Steely Definitions

I've been re-listening to Steely Dan lately. Quite an amazing band, of course. Lots of musical currents flowing in there. Jazz, pop, R&B, rock, funk. Great songwriters. "Peg", "Reeling In The Years", "Do It Again", "Dirty Work" (which I hadn't even realized was their song--sung by the guy who left after their first album), "Babylon Sisters", "Hey Nineteen", "FM". Albums populated with fine musicians. Only in the '70s would such a band as Steely Dan find success on mainstream radio. One more reason why I prefer the '7Os to this retched '80s nostalgia kick we're now suffering through. Ugh.

Kind of makes me wonder what kind of musical beast would have resulted had the Steely Dan bus collided with The Band's bus on some supernatural bayou highway in 1974, and when they emerged from the mystic bog, the two groups had been transmorgrified into one entity distilling the essence of each. A melting pot of Becker and Danko and Helm, with an easily imagined amalgam of Fagen/Manuel singing at the piano. And into that broth, throw in Garth Hudson! Oy!

What a cauldron of music! Imagine! The mind reels [in the years, Jim?]!

So Anyway.

I think partly I was inspired to re-dig the Dan by listening to Wilco's cover version of "Any Major Dude Will Tell You". A fine song and a fine cover version (perhaps a pale hint of what the abovementioned transmorgrified beast from the mystical bog might possibly sound like?). But this line in that song always intrigued me:

Have you ever seen a squonk's tears?
Well look at mine

Which obviously led me to ask "What the hell is a squonk?"

And, of course, to answer such questions, there's only one place to turn:
The Steely Dan Dictionary!

According to the good Dan book, a squonk is: A mythical woodland creature, originating in Pennsylvania. Squonks spend much of their time crying due to their ugliness, and when captured, will dissolve into a puddle of tears. Also the subject of a song on the 1976 Genesis album A Trick of The Tail.

Although I rather prefer the definition I found through a google search (dig the Latin name):

squonk n :
Lacrimacorpus dissolvens. A warty, loose-skinned, butt-ugly (and hence wretchedly shy) creature of the northern Pennsylvania hemlock forests, that when sought plays possum by dissolving in a surfeit of melancholy.

So, mystery solved.

For more on the Squonk, look here.