Peg

Peg, in this song, is, or appears to be an aspiring actress, Jade, from Equations, as is seen here in Scud, is an established actress. However, in presenting the two of them, however much I might value Scud, or Equations, I myself am acting, and with an ulterior motive. You see, the drama in the mid-Aughts was around Syd, but it was also around these guys. Nights of drama, in which, phone-call by phone-call, e-mail by e-mail, Mike Land and  I planned our next move, always with Steely Dan being spun on the side. Not to mention taking the Dan stuff to Henniker and making it resonate with Henniker Heat. So, with Syd first on the list, the second thing to be spun at the Highwire was Steely Dan. The real-life Jade to emerge in the mid-Aughts was like to tangent to the Jade in the book. "Didn't mean to get scarlet on your hands, son." There it was— the entire period of wanton mid-Aughts excess in Philadelphia was shaken loose with a sense that all that session-musician slickness, artfully obfuscating all that intense warpage, put us on the surface the right way. Then, all the quicksand beneath us could stay manageable for a while. And back to Peg, and the sense that Syd with a Donald Fagen chaser might seem like an odd bet, but everything in Aughts Philly was an odd bet, wasn't it?