album called 'Brite Nightgown'. Just cool and funky with very humorous lyrical direction (inspired by DF reading W.C. Fields biography!).

Count me in as a fan of Becker and Fagen songs. They just happen to also have some fantastic pop drumming as well.

Jim

Beckers voice...
I always thought it was good on the albums.
Live was a very different story - let me tell you. 

You had to ask, I could go on and on about them.  They are probably, hands down my favorite of all time.  Complex, complex, complex music, look at some of their chartings, unbelieveable.  Plus any band who has Larry Carlton playin with them on tour and in the studio can't be all that bad.  I have recently purchased a box set cd of theirs, 4 cd's and I want to say 60 some songs on it, every Steely song imagineable.  I also have a DVD, the making of the Aja album, I recommend watching this, you will be amazed at how much they went through to get this compilation done in the studio, amazing.