Have you heard any of the pre-Dan demos - pretty much everything is on "Becker and Fagen: the Early Years" and/or "Android Mountain" - or the soundtrack You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It? The demos are honestly nothing special for the most part, unless you're a hardcore fan, but there are a couple of tracks that didn't make the cut into the SD discography.Steely Dan - especially Donald Fagen, who I think writes most of the music - are amongst the greatest songwriters.
Those early albums were fantastic.
I also rate very highly the first two Donald Fagen albums, and Walter Becker's first one (11 Tracks Of Whack). His second one was terrible...