Since September 2010, this blog has recorded the journey of this music junkie as I attempt to listen to all the music in my CD collection. CDs revisited in their entirety from start to finish - no skipping tracks, no shuffle. Compact Discs only - no vinyl, no tapes, no files.
Credits are provided, but liner notes are non-existent. From what I can piece together, these tracks were recorded in 2019 at tour stops at the Beacon Theatre in New York City (Oct. 19) and the Orpheum Theatre in Boston (Oct. 26).
For decades, I've had Fagen's 1982 Nightfly release on my proverbial "desert island" list of albums; my thoughts on that particular masterpiece are available at a previous CDP post. When I read that a live recording was going to be released, I wasn't particularly interested. The original is great as is - why mess up a good thing, right? So I avoided it until I saw this disc in the used bin (still sealed) with a $2 sticker on it. For that price, why not give it a shot? So let's break open the shrink wrap and give this a listen.
...
Music? Fantastic. Performances? Solid. Necessary? No. The CD is enjoyable and you can tell the audience got their money's worth, but it's mostly rote recreations so I think I'll stick with the '82 original.
Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart
Tracks: The only cut that veers from the familiar '82 recording is Maxine, in which the background vocalists completely take over singing duties. I guess Donnie's voice needed a break and at his age (71 at the time of recording), I can hardly blame him. My favorite track from the album has always been New Frontier and they pick up the tempo ever so slightly here and I like the urgency and intensity that slight, simple change brings to the tune. And I appreciate the absence of any between song patter.
So I'm sitting here minding my own business when I read the following post on another blog: Stereo Review In Review: September 1988. The blog post in question summarizes an article regarding CD Videos before posing the query "Wondering how many of these are in the hands of the folks over at the CD Project…"
Well, not only was the answer a big, fat zero; I had never even heard of such a disc until reading that post. But with a challenge like that, I simply had to possess a CDV of my own, post-haste. Regular readers of this blog are aware of my mild-to-moderate eBay addiction, plus Donald Fagen's LP The Nightfly is on my proverbial "desert island" album list, so it wasn't long until this CDV was ordered.
click to enlarge
Come to find out that a CDV is a 5" gold disc, basically half-laserdisc and half-regular CD; it plays the audio tracks (usually 2-4 songs) in a CD player and the video clip in an laserdisc player. Combo players were also manufactured briefly:
Adjusted for inflation, $1,300 in 1988 equals $2,856 in 2020
CDV had relatively short life span (ca. 1987-1991) and was eventually replaced by by the Video CD in 1993. Since the latter VCD discs are designed to deliver video only, I don't feel compelled to figuratively run out and buy one, but ya never know.
Tracks: As advertised, the two audio tracks readily play on all my CD players. Track 1 is listed as the 7" version at 4:24, but discogs doesn't list any 7" at that playing length. In any case, I previously didn't have any edit other than the album cut, so this CDV did more than simply appease my curiosity.
Soon after I saw the video for New Frontier on MTV, I owned The Nightfly LP and anyone who rode with me in my car in 1983 was subjected to this song (it was for their own good, really). Musically, it's a great piece with tight vocal harmonies, exotic chords (B9, F#6, C9+11, etc.), and great solos from Larry Carlton on guitar and Hugh McCracken on harmonica. Lyrically, the song takes us back to the Kennedy years and the beginnings of the Cold War. Not political at all, it simply uses that era as a backdrop as the lyrics tell the story of a teenage boy trying to lure his date down into a backyard fallout shelter for a night (or at least a few minutes) of passion. If I'd had a fallout shelter in my backyard in the early '80s, I'd have tried the same move.
Track 2 is Maxine, with vocal harmonies that echo those of The Four Freshmen and lyrics that capture the anxiousness of high school romance - big plans with no idea how to get there.
Track 3 is allegedly the video of New Frontier (now readily available on YouTube, below). None of my CD players acknowledge the track, but that's no surprise. My desktop computer's DVD drive didn't even recognize a video file, so I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to be able to access this 1988 technology in 2020 without buying a refurbished laserdisc machine (that ain't gonna happen, folks). I've got four more devices that will read 5" discs, so I might as well try those:
Nintendo Wii: ✘
Sony PS4: ✘
Microsoft Xbox One S: ✘
Sony BDPS3500 Blu-ray Player: ✘
0-for-4. Ah, well, it was worth a shot. Open to suggestions.
I guess CDV filled a small niche for fans back in the late '80s. At the time, CDVs would have provided the only way to view a specific music video on-demand other than on VHS or full-on laserdisc. A very small niche, indeed. I doubt I'll be purchasing more, but there's always a chance.
Question: since they were released in the late '80s in standard CD jewelboxes, were some CDVs packaged in longboxes or blister packs? Hmmm...
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: see above. Also, I have specific memories of singing Maxine while working late nights at the Burger King drive-thru during the spring and summer of 1983. My co-workers must have loved that.
Fagen's fourth solo album has all the trappings we've come to expect from his white boy jazz-funk-pop: thick inverted chords, clean production, smooth but energetic grooves, wry lyrics, excellent craftsmanship and musicianship. Co-producer Michael Leonhart's contributions can't be overstated (this album appears to be as much his as Fagen's). There's just one thing missing here: melodies. Granted, every song doesn't sound like One Note Samba, but there's some that are close (I'm looking at you, track 8) and there's certainly nothing I whistle after the album is over - no danger of earworms here. Still, I like the grooves better than those on Morph the Cat so I'm digging this album a little better than its predecessor. It's too bad I always compare everything Fagen puts out to The Nightfly, but I can't help it. The professional music critics loved it, but I'm not in that club. I'm not blown away, but I'm not skipping any tracks, either.
Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: #12
Tracks: My top picks are I'm Not The Same Without You, Memorabilia, Miss Marlene, and Planet D'Rhonda. The cover of Isaac Hayes' Out Of The Ghetto sounds great, but do you really want to hear an AARP member sing those lyrics? Maybe that's a weak attempt at humor that I'm just missing.
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None for this album, but I can definitely recommend that you skip Fagen's 2013 book, Eminent Hipsters, of which the last half consists of ranting diary entries about his 2012 tour (in which he doesn't perform songs to promote this album - wha?). Eminent Hipsters: when you want to publish a book but you don't want to write a book.
Fagen's third solo album in 24 years. Musically, this disc furthers the sound that Fagen brought back in the early aughts with Steely Dan's Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go albums. Well, no one is going to accuse Fagen of trying to sound like anyone but himself, regardless of what year it is. No trying to keep up with current trends here; people under 40 aren't really the target audience anyway. It's all highly produced music, saturated with laid back tempi, thick chords, jazzish-pop grooves, and sardonic lyrics. But those sardonic lyrics are all about death which, as a middle age man, I'm not quite ready to deal with. I don't care if Fagen is comfortable dealing his mortality with black humor, I'm not there yet. So, unlike most Fagen fans, I just ignore the lyrics, which is something I do with most songs anyway. It's no Nightfly, but what is? Our friends over at metacritic have the album rated at 83/100. Sounds about right to me. I agree with the BBC review: "It's good-humoured, intelligent and cynical, and it's the unmistakable sound of an ageing hipster using his chops for the power of good."
When the album was released, the promo materials claimed this completed some sort of "Nightfly Trilogy" from Fagen. That's curious since I don't recall ever hearing of such a trilogy until this album was released. However, suddenly branding the three albums a trilogy made for easy repackaging of the three albums in a 3 MVI DVD + 4 CD box set that included "bonus material" that was already easily available elsewhere. Shameless.
Tracks: My faves are the title track, Brite Nitegown, and Security Joan but the whole album goes down smooth; don't skip anything.
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: For some reason, I'm picturing myself sitting at a Whataburger drive-thru while this disc plays in the car. Funny how the mind works.
Quick notes about the album title and concept; it is helpful to know this stuff, but certainly not required for listening. The word Kamakiri is Japanese for "manits" or "praying mantis." As for the concept, here's what Fagen says in the liner notes:
Kamakiriad is an album of eight related songs. The literal action takes place a few years in the future, near the millennium. In the first song, "Trans-Island Skyway," the narrator tells us he is about to embark on a journey in his new dream-car, a custom-tooled Kamakiri. It's built for the new century: steam-driven, with a self-contained vegetable garden and a radio link with the Tripstar routing satellite. The next six songs describe his adventures along the way. In the last song, "Teahouse On The Tracks," the narrator lands in dismal Flytown where he must decide whether to bail out or to rally and continue moving into the unknown.
I loved (and still love) Fagen's first solo album, 1982's The Nightfly, and waited for this follow-up for 11 years. It's no Nightfly (warning: I find it hard to write about The Nightfly in a non-hyperbolic way). The Fagen sound is still present on this album despite producer Walter Becker's attempt to sterilize it, but the melodies aren't as strong as anything on The Nightfly or Aja. There's a lot of one or two chord vamping, which might work for Miles Davis, but not here. Still, it's really good pop music - I guess I shouldn't compare it to Nightfly, but I can't help it. It's good, but not great. However, Fagen's 'good' is still better than 95% of the music released in the '90s and I'm happy when one of these songs comes up while I'm shuffling through tunes on the computer or smartphone. I usually shy away from giving albums a rating, but if The Nightfly is a 10 (and it is), Kamakiriad is about a 7. The album was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, but lost to the soundtrack to The Bodyguard.
CashBox: "It's not the Steely Dan reunion we've all been waiting for, but it is pretty damn close."
Rolling Stone (★★★): "songs are sleek, witty confections"
Stereo Review: "Needless to say, it's marked by superlative musicianship, class, and intellectual irony."
Robert Christgau (***): "virtuoso time warp--as gorgeous and shallow as Aja"
Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: #10 (June 12, 1993)
Tracks: My favorites are Countermoon, Springtime (which sounds the most like a Steely Dan song), Tomorrow's Girls, Florida Room, and Teahouse On The Tracks. I didn't like one of the singles, Snowbound, for several years, but then it grew on me. Still, I sometimes skip it, along with the seemingly never-ending On The Dunes.
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: In the summer of 1993, my wife was expecting our first child and I traveled to Mexico for a church mission trip (those two events are entirely unrelated). However, this CD got a lot of playing time that summer. When the mission group returned from Reynoso (where we had helped build a school, I think), we went to a club/restaurant on St. Mary's Street in San Antonio (Tycoon Flats, maybe) and Tomorrow's Girls was playing, so this CD always reminds me of that.
Note: this release was originally purchased as a LP, later replaced by a CD. In addition to a regular CD, I also own this music on 5.1 DVD Audio disc, a format that never really caught on.
A desert island CD, for sure. The music is more jazz-pop than Steely Dan, but the lyrics are autobiographical; memories of growing up during the Kennedy era. In the words of Fagen:
The songs on this album represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote subrubs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build.
I was an adolescent when this album was released, so maybe the lyrics spoke to me. Aww, who am I kidding, I'm not a lyrics guy. For me, this album was all about the music: catchy melodies, thick chords, tight harmonies, slick production, and great playing from top-notch musicians: Larry Carlton, Michael Brecker, Marcus Miller, etc. Nominated for Album Of The Year in 1983, it lost to Toto IV. It's a great album. So good, if fact, that even hard-to-please critic Robert Christgau gives it an A. Even the Pope likes it - in February 2010, Vatican City's L'Osservatore Romano appointed The Nightfly to its official Top 10 Albums list.
The DVD Audio edition contains a 5.1 audio mix, the video for New Frontier, and excellent new liner notes where Fagen breaks down each song individually. No bonus tracks. I purchased the DVD in 2004, a year before the launch of YouTube, so having the video was a nice bonus at the time.
Tracks: I like this album. A lot. All 8 tracks are wonderful. Fagen even covers a Lieber/Stoller tune, Ruby Baby, and makes it completely his own. My usual favorites are New Frontier and Walk Between Raindrops, but that's subject to change each time I listen.
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: The album cover caught my eye before I'd heard the music and, back in the early '80s, sometimes an interesting album cover was the only excuse I needed to purchase an LP. At the time, I was unaware of Fagen's involvement with Steely Dan. One night at my friend Jim's place, I caught the innovative video for New Frontier (below). I had the album within a week. People unfortunate enough to ride in the Markmobile with me were endlessly subjected to it. Even 30+ years later, the album is still in heavy rotation.
Yesterday's passing of Phoebe Snow led me to pull out this CD. In the early '90s, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen got together some like-minded musicians and performed a brief series of concerts as the New York Rock And Soul Revue. This group included Snow, Michael McDonald, Boz Scaggs, Charles Brown, Eddie and David Brigati (from The Rascals). Basically an all-star cover band. They play some old classics as well as some of their own material, never straying far from the better original arrangements. The CD would have been much better if 1) Donald Fagen didn't talk between numbers, and 2) they had stuck to the soul music and left their own material for another time and place (except for Charles Brown because he's a legend and can do whatever he wants). Overall, it's good, but not great.
Press of the time:
Billboard: "all hands sound like they're having a rousing good time."
Stereo Review: "The album won't change the world, but Fagen's New York Rock and Soul Revue is good, cleanly recorded fun."
Tracks: Phoebe Snow easily has the best showing here, covering Knock On Wood, Shakey Ground, and At Last. Her versions stick close to the originals, but her voice is so powerful, she does justice to the material. McDonald gives us a quality cover of Jackie Wilson's Lonely Teardrops and, of course, does a great job reprising his role as a backup singer on the Steely Dan tune Pretzel Logic (one of the better tracks on the CD). Boz Scaggs' cover of Drowning In The Sea Of Love is bland. Plus, they have Boz sing, but not play guitar? Whose idea was that? Charles Brown, of course, brings it, but they only have him on one tune.
Personal Memory Associated with this CD: I'm sure I purchased this when it was released, but I don't have any real memories of it from that time. I rarely listen to this disc, but occasionally a song will pop up while iTunes is shuffling.
