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 […]
Tag Archives | Kamakiriad
Fagen Does Dan; Dan Does It Again
By Geoffery Himes Washington Post Donald Fagen’s first album in 11 years, Kamakiriad, can be judged from two different perspectives. On the one hand, it marries tartly ironic lyrics with lush jazz harmonies in ways well beyond the reach of today’s ambitious pop-rock composers from Sting and Billy Joel to Mark Knopfler and Brenda Russell. […]
Donald Fagen’s ‘Kamakiriad’: Words and Music
From the radio show “Words and Music” with Donald Fagen, featuring music from his new Reprise Records release, Kamakiriad. This program was written and produced by Davin Seay, and edited by Rick Dasher for Marc Graue Recording Services, Burbank. Executive producer, Larry Butler. Segment 1 INTERVIEWER: Donald Fagen, it’s been over a decade since one […]
Picking up Where Dan Left Off
By J. D. Considine Baltimore Sun Packaging, they say, is everything, and Donald Fagen’s Kamakiriad (Reprise 45230) is a case in point. Mention to most pop fans that Kamakiriad marks Fagen’s reunion with Walter Becker, and the reaction is likely to be mostly yawns. Explain, however, that Becker and Fagen’s last project was a little […]
Resonant Emotion in Fagen’s Latest
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 […]
Return of the Nightfly
By Richard Cromelin Los Angeles Times Donald Fagen is known nearly as much for his reclusive nature as he is for his role in Steely Dan, the cerebral rock duo that combined commercial clout with artistic distinction before dissolving in depression and drug problems at the end of the ’70s. It took Fagen two years […]
A Dan for All Seasons
By Fred Dellar Vox No news flash interrupted TV programmes on May 21, 1990. No breakfast time headline gave any indication that much of musical importance was happening. But for many, the real rock summit was taking place – Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were both booked into New York’s Hit Factory studio and working […]
