if you trouble to read between the splotches that decorate the back cover like nocturnal emission stains on a paper bag: "Hear the raw urgency of Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter's solo on 'Change of the Guard' and savour his tasteful utilization of the spinal vibrato. Or hear how he displays the cunning of the insane on steel guitar in 'Fire in the Hole.' "

"Tristan Fabriani is a collective persona of Donald's and mine," explains Walter Becker. "The notes were intended to amuse and to ... cast an oblique light on the music."

Obliquity is Becker's style. He wears smoked glasses, accenting a somewhat gnomish face marked by high cheekbones and an upswitched nose. He has the fool, slouched posture and crooked, potentially menacing smile of somebody who was probably asarcastic outcast in junior high school. Chortling soundlessly he can assure a reporter, "I think it important in a story of the sort you're doing to have some misspellings." When he wants to end a conversation he may sign off by cracking, "Don't tell me about it, I'm tripping."

The Tristan Fabriani name, says Becker, dates back to the days when he and Fagen, who write all Steely Dan's material, were working in Jay and the Americans' backup band. "We got tired of being introduced as Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, so we had them announce us as Gus Mahler and Tristan Fabriani.

"I hasten to point out that I am not particularly fond of the music of Gustav Mahler."

Donald Fagen is an ironist too. The pinched rectangular face of