By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times Donald Fagen Kamakiriad Reprise The Steely Dan signatures are all in place: jazz chords and female choruses, horn-section sighs and light-funk grooves, lush atmospheres and a sound of amazing presence. But Kamakiriad isn’t just an Aja minor. For the first time, Fagen instills his music with full emotional openness, […]
Kamakiriad Review
By David Browne Entertainment Weekly Both nothing and everything sounds out of place on Kamakiriad (Reprise), the long-delayed return to the record bins of former Steely Dan singer, keyboardist, and jaundiced wit Donald Fagen. Steely Dan was the first slacker pop band, mixing in bits of hipster jazz rhythms and lingo into sardonic pop that […]
The Unabridged Walter Becker Interview
By Christopher Hoard Jazziz October 1991, Lower Manhattan just another gig at the Road House, featuring Walter Becker’s one-time songwriting partner sitting in on keyboards with guitarist Jimmy Vivino’s feisty blues rock and R&B house band. With the four-piece horn section, Vivino’s New York Nights renders tunes like “Deacon Blues” and “Green Earrings” with an accuracy and looseness that celebrates the […]
Becker Reels In Years with Solo Effort
By Melinda Newman Billboard Donald Fagen isn’t the only ex-Steely Dan member with a new album coming out. Walter Becker is hard at work in his Maui recording studio recording his first-ever solo record to be released on Giant Records. Becker, who hasn’t recorded since Steely Dan’s last album in 1980, was spurred on by […]
Jeff Porcaro: A Special Salute
By Robyn Flans Modern Drummer On August 5,1992, incredibly, we lost drummer Jeffrey Porcaro to a heart attack. Even as I write the words, it seems inconceivable. To those who knew him, the pain of his loss is excruciating. Jeff was one of the most vibrant, vital people on the face of the earth. His […]
The Drummers of Steely Dan
By Ken Micaleff Modern Drummer Between 1972 and 1980, Steely Dan produced some of the most searing and bitter pop music ever recorded. With scathing lyrics delivered by Donald Fagen’s pungent vocals, he and partner Walter Becker’s music chronicled the feelings of many who passed through young adulthood during the 1970s. At times cynical and oddly […]
Rock & Soul Revue: High-class Nostalgia
By Steve Morse Boston Globe MANSFIELD, Mass. — Welcome to a concert that echoed a high school variety show, only on a much smoother, more elegant level. Welcome to the New York Rock & Soul Revue — a snappy traveling corps of musicians from Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, leavened with solo artists Boz […]
Steely Dan Founders Get Juices Flowing
By Chicago Tribune For Steely Dan fans, it’s been a drought of biblical proportions: 12 years and counting without any new music from one of the more innovative bands of the 1970s. There have been no albums from either of Steely Dan’s founding members, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, since 1982, when Mr. Fagen released […]
The rise and fall (and rise again) of Steely Dan
By Greg Kot Chicago Tribune For Steely Dan fans, it’s been a drought of biblical proportions: 12 years and counting without any new music from one of the more innovative bands of the 1970s. There have been no albums from either of Steely Dan’s founding members, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, since 1982, when Fagen […]
