STEELY DAN-GAUCHO (B+/B) 1. Babylon Sisters (A-) 2. Hey Nineteen (A) 3. Glamour Profession (C+) 4. Gaucho (B+) 5. Time Out of Mind (A-) 6. My Rival (C-) 7. Third World Man (B) Steely Dan's 7th studio album is underwhelming after a 3-year wait for a Steely Dan fan, but that's doesn't mean it's not great. 1. Babylon Sisters (A-) Babble on my fine young ones! Fagen and Becker always start their albums with a big time track and they go 7 for 7 with this steady soul song with touches of jazz, reggae and pop over a light Bernie Purdie shuffle. Like much of the album, “Babylon Sisters”’ rhythm is colored mainly with electric piano but as their career as progressed, the soulful women backing vocals of their albums have increased, at times feeling like they take over the song because they’re so prominent during important moments. Here, Fagen is hardly heard during the chorus to a point where I’m starting to think that the line “tell me I’m the only one” are the “Babylon sisters”’ naïve request despite both young women being involved with a guy who is looking for a perking up of his life with two young ones. The tale told by an guy significantly older can’t get past his own stolen innocence- “well I should know by now it’s just a spasm” and “the kid will live and learn as he watches his bridges burn from the point of no return”. Physically though, Fagen/Becker can’t resist as the “shake it” and “you got to shake it baby” refrains prove. The fight between mental and physical continues on “Hey Nineteen”. One of the best melodies here, the aroused, expanding horns through the choruses get wider and larger as the women sing “shake it” almost like those horns represent private parts stimulated. The soft skin tones of the electric piano, light reggae guitars, light Bernie Purdie shuffle all groove with the cool of the best jazz and gospel. While the bright bridge of “here come those Santa Ana winds again” cuts through the cool groove with stimulation, it’s the final verse’s lost innocence lyrics that get the clarinets, horns and saxes whining. The coda wasn’t worth all the additional mix attempts and while it is somewhat stiff for a cool groove, it mostly satisfies and is very catchy. “You got to shake, you got to shake it, you got to shake it baabbyyy!” Personally, I’d like the coda to have a hard rock guitar 2-note riff on ‘shake it’ like the guitar we hear on the closer “Third World Man” but it’s fine this way too. 2. Hey Nineteen (A) Continuing the theme of longing for a more youthful time like many of The Dan’s songs, this particular strong and catchy tune is very similar to “Babylon Sisters” in their witnessing of an age difference once the man gets older. As the obvious single and most commercial track, it’s easily one of their greatest songs and keeps the lyric clear cut-when you get older, it’s hard to relate to youth in thoughts, actions, and conversations. “Hey nineteen, that’s ‘Retha Franklin/she don’t remember the Queen of Soul/It’s hard times befallin’ the sole survivors”. That line is another triple entendre as we have the band The Soul Survivors, Fagen just mentioned a soul survivor in Aretha, but the spelling of the lyric on the Steely Dan website is “sole” as in the expression when there’s one person left alive after an accident. It’s lighthearted and heavy too like the opener, but the music has a thoroughly enjoyable and positive sound. The very first notes are interesting as it comes in hard before pausing and then continuing into a narrow cool groove with some of the rare electric guitar moments we hear on the record. This song also has plenty of electric piano, reggae guitar licks, adding synth that sounds like a harmonica on the long coda. “No Cuervo Gold” & “Make tonight a beautiful thing” are just two of the classic lines stemming from this Fagen/Becker excellence. 3. Glamour Profession (C+) The expanding horns from “Babylon Sisters” are back on the longest track, the over-7-minute “Glamour Profession”, an upbeat, but not very energetic jazz pop song with a great bass line, more prominent keyboards, and light and stiff drums put through a Wendel machine. Tom Scott brought back his Lyricon synth-horns found in “Peg”, but they’re less effective. The Fender Rhodes solo is uneventful like the coda-the third straight coda that continues the groove mostly uneventfully. The groove here isn’t worth it like it was on songs like “Daddy Don’t Live in That NYC No More” or “Green Earrings” because the horn riff here that the coda works around isn’t strong enough to get this much airtime. While the drums should be at least louder, it’s the lack of funk or jazz that makes this sound more like dance pop than it really is. It's a glamour profession/The L.A. concession Local boys will spend a quarter /Just to shine the silver bowl Living hard will take its toll/illegal fun under the sun Though the Hoops McCann and L.A. reference is Magic Johnson, the song itself really tells the tale of a heavy partier troublemaker with ‘silver bowl’ being drug paraphernalia, not Johnson, who was never known as troublesome. 4. Gaucho (B+) “Gaucho” the title track seems to be the direction that Donald Fagen took his solo debut The Nightfly as sax, electric piano, a very nasal vocal, and a pretty good melody join together for a song about an amigo not accepted because of what he’s done. The melody is pretty good throughout but it soars on the chorus though Fagen is again drowned out by female backing vocalists. The melody on “will never be welcome here” is the best part of the song. The sax and guitar break is one of the most exciting moments on Gaucho, though it’s just a break from a lot more keyboard-led rhythms. As the sleeper of their late career, this has progression for Steely Dan and ambition making the tracks feel like sonic retreads. It’s also got a late night feel between the keys and sax like much of the album. 5. Time Out of Mind (A-) One of the Steely Dan songs that I felt sounded better than I remembered, originally, I was never thrilled with this track but man the chorus is popping out as one of the catchiest hooks anywhere on the album. It’s bouncy, livelier than “Glamour Profession” with a more daring perspective lyrically. The opposite of that song’s lyric, this has a pro-drug lyric. “Tonight when I chase the dragon the water will turn to cherry wine”. With ‘chase the dragon’ meaning smoking heroin, the ‘time out of mind’ is looked at from the user’s perspective not the typical societal outsider look-in perspective. Michael McDonald is not as obvious here but Fagen continues to be overshadowed on his choruses like the most recent albums especially on this LP. David Sanborn is effective on sax and the jazz pop here is very strong melodically while not quite matching “Hey Nineteen”. 6. My Rival (C-) Bland funk guitar, uninspired groove, the album’s weakest melody, a tired Steve Khan guitar solo after a prototypical synth break and stiff horns all contribute to a song that seems to encapsulate some of the issues with the album. The drums are lifeless like on a lot of these, despite drums not being one of the more emotive instruments, but it’s the tired feel of all the individual parts including Fagen’s vocal that make this worn out. One of the rare annoying moments for me are the women vocalists cutting into the verse with the title mentioning refrain. It takes a vague opinion about a rival (real or made up) that should be hurt, upsetting or unsettling and makes it sound inconsequential. Even “Third World Man” has a couple of guitar moments that wake up a tired atmosphere, but here, everything is ordinary and below average rendering the funk rhythm unnecessary. To me, this may be their weakest song so far in their catalog. 7. Third World Man (B) One of their slowest songs, some say this drags but it’s not snail pace. With just the brief hard electric guitar bit in two sections of this world weary song about a man who served during wartime, they are the only energetic moments. The tired rhythm works on this aching melody and the lyric is one of their most earnest. With a clean and pristine and calculated production, Gaucho. A pop song with just a hint of jazz, it completes their 7 album run sounding as tired as they do. The lyric is probably the best part – “soon you’ll throw down your disguise, we’ll see behind those bright eyes.” The war veteran has some shame in his nightmare past trying to appear like he’s not seen what he’s seen. An interesting closer like many of their other albums contain. Overall: B+/B Steely Dan releasing their final album of their prime in 1980, 3 years after Aja and we find them painting themselves in a corner with just a mixing board to occupy them for seemingly a year which is as long as this album took to record with perfectionist tendencies and Walter Becker’s personal problems involved. With more genres coming and going: like post punk, new wave, the end of punk, the end of disco and more synthesizers and drum machines, Steely Dan employ their own new sounds by way of drum recording and synths that usually sound like electric pianos. The singing and lyrics are well done, but the backing vocalists take over the choruses too much at this point to be considered backing and it creates, at least to me, an emotive detachment or a lack of vocal confidence. I barely can hear Fagen and it disassociates the emotion from the song moreso than the stiff rhythms and weak drums on a few of the tracks. The emotion comes through muffled causing me to still wonder why the additional vocalists are relied on this much throughout their late catalog. Becker is good when he’s around committing some fine guitar solos to tape, but his presence feels like it’s more in the lyrics and less musically like his stamp on other albums proved. This album still overcomes the weaknesses of an inconsistent set of songs by making the peaks so high. “Babylon Sisters”, “Hey Nineteen”, “Gaucho” and “Time Out of Mind” all prove they had magic left in them but were unsure how to go about producing it. All four are your standard great Steely Dan but it’s only 4 songs. The other 3 are a mix of mediocre with possibly their weakest track “My Rival”. Ultimately, they barely pass the “great album” marker here-just by a hair because the instrumental work is very good though not creative enough, the melodies are also very good on almost everything, and despite the seeming lack of energy, their lyrical bite, and caressing style musically still has impact. They were in some ways trying to stay current and true to their own sound, so as long as their well-known and successful Steely Dan character comes through, they can produce a great album despite it being a touch below their typical greatness.
Damn, Walter Becker passes away last month, and Tom Petty dies today this month. A very sad two months indeed. The music by these great artists will live on forever...
Paul, just wanted to say you've put a whole lot of informative posts on here that I learned a lot from like this post. Tremendous catches on certain items.
And by the way, the state is called ORE-eh-gin. Third syllable more or less rhymes with the liquor "gin," but with a hard G. Not ore-eh-GONE.
Not only does Fagen sing every song (of course) but he played more keyboards on Gaucho than any Steely Dan album since the first two. He almost exclusively played synth on Katy Lied, Scam and Aja- leaving all the acoustic and electric piano parts to others. On Gaucho he actually sat behind the Rhodes and organ. Becker's lack of involvement in Gaucho is understandable, given his myriad personal problems at the time. Heh heh, probably- I suppose smoking horse is a pretty controversial subject for a song, no matter how commercial it sounds. Excellent and astute analysis as always, William Indeed- fans of boomer music have taken it in the nuts in the last four weeks. Who the hell is next?
It was meant as a rhetorical question- like my wife keeps telling me every time one of these guys moves on to the great gig in the sky, "Better get used to it."
And on that note...I think it's time to take a break from all the doom and gloom and bad craziness we've seen in the past few days and spend some time hanging out at WJAZ with The Nightfly: The Nightfly is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter Donald Fagen. Produced by Gary Katz, it was released October 1, 1982 by Warner Bros. Records. Fagen was previously best known for his work in the group Steely Dan, with whom he enjoyed a successful career in the 1970s. The band separated in 1981, leading Fagen to pursue a solo career. Although The Nightfly includes a number of production staff and musicians who had played on Steely Dan records, it was Fagen's first release without longtime collaborator Walter Becker. Unlike most of Fagen's previous work, The Nightfly is almost blatantly autobiographical. Many of the songs relate to the cautiously optimistic mood of his suburban childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and incorporate such topics as late-night jazz disc jockeys, fallout shelters, and tropical vacations. Recorded over eight months at various studios between New York City and Los Angeles, the album is an early example of a fully digital recording in popular music. The nascent technology, as well as the perfectionist nature of its engineers and musicians, made the album difficult to record. The Nightfly was well-received, both critically and commercially. It was certified platinum in both the US and UK, and generated two popular singles with top 40 hit "I.G.Y." and the MTV favorite "New Frontier". Among critics, The Nightfly gained widespread acclaim, and received seven nominations at the 1983 Grammy Awards. The relatively low-key but long-lived popularity of The Nightfly led Robert J. Toth of The Wall Street Journal in 2007 to dub the album "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces." Background Donald Fagen, born in Passaic, New Jersey, in 1948, grew up with an affinity for music. As a kid, he enjoyed listening to rock and roll pioneers Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, but noticed that as rock music gained popularity, he personally felt it lost an edge. Fagen, a "lonely" kid, then turned to late-night jazz radio shows for the vitality he felt the new music lacked. As he got older, he intended to go to graduate school and pursue literature. Instead, he was "swept up" into the counterculture at Bard College, where he met Walter Becker. They later moved to Los Angeles at the suggestion of their friend Gary Katz, and took jobs as staff writers for ABC Records. Together, they formed Steely Dan, releasing their first album, Can't Buy a Thrill, in 1972. Over the course of the decade, the group became enormously successful on the strength of the albums Countdown to Ecstasy (1973), Pretzel Logic (1974), Katy Lied (1975), The Royal Scam (1976), and Aja (1977), the band's best-selling effort and a critical favorite. They gradually shifted from performing live to working solely in the studio, making the project a revolving selection of session musicians at the behest of Fagen and Becker. Their relationship became strained during the making of 1980's Gaucho, largely due to their insistence for perfection. In addition, Becker was in the midst of a drug problem and both, they later recalled, seemed depressed. Though Fagen imagined they might "stick it out for a while," he admitted to Robert Palmer of The New York Times, in an article published on June 17, 1981, that the group had indeed separated. "Basically, we decided after writing and playing together for 14 years, we could use a change mondaire as the French say," he told Palmer. After their split, Fagen worked on a song for the soundtrack of the film Heavy Metal, which got him back in the studio. He began working towards a solo album shortly thereafter. "Working on it has been interesting. The fact that it's not a Steely Dan album has freed me from a certain image, a preconceived idea of how it'll sound," he said at the time. Fagen had hoped to record music on his own "a year or so" prior to the duo's breakup.[8] The album was originally slated to be titled Talk Radio. Recording and production To prepare to use the digital technology, the album's engineers took classes at 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Nightfly was recorded in 1981–82 at Soundworks Digital Audio/Video Recording Studios and Automated Sound in New York City, and at Village Recorders in Los Angeles. The producer was Gary Katz and the album engineer was Roger Nichols; both men had worked on all seven of the previous Steely Dan albums. Many of the musicians had also played on Steely Dan records, including Jeff Porcaro, Rick Derringer and Larry Carlton. Similar to the Aja and Gaucho albums, a large number of studio musicians were employed, with the liner notes crediting a total 31 musicians. According to a radio interview conducted with Mary Turner of Off the Record in 1983, the bulk of the album's songs came to Fagen easily. He had trouble "filling out" two more to round out the LP, though he failed to specify which songs they were. His demos for the album were mostly composed on keyboards and a drum machine and remained without lyrics, to allow for alteration when in the studio. The Nightfly is one of the earliest examples of fully digital recording in popular music. Katz and Fagen had previously experimented with digital recording for Gaucho, which ended up entirely analog. Nichols conducted experiments and found that the digital recordings sounded better than those recorded to magnetic tape The Nightfly was recorded using 3M's 32-track and four-track recorders. Nichols built a new drum machine, the Wendel II—a sequel to the original Wendel, which was employed for their work on Gaucho. The new model was upgraded from 8 bits to 16 bits, and "plugged straight into the 3M digital machines, so there was no degradation" in sound. Problems with the technology persisted in the beginning, particularly regarding the alignment of the 3M machines. Representatives from 3M had to be called to align the machines, but eventually Fagen and Nichols grew tired of this. Nichols and engineers Jerry Garsszva and Wayne Yurgelun took classes at 3M's Minnesota headquarters, and returned knowing how to align the machines themselves. "I was ready to transfer to analog and give it up on several occasions, but my engineering staff kept talking me into it," Fagen remembered. They practiced an early form of "comping" Fagen's vocals—which they called "beat[ing] the computer"—wherein he would record multiple takes and the engineers would pick the best lines from each take. On "Walk Between Raindrops", they combined bass parts playing on a keyboard bass and bass guitar. Doubling bass lines would "become common practice on many records," according to writer James Sweet. Though previous Steely Dan projects were often recorded live, Fagen opted to overdub each part separately for The Nightfly. It became enormously difficult, between this approach and the new technology, to record the album. Pianist Michael Omartian "objected strongly" when Fagen tasked him to "set the groove" of the title track on his own, with nothing but a click track. On another occasion, Fagen "demanded subtle timing differences between the left and right-hand piano parts" on "Ruby Baby". The effect he desired was achieved with Omartian and Greg Phillinganes playing together on the same keyboard. For the "party noises" in "Ruby Baby", the team suspended a microphone from the ceiling of Studio 54 – just next door to the studio they were working – and recorded one of Jerry Rubin's 'business parties.' Unsatisfied with the results, the group instead held a party in the studio by themselves and included that ambience in the song. Larry Carlton performs lead guitar on much of the album, and recorded his pieces in four days. During his time with the group, he discovered a humming sound coming from his amplifier. The engineers discovered the source on the outside of the building: a large magnet "that formed part of the New York subway system." In one instance, a strange smell permeated the studio space at Soundworks. The studio staff "gutted" the studio, removing its air conditioning, carpeting, and recording console until they discovered the cause of the smell: a deceased rat in a drainpipe. 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. Composition Note: 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. A message from Fagen in the liner notes of The Nightfly The Nightfly is more unapologetically jazzy than Fagen's previous work with Steely Dan, and his lyrics are more wistful and nostalgic than biting. Fagen aimed for his lyrics to have "as little irony as possible," and his goal was to make an album that was fun to listen to. As many of the songs come from an adolescent viewpoint, he hoped for them to maintain "a certain innocence." Walter Becker was responsible for the more sardonic elements in Steely Dan, and many writers have considered his absence the reason for the album's "warm and nostalgic" tone.Another difference between The Nightfly and his work with Becker is that it maintains a focus on a "certain period [or] motif," according to Fagen. Though Fagen hints in the album's liner notes that it is an autobiographical piece, he downplayed this notion in a later interview: "It is not me exactly. It is a composite character of myself, what I remember and people I knew. Plus, it includes my feelings in retrospect." According to Sam Sutherland, writing for Billboard, Fagen's songs "shimmer with jazz harmonies and alternately swing, shuffle or bounce to a samba." Will Fulford-Jones, in his appraisal of the album in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, considered it ironic in the sense that while it focuses on a simpler time, its production sounded like a modern Steely Dan album. Fagen held a "propensity for the perfect drum track," and multiple drummers are credited on the album, sometimes on the same song. For example, James Gadson and Jeff Porcaro are present on "I.G.Y.", with the former playing the snare drum, kick drum, and hi-hat, and the latter performing the tom-tom fills. Even still, some songs contain the drum machine Wendel II. Fagen feared listeners finding plagiarism in his lyrics, so he altered a lyric in "The Goodbye Look"—"Behind the big casinos by the beach"—as it "reminded him of a line from a well-known poem." He was also concerned the "late line" lyrics in the title song were too close to the late-night news program Nightline. Songs The album opens with "I.G.Y.", the title of which refers to the "International Geophysical Year", an event that ran from July 1957 to December 1958. The I.G.Y. was an international scientific project promoting collaboration among the world's scientists. Fagen's lyrics reference, from the point of view of that time, an optimistic vision of futuristic concepts such as solar-powered cities, a transatlantic tunnel, permanent space stations, and spandex jackets. Fagen remembered being enchanted by the prospects of a "gleaming future," and hoped to give an optimistic look back at it.[16] "Green Flower Street" is a "nod to the jazz standard On Green Dolphin Street." "Ruby Baby" is modeled after the Drifters' version of the song. For his rewrite of "Ruby Baby", he listened to several records from the 1950s to "get a general atmosphere of the period." "Maxine" references the harmonies of the Four Freshmen, and revolves around an "extremely idealized version of high-school romance." The tune was created from an unrelated drum track played by Ed Greene. Fagen felt that drum track was not working for that particular song, but was so taken with it he wrote a new song around it, which became "Maxine". "New Frontier" follows a "gawky teenager" inviting a girl back to his family's backyard fallout shelter for a private gathering. "The Nightfly", the title song, was once described by American novelist Arthur Phillips as a "portrait of a late-night D.J. in Baton Rouge, taking lunatic phone calls from listeners while silently battling his own loneliness and regret." According to Fagen, the song "uses a lot of images from the blues: that hair formula gets its name from Charley Patton, the old delta blues guitarist, and Mount Belzoni gets its name from another old blues lyric: 'When the trial's in Belzoni/No need to scream and cry.'" "The Goodbye Look" alludes to the popularity of bossa nova in the 1960s. The song is a "tale of military upheaval on a Caribbean island." The last song, "Walk Between Raindrops", has origins in a Jewish folk tale. It was the last song to be recorded, and took form "almost as an afterthought," according to writer Sweet. Artwork The back cover of the album depicts a house with a solitary window lit. Commentators took this as a memory of Fagen's youth. The album's cover artwork features a photo of Donald Fagen as a disc jockey, wearing a collared shirt and tie, speaking into a RCA 77DX microphone. In front of him is a turntable (16 inch '50s model, with a Para-Flux A-16 tonearm), an ashtray, and a pack of Chesterfield King cigarettes. Visible on the table with the record player, is the cover of the 1958 jazz album Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders (one of Fagen's favorite albums). On the wall behind is a large clock, indicating that the time is 4:09. An advertisement in Billboard shortly before the album's release described the album cover: "At 4:09 a.m., silence and darkness have taken hold of the city. The only sound is the voice of The Nightfly". Fagen appeared on the album cover despite his reclusive nature. "It was an autobiographical album so it seemed like I might as well go public with it," he said. The cover was shot in Fagen's apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan by photographer James Hamilton. Two shoots were arranged because in the first, the RCA microphone was facing the wrong direction. Gale Sasson and Vern Yenor are credited with the cover's set design. In his memoir, Eminent Hipsters, Fagen notes that the cover figure "wasn't supposed to be a stand-in for any particular jazz DJ," but noted a few personalities from the period that factored into the creation: Ed Beach, Dan Morgenstern, Martin Williams, R.D. Harlan, "Symphony Sid" Torin, and what Fagen regarded as his "main man", WEVD's Mort Fega. "He was laid-back, knowledgeable, and forthright, the cool uncle you wished you'd had." At the time of the album's release, he remembered that jazz music offered him an escape from the adults in his life: "When I saw 'E.T.,' I realized that the E.T. in my bedroom was my Thelonious Monk records. Everything that he represented was totally unworldly in a way, although at the same time jazz to me seemed more real than the environment in which I was living." The Wall Street Journal's Robert J. Toth writes, "The cover adds another layer of autobiography. On the front, we see Mr. Fagen as a crew-cut deejay on the graveyard shift. On the back is his audience, a single lighted window in a row of tract homes — or maybe the artist as a young man, drinking in inspiration." Robert Palmer, of The New York Times, continued in this line of thinking: "Inside, there's a teenager with his ear next to a portable radio. He's playing it softly, so his parents won't wake up, and he can barely make out the sounds through the static. [...] The teenager was Donald Fagen." Release The Nightfly was released on October 1, 1982 on vinyl and cassette. It was also released in its first prerecorded digital form, via half-inch Beta and VHS format cassettes issued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. In addition, a matching folio for the album was released by Cherry Lane Music in February 1983. It was first widely available on compact disc in 1984; a reader's poll conducted by Digital Audio magazine the following year ranked it among the best releases of the time, alongside Security (1982) by Peter Gabriel (another fully digital recording) and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. (1984). Early CD copies, however, suffered from being manufactured from third and fourth generation masters. Nichols discovered this when he received a call from Stevie Wonder, who told him that his CD copy of The Nightfly sounded "funny." Nichols penned an essay in Recording Engineer and Producer, criticizing record companies' apparent carelessness in manufacturing the then-nascent format. The Nightfly was reissued on various disc formats four times in recent years, each time with a multichannel mix: on DVD-Audio in 2002, on DualDisc in 2004, on MVI in 2007 and on hybrid multichannel SACD in The Warner Premium Sound series by Warner Japan in 2011. Following completion of the album, Fagen entered therapy and more-or-less dropped out of public sight. In his memoir, Eminent Hipsters, he writes that "the panic attacks I used to get as a kid returned, only now accompanied by morbid thoughts and paranoia, big-time." He remained paralyzed for much of the rest of the 1980s, "gobbling antidepressants" and nearly unable to get through each day. He came to view The Nightfly as the culmination of "whatever kind of energy was behind the writing I had been doing in the '70s." He turned down requests for television performances, opting only for radio and press interviews. Though he suggested he may do smaller concerts in New York, Fagen did not tour behind The Nightfly. He expounded upon his mental state after the album's completion: “ I wanted to do an autobiographical album, and I really put everything I knew into the Nightfly album. And after that, I wasn't really inspired to do anything. I fell into a bit of a depression for a while. I think, that like a lot of artists, especially in the music business, I was young and successful, and I was basically still an adolescent. I started to address some of these things with The Nightfly, and I got really scared after it was done; I felt I'd exposed myself in a way that I wasn't used to doing, and I kind of retreated psychologically from that. ” In 2006, Fagen maintained that "I haven't listened to The Nightfly since I made it." Critical reception The Nightfly was met with almost universally positive reviews. Billboard labeled it their top album pick in the first month of its release, calling it a "stunning debut" and praising its "typically blue chip crew of crack players and crisp digital production." David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone that "Donald Fagen conjures a world where all things are possible, even to a kid locked in his bedroom." Robert Christgau, writing for The Village Voice, gave the album an A and commented, "these songs are among Fagen's finest [...] his acutely shaded lyrics puts the jazziest music he's ever committed to vinyl into a context that like everything here is loving but very clear-eyed." Robert Palmer of The New York Times called The Nightfly a "vivid and frequently ingenious look back at a world that is gone forever. Its sound is glossy and contemporary, but references to both the spirit and the music of the years when Mr. Fagen was growing up can be found in almost every song." Subsequent reviews remain positive. Jon Matsumoto picked it for a "Classic of the Week" editorial in the Los Angeles Times in 1994, calling it an "elegant pop album," praising the album's "vivid lyrical tapestry" and "rhythmically effervescent" music. Jason Ankeny of AllMusic regarded The Nightfly as "lush and shimmering, produced with cinematic flair by Gary Katz; romanticized but never sentimental... crafted with impeccable style and sophistication." Bud Scoppa, in a review of the Nightfly trilogy (a reissue of Fagen's first three studio albums), wrote that they are "united not just by their sophistication but also by a sense of nostalgia for what has been irretrievably lost."The album was included among the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die in 2006. In 2010, Vatican City's L'Osservatore Romano selected The Nightfly as one of its official Top 10 Albums. Accolades[edit] The Nightfly was nominated for seven awards at the 25th Annual Grammy Awards in 1983, including Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical. "I.G.Y." received the most nominations, included on lists for Song of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, and Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s), while "Ruby Baby" received a nod for Best Vocal Arrangement. In addition, Gary Katz was nominated for Producer of the Year. Commercial performance The Nightfly debuted on Billboard's Rock Albums chart at number 39 during the week ending October 23, 1982, peaking at number 25 on November 13. It debuted on the magazine's all-genre Top LPs and Tapechart on October 30 at number 45; it climbed to number 11, its peak, on November 27. It also charted on Billboard's Black LPs chart, peaking at number 24. Internationally, the album charted higher: in Norway, it reached number seven on the charts. In Sweden and New Zealand, the album peaked at numbers eight and nine, respectively. The Nightfly performed poorer than Gaucho commercially; Fagen felt as though the label did not market the album properly or effectively. WBCN in Boston, inspired by the album cover, developed a promotion in which listeners could register to host their own radio show. Legacy The album remains a favorite among audiophiles. According to Paul Tingen, from Sound on Sound magazine, The Nightfly was "for years a popular demonstration record in hi-fi stores across the globe." Paul White, editor-in-chief of Sound on Sound, said The Nightfly "is always a good reference for checking out monitoring systems and shows what good results could be obtained from those early digital recording systems in the right hands."In addition to its use in recording studio tests, Clive Young of Pro Sound News called Fagen's "I.G.Y." the "Free Bird" of pro audio, claiming that almost every live sound engineer uses the song to test the front-of-house system's sound response. EQ Magazine rated The Nightfly as among the Top 10 Best Recorded Albums of All Time, alongside the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. Track listing All songs by Donald Fagen, except where noted. Side one "I.G.Y." – 6:03 "Green Flower Street" – 3:42 "Ruby Baby" (Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, arranged by Donald Fagen) – 5:38 "Maxine" – 3:50 Side two "New Frontier" – 6:23 "The Nightfly" – 5:45 "The Goodbye Look" – 4:47 "Walk Between Raindrops" – 2:38 Bonus tracks, from The Nightfly Trilogy MVI Boxed Set "True Companion" – 5:09 "Green Flower Street (Live)" – 4:24 "Century's End" – 5:31 Personnel Adapted from the album's liner notes. Musicians Donald Fagen – lead vocals (all tracks), organ (3, 4, 8), synthesizer (1, 2, 6), synth blues harp (1), electric piano (3, 4, 8), piano (6), background vocals (3, 5–8), horn arrangements, liner notes Dave Bargeron – trombone (1), euphonium (4) Michael Brecker – tenor saxophone (1, 3, 4) Randy Brecker – trumpet (1, 3), flugelhorn (3, 4) Larry Carlton – lead guitar (2, 3, 5–7), guitar (4, 8) Ronnie Cuber – baritone saxophone (1, 4) Rick Derringer – guitar (1, 3, 6) Frank Floyd – background vocals (1, 2, 6) James Gadson – drums (1), additional drums (3) Ed Greene – drums (4, 5) Gordon Grody – background vocals (1) Anthony Jackson – bass (1, 3) Steve Jordan – drums (8) Steve Khan – acoustic guitar (7) Abraham Laboriel – bass (5) Will Lee – bass (8) Hugh McCracken – guitar (1, 3, 7), harmonica (7) Leslie Miller – background vocals (8) Marcus Miller – bass (4, 6, 7) Rob Mounsey – synthesizer (1, 2), horn arrangements Michael Omartian – piano (3, 5) electric piano (5, 6) Dean Parks – guitar (2, 7) Greg Phillinganes – synthesizer (7), piano (4), piano solo (3), electric piano (1, 2, 7), clavinet (2), synthesizer bass (8) Jeff Porcaro – drums (2, 3, 6, 7), additional drums (1) Chuck Rainey – bass (2) Zachary Sanders – background vocals (1, 2, 6) Valerie Simpson – background vocals (1–3, 6, 7) David Tofani – alto saxophone (1, 4) Starz Vanderlocket – percussion (1, 2, 5, 7), background vocals (5) Production Gary Katz – record producer Roger Nichols – percussion, special effects, engineer, sequencing Daniel Lazerus – background vocals (2), engineer, overdub engineer Elliot Scheiner – engineer, mixing, tracking Cheryl Smith – assistant engineer Robin Lane – assistant engineer Mike Morongell – assistant engineer, digital editing assistant Wayne Yurgelun – assistant engineer, digital editing assistant Bob Ludwig – mastering Ginger Dettman – project assistant Steve Pokorny – project assistant Steve Woolard – project assistant David Dieckmann – authoring George Lydecker – authoring Greg Allen – design, art direction George Delmerico – art direction Cory Frye – editorial supervision James Hamilton – photography Andrew Thomas – screen design
Ah…The Nightfly. Very few albums make me smile like this one does, it’s pure pop perfection IMO. As a song cycle, it is, for the most part, a nostalgic look back at lost youth and better times- who hasn’t been there themselves? On his first solo outing Donald Fagen takes everything he learned from the last few Steely Dan records and creates a musical soundscape bound to some clever, witty songwriting. Indeed, with Gary Katz once again in the producer’s chair Fagen more or less creates a Walter Becker-less Steely Dan album: employing many of the same musicians (and some newbies) and recording and production ethos that made the first seven Steely Dan albums so special. And in some respects outdoes them…I would be brazen to say that in some ways The Nightfly is superior to at least a couple of those classic Steely Dan records, not only as far as the songwriting goes but in general execution. My only quibble with The Nightfly is the cold, sterile hyper-digital sound of the album. Like Gaucho, there’s not much warmth to be found here, but in spite of the use of WENDEL and digital recording there is a sense of humanity to be heard on these tracks, even if they were once again built up instrument by instrument in the studio. Like Aja, The Nightfly is more than just an album, it’s a complete work of art its creator should be justifiably proud of making. It’s not rock, it’s not pop, it’s not jazz, it’s not funk- it is a potpourri of all of the above, fused into something that is wholly creative and totally original. And it’s addictive as hell! Nine times out of ten as soon as the last notes of “Walk Between Raindrops” fade I can’t help but flip the record over and play it from the top again. Without fail, this album makes me smile every time. The whole family likes it, in fact. He’d never remember it, of course, but The Nightfly was my son’s introduction to music, as soon as he was home from the hospital at two days old. “I.G.Y.” – The synths instantly date the song to 1982, but given that that sound was Fagen’s trademark at that point in time it makes sense to start the album off that way. There are two drummers credited here –Jeff Porcaro and James Gadson- with one playing the main rhythm and the other overdubbing fills and cymbals (the same M.O. is used on “Ruby Baby”.) The Brecker Brothers provide horns, as they do throughout the album, but naturally the star is Fagen, relating a wistful story of the “International Geophysical Year”, a two year scientific study that took place in the early ‘60’s. It’s a song full of optimism. “Green Flower Street” – If pressed, this is probably my favourite song on the album. Love that Rhodes…Larry Carlton returns to the fold to put down a brilliantly quirky sounding guitar solo (indeed his work on The Nightfly easily rivals his playing on the mighty Royal Scam). Fagen relates a story of an interracial relationship that is definitely frowned upon by the girl’s family. There’s no resolution, but you get the idea that the narrator doesn’t seem to care. “Ruby Baby” – The second cover version to be found in Fagen’s recording career, this Lieber/Stoller standard is taken to new heights thanks to some fantastic 50’s style harmonies from Fagen and his backing singers as well as a jawdropping piano solo from Greg Phillinganes. For the bulk of the song Fagen famously sat Phillinganes and Michael Omartian down at the same piano insisting that one of them play all the right hand parts and the other playing the left hand parts. The party sounds at the end were recorded live in the studio. “Maxine” – Anybody who says “Donald Fagen can’t sing”/”I can’t stand Fagen’s voice” needs to listen to this song, a slow piano ballad that musically would not be out of place on Katy Lied or Aja. Fagen narrates this story of young love though his own multipart harmonies, harmonies that get my vote as the greatest vocal performance of his entire career. The whole song was based around Ed Greene’s drumming- a pocket groove that does not let up for the duration of the song. The drum track was intended for a different song that was abandoned, but fortunately Fagen realized the drum track was too good to waste and so he wrote “Maxine” based around it. Michael Brecker plays a killer sax solo as well. I love this song. “New Frontier” – Only Donald Fagen could write a song around the twisted, hilarious idea of a horny teenage boy trying to convince his girlfriend to engage in a tryst in his family’s fallout shelter. Clearly the song is inspired by the late 50’s Cold War nuclear threat, when nuke drills and fallout shelters were a part of American life. Musically, like “I.G.Y.” the song is based around a sequenced synth riff (oddly enough Fagen doesn’t play any instruments on this track) and Abraham Laboriel Sr’s relentlessly funky bass line. Melodically the bridge section (“Well I can’t wait till I move to the city…”) reminds me of something McCartney would write. Another long Carlton guitar solo is featured, alongside Hugh McCracken’s harmonica. “The Nightfly” – For many reasons, the title tune has a lot of personal resonance for me. Lester The Nightfly is of course a late night jazz DJ (as depicted on the album cover) dealing with the wierdos who call in to his show as well as ruminating over lost love. Indeed, you get yer fair share of weirdoes on the night shift- I’ve been doing it for the better part of seventeen years, I oughta know! Before I met my wife, the bridge section (“You’d never believe it…”) hit me like a sledgehammer the first time I heard it because I could completely relate to it- I figured at that time that true love had already come and gone from my life (courtesy of a relationship I was in for eight years) and had resigned myself to being as alone as Lester was. That changed in late 2011, of course, and the memory of the future Mrs Ohnothimagen hearing “The Nightfly” for the first time and proceeding to doing a slow bump and grind to it is indelibly etched on my brain for all time. Musically, in true Katy Lied/Aja fashion, “The Nightfly” is grounded by Michael Omartian’s piano, Marcus Miller’s jazzy bass and a fine Larry Carlton solo. The end result is exquisite pop/jazz that Donald Fagen is a master at creating. “The Goodbye Look” – A bossa nova type groove sets up this story of an American stuck on a Caribbean island experiencing some civil/p-litical unrest (Gee, you don’t suppose Fagen wasn’t thinking of Cuba shortly before Castro took over, could he? I get images from The Godfather Part II in my mind whenever I hear this song.) The lyric is literary, funny and sardonic- classic Fagen, in other words. The “Won’t you pour me a Cuban Breeze, Gretchen” aside cracks me up every time- what left field did that come out of, Donald? Steve Khan and Larry Carlton share the guitar duties here. “Walk Between Raindrops” – Arguably the ‘slightest’ song on the album, it’s based on an old Jewish folk tale. Thanks to Will Lee and Steve Jordan’s swinging rhythm section, the song sounds like a throwback to an earlier age. The studio’s organ was broken, but Fagen loved the sound of it just the same, using it for both the song’s intro and the solo. That’s Gary Katz leading the “Oh…Miami!” chorus, by the way. At this point it’s usually where I end up saying, “Oh, man, I gotta play this album again!” The Nightfly is one of those albums that goes in the casket with me when the time comes.
To me, this album is a close to musical perfection as it gets. Conversely, I have a friend who described it as 'so slick, it made my tonearm skid across the record' It's the flip-side to Gaucho, and the clearest demonstration of the gulf between Becker and Fagen as lyricists. There are many musical similarities (I've grown accustomed to WENDEL II as the primary drummer), but those sleazes, junkies and psychos on Gaucho are Walter's folks, while Donald holds onto some optimism. I've listened to the goodness knows how many times, and it's a rare album that's never felt stale or overplayed. As I've grown to know every nuance in the album, I've narrowed my favourite songs down to either 'Maxine' (surely the most romantic moment in any SD-related release) or 'The Goodbye Look' (to me, the only song that would fit on a Steely Dan album without seeming too lightweight). This is also the last Steely Dan related record that has sonic unity with the early stuff. After this, and the the enveloping, lush sound got stripped back to the dry, live-feel natural sound.
Before we start the Nightfly - I found this fascinating: Don't let the talk of "gain ranging" frighten you. This is actually super clever. 16 bits had been the dream for a long time - even the early CD players rarely had 16 bits. The 1st generation Philips CD players were only 14 bit, IIRC - to preserve linearity. Only Sony was 16 bit and they weren't very linear back then - also IIRC. So - what 3M did is take the accurate D/A and A/D converters of the time - and "gang" them to get 16 bit resolution. I can imagine it working like this - the first 12 digits of the 16 bit word are the 12 bit D/A converter. Then - using 4 bits of the 8 bit converter - if you "upped the voltage" if you will - the 4 bits used on the 8 bit converter would be mapped to what would be the voltage of bits 13, 14, 15, & 16 of the primary conversion and added to the 12 bit output... Viola - 16 bits. In fact - if they'd had the tape bandwidth - they could have gone to 20 bit this way - in 1981! I'm guessing the hard part of this would be mass production. You'd have to tune this very carefully to insure linearity between the 12 bit lower DAC and the 8 bit upper DAC. Clever clever - no wonder they liked these 3M machines. More on the Nightfly later. I gotta dig my CD Video (!) out of storage first. Here's a preview: Anyone remember these? Cheers, Paul
No question about it, Roger Nichols and co. did their homework before they started recording the album- to the point of actually taking classes at 3M to learn more about the machines and how to align them properly etc. Clearly they were leaving nothing to chance- and it shows. Even WENDEL was improved upon, and in spite of the fact that a lot of the drum parts were WENDELized ala Gaucho, at least the sound of The Nightfly doesn't end up sounding like it had all the air sucked out of it. Listening to Gaucho, I have to keep reminding myself that it wasn't recorded digitally. The Nightfly, to me indeed sounds like a digital recording, almost annoyingly so (the lack of low end, for example- you do need the vinyl to hear the bass in its true glory IMO), but I also remind myself- "Hey, it was 1982, still early days for digital recording."
I love the Nightfly and there is so much to say about it... While I think about what to say I must mention the cover which to me is as much 10/10 you can get. A really cool picture with cool colours and you can actually guess from the cover how the music will sound. Getting this on DVD-Audio and see the moving smoke from the cigarette was an additional icing on the cake.
I love The Nightfly. I'd rate it on par with four Steely Dan albums and better than three others. Favorite song: "New Frontier," with "Green Flower Street" a close second. What a shame Fagen was unable to follow it up in the '80s...
I would personally rate The Nightfly ahead of at least Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied and Gaucho, at least as far as the 'classic seven' Danalbums go. It's easily Fagen's best solo album, that's for sure. The Nightfly is one of those albums where I would like it just as much if it was the only album made by Joe Shmoe, and not Donald Fagen, lead singer/keyboardist of Steely Dan. He tried in 1984. Got about three songs in, as I recall, before his dreaded 80's writer's block reared its ugly head- he hit the wall and shelved the project. A year or so later, of course, he reunited with Walter Becker when they were working on Rosie Vela's album and started writing songs again, including "Snowbound". But let's not get ahead of ourselves
I rank The Nightfly above Gaucho, but not above any of the other SD albums released up to that point. It certainly has the SD sound down pat.
I saw Fagen in concert this past August and he opened up the show with Green Flower Street. What a fantastic show that was.
Here of course is the Nightfly t-shirt I couldn't resist buying: Donald Fagen Steely Dan The Nightfly Inspired T-shirt Homage Original Design | eBay "Est. 1982"...just like my wife
I don't think I can adequately convey my love for this album. The Nightfly is one of my all-time favorites, with its understated cover and upbeat lyrics (and I do tire of the unrelieved darkness found on the other albums) wrapped in that ultrasmooth-jazz, mid-century sound. Each song economically conveys a dynamic moment of that era; there isn't a single track I skip, from the secret-agent motif of The Goodbye Look, with its cool, canny protagonist finding his way out of a deadly situation, through paeans to the World's Fair and fallout shelters, to lonely Lester's lament, and all in between. I think Fagen even one-ups Dion with his sleek rendition of Ruby. And Walk Between The Raindrops? Talk about danceable...I can NOT sit still for that. Ohhhhhhh, MIAMI!
Just as massively played 'Rikki' was in 1974, the same goes for 'Ruby Baby' in 1983. You couldn't get through the day, if you listened to the radio, w/o hearing those songs in those years. And as good as those songs are, I always wish program directors would get a bit more curious and dive a bit deeper. Some did (way to go, WBCN in Boston), but so many just played it safe. This tangent has very little to do with the Nightfly, which I regard very highly, and a huge improvement over Gaucho. But to this day, it's just always bugged me how radio just seems to make a beeline for a certain formula, while leaving some great music largely unheard.
