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2/1/2008 Date: Thursday, February 7 1/9/2008 By ROBERT J. TOTH The Wall Street Journal One of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces has turned 25. Often, an album rises from regular best-seller to classic status because it captures the temper of its times. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," for instance, simply sounds like 1967, trippy and disarrayed. But "The Nightfly," the 1982 album from songwriter Donald Fagen, gives that standard a twist. Instead of evoking the early '80s, Mr. Fagen captures a different time -- the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, when America was starting to simmer but the '60s hadn't arrived in earnest. Along the way, he pulls off an unmatched bit of alchemy, blending satire and affection without letting one overwhelm the other. If the album doesn't ring a bell, don't worry. "The Nightfly" has sold more than a million copies and shown enough staying power to get a soup-to-nuts anniversary edition in November from Reprise Records. Yet it never quite made itself inescapable. If you've heard one of the songs, it was probably either "I.G.Y.," a catalog of World's Fair forecasts about the future, or "New Frontier," a frantic, jazzy number about a "summer smoker underground" in a fallout shelter. You might also know Mr. Fagen, who has a long history of misdirection. As the front man for the band Steely Dan, he co-wrote a decade's worth of hits that hid snarky lyrics under silky harmonies and slick musicianship. "The Nightfly," which arrived a couple of years after the band broke up, was something else altogether. For once, Mr. Fagen stopped being cryptic and opened up to his audience. As he wrote in the liner notes, the songs "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." 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. If so, he didn't forget a thing. Throughout the record, Mr. Fagen draws on obscure corners of American pop for his musical settings -- stuff that got pushed to one side by the British Invasion and then trampled underfoot by the harder sounds of the late '60s. But he's not simply aiming at pastiche. The music always reinforces his themes of innocence and experience. In "New Frontier," for instance, he uses cocktail-party jazz to set the story of a would-be ladies' man on the make. The music sounds as frenetic as the teenage hero's hormones, and its deliberately cheesy tone matches the kid's skin-deep sophistication. Likewise, "The Goodbye Look" uses a campy tropical backdrop -- the kind a teenager would hear on his parents' cha-cha records -- for a tale of romance and revolution on an island paradise. Mr. Fagen throws in some vocal homages, as well. "Maxine," a story of hand-wringing college romance, gets decked out with soaring harmonies worthy of the Four Freshmen. The lyrics are just as poignant and precise. Take the opening number, "I.G.Y.," which pokes fun at space-age daydreams. "By '76, we'll be A-OK," the narrator promises, enjoying undersea trains, wheels in space and "Spandex jackets, one for everyone." But Mr. Fagen's vocals never make it seem like he's sneering. He seems to be joking about his own dashed hopes as much as everyone else's, and he clearly has a lot of affection for those forgotten tomorrows. "New Frontier," meanwhile, turns JFK's famous phrase into a metaphor for the mysteries of sex and adulthood. The song follows a wannabe hipster through a party in his parents' bomb shelter, as he chases a girl "with a touch of Tuesday Weld" and imagines a future that would get big laughs in "The Graduate." "I can't wait till I move to the city," he confides, "till I finally make up my mind to learn design and study overseas." Obviously, Mr. Fagen is having some fun at his hero's expense. But he also seems to have fond memories of just how sexy a vacuum-packed world could be. The album's most revealing line comes in the title song, narrated by the disc jockey on the cover. "You'd never believe it," he tells his listeners in a weak moment, "but once there was a time when love was in my life." I sometimes wonder what happened to that flame The answer's still the same It was you, it was you Tonight you're still on my mind A girl, surely -- but maybe also the America that got swept away by riots, sit-ins and Southeast Asia. Reprise's reissue moves the story along by bundling in Mr. Fagen's two other solo records -- as well as a bunch of extras -- to make a "three ages of man" trilogy. "Kamakiriad," from 1993, is a witty meditation on middle age and its regrets, told as a sci-fi travelogue through a future America. "Morph the Cat," released in 2006, is the weak leg here: a first-draft effort from a musician who makes a living on precision. As for the extras, you get a lot of hard-to-find songs and multimedia doodads, but the real gems are Mr. Fagen's sly liner notes. In particular, one closing observation: "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." It's a perfect coda for the record -- and a melancholy confirmation of its themes. 11/21/2007 By Mark McSherry NEW YORK (Reuters) - American musician Donald Fagen -- half of jazz-rock duo Steely Dan alongside Walter Becker -- is in no rush to put out a fourth solo album, having taken 25 years to produce the first three. Outside of Steely Dan, Fagen's three albums -- "The Nightfly," "Kamakiriad," and "Morph The Cat" -- have chronicled various stages in his life and encompassed his love of science fiction and jazz. Fagen, 59, spoke to Reuters as a box set called "Nightfly Trilogy," pulling together his solo work, was released by Rhino Records: Q: From the first track of "The Nightfly" and throughout your solo work, the future and science fiction seem to be your thing. Was that always the case? A: "When I was a kid, I liked science fiction. I actually belonged to something called The Science Fiction Book Club, since I was about 10 or 11, and every month you would get another book. Used to get these big anthologies ... I was pretty deep into science fiction when I was a kid." Q: Do you look at your three solo albums, from 1982, 1993 and 2006, as one piece of work? A: "I did the first one ("The Nightfly") and when I was through with it, I realized it was kind of a picture of when I was a kid and I realized it might be cool to look at it a few years later. Then, while I was working on "Kamakiriad" I thought it's almost like those "7 Up" movies where the director looked at these kids (every seven years) and then made "14 Up" and he is still doing it now these kids are in their 50s. It might be interesting just to do one every, you know, whenever I had enough material to do one." Q: So, you envisage a few more to come then? A: "Yeah, kind of ... but you know I'm almost 60." Q: Is there any difference in writing lyrics and music for Donald Fagen as opposed to for Steely Dan? A: "When I'm writing for myself, it's more autobiographical I guess in a way .... When you are alone you tend to be more intimate or personal. When we are together, we just start laughing and create these characters which I try to embody when I sing. It's kind of like acting." Q: You went to Bard College, a liberal arts college. Has that been a factor in your career? A: "The fact that Walter and I both grew up in the 1950s and early 60s as somewhat marginal kids for various reasons in our childhoods. He had a similar interest in science fiction and also we were both jazz fans, which was very unusual for kids who were 11 or 12 ... we were kind of little mini beatniks and somewhat cut off from the junior high school society. So we kind of gravitated toward Bard, which was a liberal arts college, which was very small, and a lot of kids with similar backgrounds gravitated towards the school." Q: Do you feel there is so much (solo work) still to do? A: "I've kind of squeezed it in, in between Steely Dan work, both touring and albums, so I sort of do it when I get a chance. When I do it, I focus on it. In a way, I think that is good, because I have time to ... polish it. There's no pressure, there's no deadline, so I just work on the songs until I feel I have something that is really representative of both the years that have just gone by and any musical advancement that I might have made." Q: Are you always looking to recruit top-notch musicians? A: "We are always looking. I think the band that we have got right now is our best band really in a way ... In the old days, we were always looking for musicians who had equal facility with jazz and rhythm and blues, which was very difficult to find in those days ... Now, these guys can play anything." Q: What's next? A: "I'm back into songwriting mode ... for myself and also talking with Walter about a Steely Dan album. We are planning to go out with Steely Dan in the summer (playing live) and maybe next fall (2008) I'm hoping to go out with my band ...We are having a lot of fun in our old age." 10/27/2007 A 7 Disc Set Including: 3 GREAT CLASSIC CDs! THE NIGHTFLY (Grammy-nominated for Album of the Year 1982/Winner of the Grand Prix du Disque) KAMAKIRIAD (Grammy-nominated for Album of the Year 1983) MORPH THE CAT (Grammy Winner: Best Surround Sound 2006) PLUS: 10 Extras - A 4th CD with 10 Hard-to-Get Singles, Demos and Live Cuts AND THAT'S NOT ALL: DON'T BE A SCHMENDRICK! 9/14/2007 Seven-Disc Boxed Set Features The Original Albums of The Nightfly, Kamakiriad and Morph The Cat , plus MVI (Music Video Interactive) Versions With Enhanced Mixes, Bonus Audio and Video, and Bonus Disc Available November 20th in the United States, November 19th in Europe, and November 21st in Japan from Rhino Records LOS ANGELES - Donald Fagen and Walter Becker-AKA Steely Dan-carved out a unique space in popular music scoring hits with tightly arranged songs that combined literate, ironic lyrics, their own eccentric musical idiom and sophisticated production. As a solo artist, Fagen recorded a trio of peerless albums spread out over more than 30 years including The Nightfly, Kamakiriad (both Grammy-nominated for Album of the Year) and Morph The Cat (which earned a 2006 Grammy for Best Surround Sound). Rhino presents all in a special seven-disc boxed set featuring CDs of the three original albums, a trio of MVI discs, along with a bonus CD that collects the 10 bonus tracks. NIGHTFLY TRILOGY is offered now for pre-order at www.donaldfagen.com and will be available November 20 at regular retail outlets and www.rhino.com for a suggested price of $59.98. Each MVI album is presented in Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 Surround Sound with bonus material in Advanced Resolution PCM Stereo (48kHz/24-bit). Each MVI disc also features the UrTone application, which is a brand-new technology that allows the customer to select any track or any portion of a track they want as their ringtone by using a simple drag bar. MVI (Music Video Interactive) is a DVD-based music format that offers everything you've come to expect from an audio disc plus more. In addition to an album's worth of songs, MVI delivers more video and interactive extras, and with one click saves your digital music files anywhere. For more information, check out www.mvimusic.com. The boxed set takes its name from Fagen's 1982 solo debut. A note from the original The Nightfly album sleeve explains the concept: "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." The Nightfly MVI album contains all eight original album cuts including the hit "I.G.Y.," "New Frontier" and the title track, a collective portrait of the late-night radio personalities Fagen grew up listening to. The bonus material features "Century's End," a song composed for the film Bright Lights Big City, "True Companion," which was written for the animated movie Heavy Metal, plus a live version of The Nightfly song "Green Flower Street" originally released on Fagen's Live At The Beacon: The NY Rock & Soul Revue. The disc also contains videos for "New Frontier" and "Century's End." Explaining the 11-year gap between The Nightfly and its follow-up, Kamakiriad, Fagen writes in the boxed set's liner notes: "During the final mix down of [The Nightfly], 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." His second solo effort, Kamakiriad, centers around a journey in a futuristic car, a Kamakiri Steam Power 10. Produced by Walter Becker, the MVI album contains all eight original songs including, "Trans-Island Skyway," "Snowbound" (co-written with Becker) and the single "Tomorrow's Girls." The bonus tracks include the instrumentals "Shanghai Confidential," and "Blue Lou" and demo versions of "Confide In Me" and "Big Noise New York," a song originally written for Spike Lee. The bonus videos feature "Tomorrow's Girls" and "Snowbound". Winner of the Grammy for Best Surround Sound, Morph The Cat was released in 2006. In the boxed set's liner notes, Fagen writes about the album origins: "September 10, 2001: My mother turned 76. September 11, 2001: You know about that one. January 9, 2003: My mother died of Alzheimer's disease. January 10, 2003: I turned 55. All these numbers somehow add up to this album, the last in this series." The album's original nine songs are presented on the MVI album featuring the title track, "Brite Nitegown" and "Security Joan," a song about a romance sparked when the narrator is wanded during a tedious airport security check by an enchanting officer. The bonus tracks include previously unreleased live versions of "Hank's Pad" and "Viva Viva Rock 'N' Roll" along with "Rhymes," (an Al Green song originally intended to promote a review that never came off) and an interview originally aired on NPR's World Cafe program. Taken together, the three albums present a rich and wry musical portrait of the artist and his times. THE NIGHTFLY Track Listing 1. "I.G.Y." 2. "Green Flower Street" 3. "Ruby Baby" 4. "Maxine" 5. "New Frontier" 6. "The Nightfly" 7. "The Goodbye Look" 8. "Walk Between Raindrops" MVI Extras Bonus Audio: 1. "True Companion" 2. "Green Flower Street" (Live) 3. "Century's End" Bonus Video: 1. "New Frontier" 2. "Century's End"
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