Major Dudes

''An indispensable compendium for Steely Dan fans'' The Wire

At its core a creative marriage between Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan are one of the defining and bestselling American rock acts of the last half-century, recording several of the cleverest and best-produced albums of the ''70s - from the breathlessly catchy Can''t Buy a Thrill to the sleekly sinister Gaucho.

In the ''90s they returned to remind us of how sorely we had missed their elegance and erudition, subsequently recording Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go during the following decade. They have sold close to forty-five million albums.

''A lot of people think of them as the epitome of boring ''70s stuff,'' novelist William Gibson said in 1993, when Becker and Fagen toured for the first time in nineteen years. ''They don''t realize this is probably the most subversive material pop has ever thrown up.''

Now fully embraced by the ''