You betcha...I can't think of many albums IMO where every song on the album is good like I can with The Nightfly. After I first heard The Nightfly it set a whole new standard for me as far as albums go. Led Zeppelin always comes to mind as the other band besides The Beatles and the Dan where this criteria is applicable. What's more, they're also the only three bands I can think of who never made what could be considered a "bad" album. All of their records were successful.
Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. The death of Walter Becker has been a huge loss, and it is comforting to read everyone's insights and analyses, whether I agree with all of them or not! With gratitude, I thought I'd share my humble attempt at a reconstruction of a portion of the lost Gaucho track, "The Second Arrangement", utilizing various elements of the song that have become "available" in recent years. Hope you enjoy: The Second Arrangement - dvakman edit
I'm trying to psych myself up to listen to Kamakiriad and Whack this weekend That is, if I'm not too busy working on my own music
I am hoping that they undergo that sort of reappraisal from me...I haven't listened to either one in years, actually.
After this week I certainly wouldn't object to getting a little silly from Mad Mona's Gospel Candy...
Be sure to give yourself a little extra time for 11 Tracks of Whack. Walter's vocals take a little getting used to. It's not his singing ability, or lack thereof - the issue is the similarities. Basically, he and Donald have a very similar vocal range and - on the surface - delivery. It can be hard to shake the "Dan Cover Band" mindset - especially since the albums share Dan-like sonic architecture. So - for me - I had to learn to hear Walter on his own terms, and not on Donald's, if that makes any sense at all. It took me a little extra time to really get 11 Tracks, but it's worth the effort. Cheers, Paul
Hey, I love Circus Money, so it's not Walter's voice that's the issue for me, although I concede that it is an acquired taste for sure- it's the demo-like feel of some of the songs, the drum machines etc... My issues with Kamakiriad mainly revolve around the production (not unlike Gaucho, I suppose), certainly not the material (for the most part)
Oh - very cool. I'm glad you already own his albums. I wasn't sure if you were hitting him "cold" or not. It's not that I feel like I need to defend Walter. It's more like people just don't give him a fair chance. My copy of 11 Tracks is from a record store cut-out bin. Cheers, Paul
I'm still psyching myself up to listen to Whack- I'll get round to it later this week. I did give Kamakiriad a listen yesterday, I'll do my write up for that one Sunday night. Been as I'm working on a new album of my own right now, given my own decidedly "low fi" four track recordings it's quite the contrast with the digital, sequenced, WENDELized sheen of Kamakiriad
"I'm Lester the Nightfly Hello Baton Rouge Won't you turn your radio down Respect the seven second delay we use" Well - radio listeners - you're just in time for Lester The Nightfly's review of Donald Fagen's The Nightfly. In some ways - this is the ultimate reaction to Gaucho. Gaucho kind of ended up being a final statement from the original pairing of Don'n'Walt - kind of a weird goodbye to the 1970s. Now each of the Dan was free to follow their own destiny for a while. Walter went to Hawaii to regain his health and sanity - Donald ended up diving deep into the studio to tell a story of his youth and lose some of the snark he'd developed over the years. The tone of The Nightfly belies its composition. According to Wikipedia: "Sessions often stretched long into the evening; Fagen would often refer to this as 'being on the night train.' In the end, the album took eight months to record, and was mixed in 10 days." Kicking off with I.G.Y. - an acronym for International Geophysical Year - Donald immediately sets the tone of the album. Not burned out and cynical like Gaucho - but optimistic - looking towards the future. He couples these upbeat lyrics with an amazingly hummable melody - and BOOM we're in new territory. The sparkle of the brand new 3M digital system just about seals the deal. Green Flower Street follows next - one of the more story-like narratives that Gaucho attempted, but this time - it works. The melody leaps out of the speakers - and so does the keyboards. Ruby Baby - the only cover on the record - is next. I didn't want to like this one - but it's so darn infectious - I ended up loving it anyway. To me - it has a big band swing sound - brassy horns and sassy backup singers. Maxine finishes out the side - quiet slow gorgeous harmonies - and yeah - quite possibly Donald's best vocal performance(s). Teenage angst and yearning at its finest. The fact that it was created from a discarded drum track just blows my mind. New Frontier starts out side two. Burbling synth groove perfection - and one of my favorite Donald lyrics. The melody and the story are amazing - and the little touches - the tiny voice singing "Brubeck" in the background after Donald's Brubeck line - amazing. Easily one of my favorite tracks in all of Donald's work. I spent eons analyzing the words in this one: Ambush and a French Twist - I hear you're mad about Brubeck - I like your eyes, I like him too - etc. The eager young suitor as narrator. And - the promo video on the CD Video I mentioned earlier? Also terrific - and still looks amazing today - even converted to HD on YouTube. The Nightfly was a track I had never really paid close attention to - until I saw it live this year. Then - I really clicked with the lyrics. Now - it's one of the highlights of the album for me. Like reading a pulp novel - set to a great melody. And speaking of pulp novels - probably my second favorite song on the album - The Goodbye Look. For me - the narrative drive of the lyrics really makes this one. I find the melody as compelling as the other songs - but the lyrics - wow. They're kind of like the culmination of the story of tropical lowlife of Doctor Wu and Here At The Western World - only this time - he knows what's up and he has to get the hell out of that un-named country. Finally - Walk Between Raindrops. This is the only disappointing song for me on the record. And - it's not a major disappointment by any means. I like the song - it just sounds like anyone could have written it. Which is its charm, I suppose. Donald finally writes the "standard" he'd been hoping to write. Still insanely catchy - and fits perfectly - just... not quite... my jam... I guess... So - yeah - probably one of the strongest Steely Dan albums that's not a Steely Dan album. Right up there with Aja and Katy Lied for me - even though - lyrically - it's the complete opposite of cynical and bitter. (Which I do happen to normally enjoy - almost too much ) It also seemed to point to a new future for Donald. Instead - it turned out to be his curtain call for a long time. As he put it, it was the culmination of "whatever kind of energy was behind the writing I had been doing in the '70s.". Next up - 11 years of... well... not much... Stay tuned though - in a decade, with the help of therapy, Donald will beat the writer's block he's been struggling with - and finally reconnect with Walter, driving in his Kamakiri. In the meantime, I'm Lester The Nightfly - signing off... reminding you that we're... "An independent station WJAZ With jazz and conversation From the foot of Mt. Belzoni" Cheers, Paul
I loved the nightfly from the beginning and I still do. I tried to get my daughter and her husband to listen to it and I was shot down. They said it was cruise music. I was shocked they didn't like it.Too bad,their loss.An absolutely wonderful album.Possibly the best ever.Fantastic production,songs ,theme.Although not his song,Ruby Baby is out of this world and for someone of the calibre of Donald Fagen to include it on his best solo album speaks volumes.
Hi everyone, So - I put The Nightfly MVI into my player - and there's extended liner notes from Donald. I'm not sure if anyone has posted these here - so here you go. Cheers, Paul ---------- Liner Notes Back in the 20th century - 1980 to be exact - at the age of 32, I was suddenly compelled to compose and record a series of more-or-less autobiographical songs. Mr. Mo Ostin at Warner Bros. Records liked the idea enough to underwrite the project. Production and engineering would be handled respectively by old Steely Dan hands Gary Katz and Roger Nichols. I wrote this note for the album sleeve: The songs on this album represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build. I.G.Y. This was the acronym for International Geophysical Year, actually 1957-1958. The kid, the narrator, is perhaps 14, although I was actually only ten in 1958. An added "point of view" complication: the character's late-'50s innocence and idealism are blended with the more jaded outlook of D. Fagen, sitting at the keyboard in his apartment on Central Park West in 1980. Over the years, several large corporations, apparently unaware of the irony in the lyric, have tried to license this piece for use in their upbeat ad campaigns. GREEN FLOWER STREET A real street in Peking that has been transposed to a spectral Chinatown in an American city. This erotic teen dream is really just a blues with added sections à la Ellington. I might have been influenced by an old film I saw on TV about the Tong Wars called The Hatchet Man. RUBY BABY A tune by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, the ghettocentric Jewish guys who used to write and produce songs for black groups like The Coasters and The Drifters. Jerry and Mike's project, typical of its era, was to have The Drifters express the dreams of the inner-city kid living in the "land of opportunity." Supported by deep Brill Building talent, The Drifters, with their incredible lineup of vocalists (including Clyde McPhatter and Ben E. King), made some of the greatest pop music of the time. I based my arrangement on the original Drifters recording, not the later version by Dion. MAXINE This yearning pastoral is set in Kendall Park, N.J. My upwardly mobile father moved us to this barely completed housing development in 1960. The vocals are arranged, just for spite, in the slick, close-voiced style associated with The Four Freshman and The Hi-Lo's. NEW FRONTIER Now we're into the Kennedy years. Hip teens party up in Dad's backyard fallout shelter, of which there were serveral in my neighborhood. In truth, the cutest girls in my high school would rather have been taken to the city to catch Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons at the Copa. THE NIGHTFLY A portrait of a late-night radio personality of the sort I used to listen to in my adolescence. The greatest was the monologist Jean Shepherd, who told magical stories of his youth in the Midwest, played sick records, and made sure his young fans grew up with a righteous bad attitude. Other voices in the night were jazz jocks Mort Fega and Symphony Sid; and conspiracy freak Long John Nebel. THE GOODBYE LOOK These days paranoia is often more than justified and mightily oppressive. But to a feckless weekend hippie in the '60s, it seemed kind of exciting. I wrote this song after a trip to Haiti in the late '70s. A bit of the atmosphere from Graham Greene's Haiti novel, The Comedians, got in there too. WALK BETWEEN RAINDROPS This almost-sort-of-hopeful wrap-it-up tune was written for an old girlfriend from Miami. The title is taken from a Jewish folk tale in which a powerful magus-rebbi manages to get from his home to the temple without getting wet, or something like that. During the final mixdown of this album, I started to feel kind of funny, and that feeling turned into an even weirder feeling that had to do with work and love and the past and mortality and so forth. I wouldn't complete another CD until 1993. So I'm glad I made The Nightfly before a lot of the kid-ness was beat the hell out of me, as happens to us all. -DFNOTE: Some passages of the above have appeared elsewhere in another form.
I went through the first 7 albums this week, only gave each one listen but I am struck by the progression of the band. Also, I'm pleasantly surprised by the guitar work on each album, and how prominent it is. I always assumed Steely Dan didn't have much guitar, don't know why. Now I am going back to the start, with Can't Buy A Thrill, and will give each album 4 or 5 listens each, to let them sink in. Again, such a great band, glad I finally discovered them.
