Far Out There Character Soundtracks: Claire

Back before everything totally blew apart and fell off the rails and whatever, the last Character soundtrack I’d posted was for Ichabod’s nitpicking boss Sophia, so it’s only natural that we should jump back in with her gun-totting, chain smoking, bespectacled assistant Claire. Like with her boss, this one was simultaneously a bit challenging and really freeing. On the one hand, we don’t actually see Claire that often, and when we do she’s all business, so there’s not a lot of pre-established character information to build off of. But that’s also the fun part: not only can I just assign any random musical taste I want in these situations, but often that one bit of extracurricular character information can actually be very helpful in establishing how the rest of her personality develops. If a character likes thing A, I can build backwards from there that she probably also likes thing B and dislikes thing C. Thus, exercises like these character soundtracks become invaluable tools for working out the personalities of rarely seen characters like Claire. It’s totally not just me getting really into Steely Dan over the past year or two and wanting an excuse to make a jazz rock playlist.

Well, okay. Maybe just a little, ‘cos Claire is totally a Steely Dan fanatic.

Why that, beyond my previously mentioned need to have SOMEBODY like them? Could it be that a person who would take up a career as a Nitpicker would feel a kinship with a band as notoriously anal retentive and detail obsessed as Steely Dan? Am I drawing a connection between the classic visual stereotypes of jazz musicians and Claire’s penchant for suits and chain smoking? Or maybe the connection is the Dan’s reputation for displaying a rather misanthropic sense of humor and Claire’s proficiency with deadly firearms? Alternately, could I enjoy the contrast between a musical style conventionally regarded as “laid back” and a character who could totally break me in half? Perhaps I’m just making an unfair assumption that a band often described as “wordy” or “literate” would be popular with people wearing thick-rimed glasses? There’s probably a little to all of those, though considering that we just saw Sophia’s musical tastes revolve around new age/smooth jazz/contemporary instrumental stuff, so maybe nitpickers in general just tend to prefer really slick, finely-crafted studio music?

In any case, singling out Steely Dan for Claire’s soundtrack is a bit like talking up Motörhead on Bridget’s. There’s fourteen songs here, and The Dan only actually did four of them, the rest are just songs that follow the same general stylistic template. And that actually makes for a tough criteria to follow, not because there aren’t very many other artists that try, but because there’s TOO many, or at least too many instances of recognizable, successful band’s name being evoked in places where it really shouldn’t. Virtually any AOR/Yacht Rock song with a piano playing a sufficiently jazzy chord has been compared to Steely Dan at one point, an it doesn’t help that they’re one of those rare acts to be popular and long-lived enough to acquire a fanbase divided against itself. You know how there’s “Pink Floyd fans” whose favorite song is “Another Brick In The Wall” or “Money” yet have absolutely nothing in common with “Pink Floyd fans” who love “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” or “Echoes”? So too people who profess an affinity for Steely Dan because they like “Reelin’ In the Years” or “Do It Again” are in no way guaranteed to like anything off of Aja or Gaucho. This fractured, divided sense of what “sounding like Steely Dan” even means makes it a genuine challenge to sort through everything that’s received that label over the years and pick out the handful of songs that actually meet YOUR criteria. Which, if you think about, might be the MOST Nitpicker-friendly thing about Claire’s musical preference yet. What good Nitpicker WOULDN’T relish a chance to get into arguments over the most insignificant details and call everybody else wrong over and over? Yeah, let’s go with that reason.

And it’ll come up a lot, too, since the four Dan songs that turn up on Claire’s list are NOT those Classic Rock Radio staples I mentioned up above, but rather the slicker, jazzier stuff that more rock-oriented listeners are prone to dismiss. The playlist is bookended by two tracks off of Aja: opening with the title track and ending with “Deacon Blues.” I’ll confess, “Aja” is mostly just there because it sounds so good, an intricate and deceptively varied summary of the sound the rest of the songs go on to explore. “Deacon Blues” is a lot more straightforward both musically and lyrically, presenting an image of a schlubby suburban looser indulging in a fantasy of being a hip jazz cat. On the one hand, and Nitpicker would probably have an interest in dissecting the flaws of an obvious poser, Claire definitely would, but in a weird way the fact that “Deacon Blues” ultimately ends on a rather sympathetic, self-aware note might register with a Nitpicker as well. I think Claire would have a perverse respect for a completely pathetic dweeb who knowingly dives headfirst into embarrassment just because he wants to.

As for the other two tracks, we have “Doctor Wu” off of Katy Lied and the title track of Gaucho. “Doctor Wu” is another song that’s as much here to maintain the tone as anything, both in sound and lyrical obtuseness. “Gaucho” is probably the most purely jazz-sounding piece on the soundtrack, to the point that I’d like to make a joke about it sounding like a TV show theme. Unfortunately, federal courts already determined that “Gaucho” sounds so much like Keith Jarrett’s “Long As You Know You’re Living Yours” that he was awarded a co-writer’s credit, so I think he’s also awarded 50% of this joke. Anyway, “Gaucho” is all about a heated argument that, somehow, managed to be maddeningly oblique about exactly what the situation is or the relationship between the parties. Again, a Nitpicker would love prodding at a conceptual puzzle like this, and Claire in particular seems like the sort who’d love rubbernecking at someone else’s emotional breakdown.

Well, that’s all the Steely Dan, so what of all the other artists involved trying to sound like Steely Dan? Of the repeat offenders on this list, Pages turns up the most with three songs. A session player dream team built around Richard Page and Steve George, Pages never had much success during its late-70s “heyday,” but its key members would go on to 80s success (and terrible Train lyric infamy) as Mr. Mister. I’m mentioning this trivia because, honestly, there’s not much to say about two of those three songs: the title track of 1979’s Future Street, and "The Sailor’s Song” off the same album. They just both have a cool classic rock meets jazz chords sound, “Future Street” in particular boasting a nice funky shuffle and some inhumanly slick multi-tracked vocals. The interesting pic is the third track: “O.C.O.E (Original Cats of the Eighties)” off of their self-titled 1981 album (confusingly, totally unrelated to their self-titled 1978 album). Along with having an especially opaque title, “O.C.O.E” is a study of an aging west coast hipster who, after spending the 70s as some kind of new age guru, is looking to keep himself relevant in the new decade. I can totally imagine this guy trying to pick up chicks in the club from “Deacon Blues,” and it’s another example of the kind of withering character dissection I can imagine Claire enjoying.

Makoto Matsushita appears with two tracks, though that’s a bit of a technicality since they’re parts 1 and 2 of the same song; “Business Man.” Matsushita is this playlist’s sole representative of City Pop, the 80s-era Japanese trend I’d honestly hoped would crop up a bit more. As the intersection of the immaculate sheen of early J-Pop and jazz fusion, there out to be a lot of overlap between the sounds of City Pop and Steely Dan, but the all important bad attitude just doesn’t manifest enough to give all that glossiness some bite. “Business Man” is a nice exception, with it’s depiction of the stereotypical hapless salaryman fitting in nicely with the character study theme of this playlist (let’s imagine this is what the “Deacon Blues” guy does as his day job). Of course, I can’t exactly dissect the lyrics as well as some of the there songs here, what with my general inability to speak Japanese, but there’s enough token English scattered about to convey the general idea. And besides, the important thing is that I get my token Japanese song on as many of these soundtracks as possible!

Another two-shot artist on this list is German band Lake, who were never much of a thing here in The States, and it was our loss because they were a pretty dang good amalgamation of all the best strands of 70s studio rock. From Electric Light Orchestra to Foreigner to ABBA, Lakes had an immaculate concoction of just about everything going on. Heck, “Red Lake” featured here has as much to do with Supertramp and The Doobie Brothers as Steely Dan. “Highway 216” is a bit more of an obvious Yacht Rock groove, and I must confess that, again, both their inclusions are more because they just sound good rather than any deep insights into Claire’s character.

The one-off inclusions are where things really start to get interesting, though, starting with the atypically funky “I Wouldn’t Wanna Be Like You” by The Alan Parsons Project. While the lyrics are a bit too general to fit Claire’s specific taste for cringe, the general “Here’s why you suck” motif is the sort of thing most Nitpickers could get behind. What’s more, the fact that it’s off of the I Robot concept album means it can be takes as an android’s critique of humanity, and you just KNOW those nerds would be down with a scifi concept like that.

Possibly the most off-brand item on the list is also the most recent” “The Lottery” by indie-funk trio The Stepkids. Arguably owing more to that whole neo-lounge/exotica sound I went on and on about in Mariska’s soundtrack, “The Lottery” seems like it’s about to break the whole vibe of Claire’s playlist when it starts with some freaking record scratching. Get past that disorienting intro, though, and I think the song itself still manages to fit the broader feel of the song selections. It’s more the Frank Zappa breed of jazz fusion than the Steely Dan breed, but that’s still slick and immaculate in tis own way. What’s more, the lyrics’ focus on the exploitative randomness of the celebrity machine is another nice fit for Claire’s outlook.

The same goes for arguably the best known artist here apart from the Dan, Joni Mitchell. I’ve often seen Mitchell’s late 70s, Hissing of Summer Lawns-era work mentioned on “if you like Steely Dan, you like this” lists, though I’m not sure how much I agree with that. I see where they’re coming from, with all the Jaco Pastorius collaborations and all, but I think most of it’s too airy and raga-like and hippy dippy to fit the same vibe. Maybe put her on an “if you like David Crosby” list instead (though, ironically, the song “Morrison” by Crosby’s band CPR was in contention for this list). The major exception present here is “Furry Sings The Blues” off of 1976’s Hejira. Not only is it a bit more musically focused than a lot of that album, but it’s lyrics also fit into the unintended theme of this soundtrack. A depiction of aging blues musician Furry Lewis bitterly watching the gentrification of Memphis’ Beale Street, it could be taken as the ugly, broken-down reality that the tourist poseur of “Deacon Blues” naively romanticizes. Sure, it’s about blues not jazz, but it’s more human wreckage for Claire to gawk at, and if we’ve established nothing else other the course of this soundtrack, it’s that Claire finds that fascinating.

Last up, we have probably the most musically straightforward song on the entire soundtrack: “I’m Not In Love” by 10cc. There’s an argument to be made for 10cc being sort of the English version of Steely Dan, admittedly without much of a jazz influence but very heavy on snarky humor and obsessive technical professionalism. Both these qualities definitely come through on “I’m Not In Love,” both in the legendarily massive sea of overdubs and the “doth protest too much” lyrics. While said lyrics are nowhere near as dense as some of the other word salads on display here, any Nitpicker would probably still get a bit of a thrill from picking out the obvious ACTUAL meaning of a song that technically says the opposite. There’s also an interesting paradox in having such an allegedly anti-romantic track on the soundtrack for one of the few members of Far Out There’s roster who is not only confirmed to have a romantic partner, but is actually MARRIED. I… don’t really know how to spin that little detail, I only just now noticed it. Hey, I think I did a pretty impressive job of fishing for bits of characterization from a character I don’t has said more than two dozen lines over the past decade. Let’s just pretend that last stumble didn’t happen, okay?

(So, there’s kind of two “volumes” of these Far Out There Soundtracks. The first volume came into being around the same time as the old Pandora stations, being the initial set of song seeds those channels were based on. I’ve had some version of these soundtracks on my iTunes playlist for years and years, tinkering and fine-tuning them all the while. Those are the ones we started out with, the big ol’ main characters. Then there’s the OTHER playlists, ones I didn’t even start putting together until LONG after the first batch were mostly established. Heck, a few of the ones in volume two didn’t even start to come together until after I’d started working on the blog posts for volume one. All that to say: the playlists are starting to get less and less “final” as I write these. Claire’s didn’t actually have “I’m Not In Love” or “Highway 216” included when I started typing out the intro, and the later actually STILL isn’t on the version of the playlist that’s on my phone right now. Since I’m the only person who actually cares about these soundtracks to begin with, I’m sure I’m also the only one who’d notice if I ever felt the need to go back and ‘fix’ some song choices I later changed my mind on… BUT IT MATTERS TO ME, DANG IT! What WOULD matter to anyone actually wanting to listen to these playlists from outside the US is the videos themselves, and I had to fudge things with one of them. While I could find region-free videos for MOST of the songs, “Future Street” by Pages only had a single, official YouTube Music posting, which is locked down in all the usual places YouTube Music is inaccessible. What’s weird is I could find plenty of OTHER tracks off of the Future Street album, including the posting of “The Sailor’s Song” included here, but no love for the title track. It’s just wonky to me. Oh, and also “I’m Not in Love” is presented with video from a live TV appearance by 10cc. The audio’s still from the album, but now you get to enjoy it in the presence of some GLORIOUS 70s leisure suits. Get a load of those collars, friends. On a sufficiently windy day, I’m pretty sure you could achieve flight with those bad boys.)

Claire's YouTube Playlist