By Vit Wagner
Toronto Star
As Steely Dan frontmen Donald Fagen and Walter Becker strolled on to the stage of the Molson Amphitheatre Sunday night, a guy a few seats down turned to his friend and asked: “I wonder what kind of groupies they get?”
Groupies? It’s absurd to think of Fagen and Becker -— a couple of jazz-revering nerds born more than half a century ago —- being besieged by favour-bestowing worshippers of the opposite sex. Or is it?
Before the night was out, two young women at the front of an aisle had removed their tops and were flashing their breasts in the direction of the stage. Too bad neither Fagen nor Becker was near enough to notice.
The unscripted display of exhibitionism did, however, add an element of risk to an otherwise carefully calculated performance. The veteran jazz/pop combo, which on this occasion included eight accompanying musicians and three backing vocalists, was in Toronto to make good on a concert postponed by the Aug. 14 power outage.
“There were times this year, I don’t mind telling you, that we thought this concert was never going to happen,” Becker announced.
This time it went off without a hitch. Fagen, singing and playing keyboards, and Becker, noodling away on the guitar, gave a polished performance that spanned more than three decades worth of material.
While sampling the current Steely Dan disc, “Everything Must Go,” the set leaned more heavily on older material. Songs from 1976’s “The Royal Scam” — including “Kid Charlemagne,” “The Caves Of Altamira,” “Don’t Take Me Alive” and “Haitian Divorce” — gave shape to a performance that also included “Aja,” “Peg” and “Hey Nineteen.”
At one point, the band — minus Fagen and Becker — performed something called “The Steely Dan Show.”
Fagen explained: “It’s a tribute written to us by … well by us, actually.”
Apparently, it’s that magnetic capacity for wry wit that just drives Steely Dan’s female fans crazy.
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