Posts Tagged Donald Fagen
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March 27, 2018 by Simon Sweetman
Todd Rundgren: White Knight
Todd Rundgren White Knight Cleopatra Todd Rundgren knows a thing or two about making mixed-bag albums – but he also knows that if you keep experimenting and collaborating you find magic. And there’s plenty of good stuff here on White Knight, an album of profound and perplexing collaborations that very much vacillates from the sublime […]Archive
December 4, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
It Was The Best Gig Ever # 15: Steely Dan, Wellington 2011
What struck me about seeing Steely Dan live – something I guess I knew already but it felt remarkable to actually see and hear it taking place, being shaped – was the bubble that this band’s music exists in; the bubble that Fagen and Becker’s music occupies, floats around in – impervious. There have been […]Archive
September 4, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
The Ghost of Electricity: War Stories by Jon McLeary # 178 Steely Dan
I woke up in the middle of the night and turned on the computer. The first thing I saw on social media was the news that Walter Becker had died. That first album of Steely Dan was really something for me. I was a long-haired high school student living in an inland town and it […]Archive
September 3, 2017 by Simon Sweetman
R.I.P Walter Becker
Walter Becker of Steely Dan has died. He was 67. Maybe all that matters, in terms of marking his passing, is this tribute by his band-mate and songwriting colleague of nearly 50 years. Donald Fagen’s words surely matter the most. If not for anything else it speaks to the bubble these two created for themselves […]Archive
November 25, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
Steely Dan’s Aja: Their Classic
Aja is the one for me – and I was reminded of that just recently, not (just) by listening to it, but by re-reading a very short book about the record, Steely Dan’s sixth. I’m a big fan of Steely Dan’s music – I own all of the albums, I really liked bits of 2003’s […]Archive
May 20, 2016 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 693
Becker-Fagen-Diaz, You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It (Or You’ll Lose That Beat) (1971) I haven’t yet seen the film – but I will, one day – not just because I tend to watch films if I like (or even just own) the soundtrack but also because the film features Richard Pryor and was […]Archive
April 10, 2015 by Simon Sweetman
Late Night Soul, Jazz and Pop: DJ Set
Tonight, Friday, April 10, I’m going to be playing some soothing late-night, post-gig jazz, soul and pop down at the San Fran. I’ll be on the decks from around 10.30. The main gig that night is Nathan Haines (with DJ Riki Gooch opening the show). Currently I’m listening to Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly so that […]Archive
December 8, 2014 by Simon Sweetman
The Vinyl Countdown # 981
Steely Dan, Gaucho (1980) I have the single of Hey Nineteen and that’s a favourite – and I had Gaucho on CD (along with everything else by Steely Dan) but now, finally, I have the LP. That lovely, loping groove of Babylon Sisters (go Bernard Purdie!) and some fantastic stuff here; indicative of where Donald […]Archive
October 30, 2013 by Simon Sweetman
Donald Fagen: Eminent Hipsters
Eminent Hipsters Donald Fagen Viking Adult You could never expect a man who made his name by placing the incongruous inside happy-sounding so-slick pop-jazz ditties to write a conventional memoir; Steely Dan is as much a magic act as it is a musical act – and not just for the fact that you’re either under […]Archive
May 17, 2013 by Simon Sweetman
Donald Fagen: Sunken Condos
Donald Fagen Sunken Condos Reprise Airtight – seems a good word for the music that Donald Fagen creates as one half of the creative-pairing that is Steely Dan and across four solo albums, Sunken Condos the most recent of those; arguably the most Dan-like too, in sound and feel. Not that the others weren’t – […]Archive
April 29, 2012 by Simon Sweetman