COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY. STEELY DAN'S BEST

Or Just My Favorite?

Is Countdown to Ecstasy, the second Steely Dan album, the band's best album? I think so. Or is it simply my favorite, as it has been since 1973? And is it really my favorite, or is Pretzel Logic?

It's a matter of taste. And in criticism and commentary, taste is almost everything. In the introduction to Pirates and Farmers: Essays on Taste, author and recovering art critic, the late Dave Hickey, observes a Park Avenue matron delighting at a collection of "Electric Chairs" at an Andy Warhol exhibition at the Whitney Museum. "I like the blue one," the rich lady says. Hickey peeks inside her soul and imagines a privileged childhood and "the grim pleasure she took in social executions." It's her taste, as much as cocaine, poker, and Chet Baker were Hickey's taste.

Steely Dan themselves didn't consider it savvy to embrace Countdown to Ecstasy as their best, though they acknowledge that some entertain such feelings. In the 1990s, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen "The Original ABC/Dunhill Records…