donald fagen, "the nightfly" -- c or d?

I think the title track would appeal to Alex in NYC for its mention of "WJAZ."

"What a beautiful world this will be, what a glorious time to be free". There's a huge difference in the way he sings this than the way he would on a Dan album. Free of that world-weary cynical tone (which I love, but it's a refreshing change).

I think 'New Frontier' was the first Dan-related song I ever heard.

kamakiriad just doesn't measure up.

Re. "The Goddbye Look": It's about Cuba right (or Cuba is the most obvious ref. point)? There are some Dan-esque obscurantist bits in that song. What is "the goodbye look" anyhow?

Actually listening to this again before work, the title track isn't perfect. His singing is unusually strained and the station-ID-as-chorus thing gets a bit tiresome.

And as for irony, there is a gentle sort of irony to some of the songs, about kids of the '50s expecting a better world. But I'm not so sure that Fagen has closed down all possibility of this ever happening, or at least he doesn't sing as though he assumes these expectations had been thwarted something fierce.

...OK I know "the goodbye look" comes from Ross MacDonald but the book that bears this title doesn't seem to bear much resemblance to the scenario related in the song. Or does it?

Maybe DF was dreaming of a jazz station down south. Even as a teen, Fagen *knew* NYC because it's so close to the suburbs where he grew up.

Anyway, this album is my top 5 favorites of all time. Such great songs. Nothing Fagen has done since can come close.

I'm not sure if I was first introduced to it through "IGY" on Top 40 radio or the great "New Frontier" video on MTV.

I always associate "The Nightfly" with another classic from 1982/83 --Joe Jackson's "Night and Day". Seems to me "IGY" and "Steppin Out" were on the radio around the same time. My first intro to jazz, if you like.

And no, "True Companion" is not on "The Nightfly." Youy have to buy the "Heavy Metal" soundtrack.

"...a touch of tuesday weld..."

by the way what's the '7 second delay wheeze'.
and is 'java' just like normal coffee or is it
something else ?

I don't think it's the kind of look you want to see.

Cause tonight they're arranging a small reception just for me
Behind the big casino by the sea

I know what happens
I read the book
I believe I just got the goodbye look

So I gather it's kinda like the "party" they threw for Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.

Years ago some firends of mine a/b'd this record with a Steely Dan record, Aja I think/. It seemed outrageously clean and smooth by comparison, like of the pair, Fagan was the real obsessive compulsive when it came to studio technique. I remember him saying once that he couldn't use keyboard strings, as their tuning characteristics made him tense.

I think they both were, really. And 1982 has a lot to do with that Spyro Gyra production, too.

"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 north-eastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e. one of my general height, weight and build."

I've been a Steely Dan fan for quite a few years, but never thought to investigate the solo albums. Downloaded 'IGY' today and man, it kicked my ass. What a wonderful, heartbreaking song. Can the other songs on Nightfly possibly be anywhere near as good as this?

-- paranoia is the hipster's disease (theundergroundhom...), October 22nd, 2004.

And producing China Crisis.

Really really interesting - just to hear all of the parts broken down...

search 'Junkie Girl', 'Book of Liars', 'This Moody Bastard', 'Down In The Bottom', 'Lucky Henry'. Destroy 'Cringemaker', 'Girlfriend'.

If people seriously can't find Kamakiriad, i'll put it up on slsk myself; if you're serious about the Dan, you should hear it.

and the rosie vela album!

Best song ever? I rather think it might be.

What? That was Purdie? No way

https://youtu.be/zx_4fwOfRXI
DOnald explains the world as he knows it in ‘93

New live album is perhaps unnecessary, but I'm enjoying it!

it is good! ditto the new steely dan live album — yeah, unnecessary, but it sounds damn good.

ha, yeah the Dan one is up next after I finish this one.

Donald Fagen during James Hamilton's album cover photoshoot for his 1982 masterpiece, 'The Nightfly' pic.twitter.com/PLbuxfeUxI

— Barney Hurley (@barneyhurley1) October 14, 2021

Donald Fagen 'Yamaha KX88' keyboards store poster, 1983 pic.twitter.com/uZ5CluSyl8

— Barney Hurley (@barneyhurley1) October 15, 2021

lolz

Trying to imagine how differently The Nightfly would have been received if that shot above had been the cover. People would have reviewed it like it was Fagen's version of The Idiot.

Straight to VHS slasher vibes

Does Don ever smile?

His lips sometimes curl up to show his teeth, does that count ?
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xytRyW-HpC4/TxDDY2DV2QI/AAAAAAAAHjI/yeQw3oeq5ns/s1600/donald.jpg

lou chang/her brother/he's burning with rage
louuu chaaang buuurns wiith rage

hey we saw you from across the bar and really dig your vibe. can we buy you a drink? pic.twitter.com/YAFRQ8FZwV

— ｂｏｓｓ (@bosscrood) September 6, 2022

creepy af

With all due respect to Walter, some days this is my favorite Steely Dan album.

And tonight they're arranging
A small reception just for me

I like it a lot too. I like all of Steely Dan's albums, but I do favor their first four - The Nightfly is not far behind.

I really really love “true companion” from the (year before’s) heavy metal soundtrack too. Gorgeous chord progression

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9wbumIKJJ0

Steve khan going hard

Never heard this! Thank u brim

This is nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzECG54oTZo

it's times like these where I really see what Don was going for with this

Recently it blew my mind to find out that Steve Khan was lyricist Sammy Cahn’s son.

Didn’t know that either, kind of wild. My college band mate took lessons with Steve Khan as a kid.

every time i put this album on, i like it just a little more, and yet am repulsed just a little more by the unbelievably stiff rhythm tracks. the ultimate in plodding click-track sophistipop. the credits claim there are human drummers all over this thing, but my ears can't tell. the songs are still so good, but i think it'd be much more widely appreciated if it weren't for this. when i first bought it, my partner (raised from childhood as a Dan fan) rejected it it immediately as elevator music.

what about believable stiff rhythm tracks

I think that drummers playing to a click was a pretty new thing at the time and they hadn't really developed ways to make it feel more alive. Even Kamakiriad still felt too clock-like to me.

Doc I agree. Fun to imagine this with Gadd and Purdie instead.

They had been using some kind of "drum computer" since Gaucho, though (which is was one of the many obstacles to completing the recording), so I don't know that the rhythmic stiffness was new to Fagen's solo career.

It was definitely there with Gaucho, but maybe just handled a bit better. "Glamour Profession" is probably the closest to having that metronomic sound, although it still sounds smoother than anything on The Nightfly.

"I.G.Y."
Best song ever? I rather think it might be.

Certainly the best tribute to Mr. Osterberg since "Jean Genie"

Drummers had been doing the click for awhile. That was one of the production tricks the Tulsa musicians around Denny Cordell etc. would do. They would cut the drums synching up with early rhythm boxes to keep steadier time.

'hey nineteen' sounds the most metronomic / artificial to me in the original album run

Yeah, to me, Gaucho is the "believable stiff" that Alfred invokes! It took me a while to warm up even to that; the opening seconds of Babylon Sisters portend a far drier record than the one that's coming. Now it works for me; there's something interesting in the tension between the locked-down rhythms and way life or anguish burst through, like the solos on Third World Man. And you also have things like Time Out of Mind which feel very rhythmically "live" even though I'm sure they were painstakingly assembled.

there's something interesting in the tension between the locked-down rhythms and way life or anguish burst through

Bingo. And you cited my favorite SD song.

Pretty sure it was ILM posts, possibly yours, that really turned me on to it!

I think the robodrumming works on “new frontier”, how it plays with the syncopated synth rhythm.

Also, the drumming on the title track is funky as hell.

"I.G.Y."
Best song ever? I rather think it might be.

I had no idea what it was referencing until I read Greil Marcus's explanation (because I was too lazy to look it up myself):

I remember first playing the record and realizing both that I hadn’t thought about the International Geophysical Year (“I.G.Y.“) in decades, and how thrilling its affirmation that anything was possible as soon as the breakthroughs it promised—all in one year—came in.

Every generation probably had a moment like that, where suddenly the possibilities seemed endless and optimism for the world was boundless (or for the less inclined, at least more justifiable). I think that comes through on that track, and it feels all the more poignant whenever I hear it now because I can't imagine ever believing in a shred of that optimism ever again, not after the last eight years.

Fagen said in interviews at the time that The Nightfly was free of cynicism, but certainly all the songs come with a dose of irony about the attitudes of twenty years prior. Forty years after that, even that distancing isn't enough to make that mindset clear to us now, and I wonder what a new Fagen song about the Kennedy era would be like.

Irony and cynicism aren't the same imo

That's the point, but I wonder would the irony curdle into cynicism with further historical perspective.

The vocals and especially the music is so generous that I think not.

I won't have a word said against this album...from top to bottom this album is a thing of absolute wonder..:peak 1982 Warner Bros glory...best drum programming ever committed to (digital) tape...don't think there's been an album since to match its sheer perfection...stiff??...WTF??

I have always enjoyed this album, never loved it. New Frontier was a very prominent radio hit when I was a kid and connotes a sort of innocence for me that is probably beyond the song itself.

I appreciate that others have since raised their concerns about the drums. For me it’s not just the timing from the Wendel sampling drum machine Roger Nichols built for Gaucho—the perfect symbol for the band’s obsessiveness, really—but also the drum sound itself, which is brittler here than what we heard on things like Hey Nineteen and Glamour Profession. This is likely due to the era more than anything, as is the prominent use of synths and sequencers.

All that said, almost every song here is memorable and full of warm little details – multitracked background vocals, bubbly synthesizers. This is something that can’t be said for the increasingly angular and skeletal jazz charts he has spent the vast majority of his career composing thereafter.

Put another way, Fagen and Dan would never again write songs this tuneful or arrangements this playful and maximalist. So there’s that.

Some bottom end missing from the mixing or something. Wish it sounded more like Aja

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzaA3h5sI6A

Here is Patti Austin singing “I.G.Y.” in 1988 with Donald on the DX-7

And David Sanborn on sax. Nice version.

I played this earlier today thinking the opener "I.G.Y." would get me nostalgic over a genuinely optimistic era when progress and science were both embraced, but instead it felt like a vision gone horribly wrong...

"Standing tough under stars and stripes
We can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear
The future looks bright...

A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision..."

What a fucking week.

Well, yeah