Yacht Rock a Dockumentary

superchuck500 said
I can ask the few that I do know - though I'm quite sure of the answer.

And I'm not simply calling everything rock. While I agree that what is and isn't rock can be heavily subjective, I think there are basic keystones of rock - including the strength of the rhythm section, the tempo and time, and the instrumentation and subject matter . . . and certainly much of Steely Dan fits those criteria. If you can listen to those songs I posted, including Reelin' in the Years, Black Friday, etc. (and there are others) and provide a defense of the notion that it's not rock, then cheers mate - but you can't.

So notwithstanding this supposed but unidentified universe of musicians a majority of which allegedly don't consider Steely Dan rock, is there any other basis for saying these songs in particular aren't rock?

These songs have rock elements, they also have jazz elements and tempo and time would definitely not be a keystone in my definition.....because if you take a simple hard rock band or punk band tempo and time doesn't change much but if you take a Steely Dan, Yes, Genesis, etc....on most of their songs tempo and time are constantly changing.....you can still define all of that music as "rock" if you want to, but I don't....

Tone is more prevalent in defining rock than any of your keystones (strength of the rhythm section?), heavy tone, tone with certain effects....we look at music way differently....