Citizen Steely Dan

Citizen Steely Dan is a four-CD box set compilation album by Steely Dan, released in 1993. The set is a collection of all of Steely Dan's albums (up to 1980) in chronological order, and also contains a non-album single ("FM (No Static at All)"), a non-album B-side ("Bodhisattva (Live)"), a rare compilation track recorded during the sessions for The Royal Scam but released only on the 1978 Greatest Hits ("Here at the Western World"), and a previously unreleased demo of "Everyone's Gone to the Movies" (a song from their 1975 album Katy Lied).

Contents

• Steely dan do it again
• Track listing
• Disc one
• Disc two
• Disc three
• Disc four
• Personnel
• Songs
• References

The set is not, however, a complete compilation of every track released by Steely Dan up to 1993. Missing are both sides of the band's 1972 debut single ("Dallas" b/w "Sail the Waterway"), neither of which has ever been re-issued on CD. This is due to the band's dislike of the songs and refusal to allow them to be reissued.

Until 1998, this was the only place to find the remastered versions of the Steely Dan albums. However, because the albums were split up irregularly amongst the discs (in some cases with the track order changed), the remastered studio albums were issued in 1998, albeit without bonus tracks.

The first pressing features "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" using the single edit of the song. This version omits the percussive opening for the song. The second pressing of the boxed set features the version from the album although it was reissued without any information noting the change.

Glen Meadows remastered the CD set from the digital masters archived by Donald Fagen, Gary Katz and Roger Nichols in 1982. These digital tapes were prepared because the original analog tapes were in very poor shape. The earliest CD mastering for all the Steely Dan albums in 1985 used these digital tapes but MCA inexplicably used deteriorating analog masters for all later CD pressings until the 1998 remasters. This information was discovered by Roger Nichols in 1991 when he was asked his opinion of the Mobile Fidelity Gold reissues of Aja and Gaucho. Nichols discovered that the "Gaucho CD was even a different speed, about a quarter tone sharper" when compared to the original CD that he was involved in.

The 1993 boxed set remaster was the first time since the originally issued CDs that the albums used the correct source tape.