Sunday, January 29, 2012

On the turntable this Sunday...The Nightfly




The Nightfly is the first solo album by Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen, released in 1982. It was one of the first fully digital recordings of popular music.  Although The Nightfly includes a number of production staff and musicians who had played on Steely Dan records, it is notably Fagen's first release without longtime collaborator Walter Becker.
Unlike the majority of Fagen's work before this point, The Nightfly is almost blatantly autobiographical. Many of the songs relate to the cautiously optimistic mood of his suburban childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and include such lyrical topics as late night jazz deejays, bomb shelters, and tropical vacations.
The Nightfly was certified Platinum in both the US and UK, and produced two popular hits with "I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" and "New Frontier". It also received several 1983 Grammy Award nominations. This relatively low-key but long-lived popularity led the Wall Street Journal in 2007 to dub the album, "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces."
The Nightfly was recorded shortly after Steely Dan's final album before their extended hiatus, 1980's Gaucho. It was Donald Fagen's debut solo album, and also the first music project of his adult life not to include longtime musical compadre and co-conspirator, Walter Becker.
A message in the liner notes of The Nightfly reads: "Note: The songs on this album represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build. - D.F."
The Nightfly was recorded in 1982 at Soundworks Digital Audio/Video Recording Studios and Automated Sound in New York City, and at Village Recorders in Los Angeles. Production was done by Gary Katz and the album was engineered by Roger Nichols; both men had worked on every single Steely Dan record up to that point. Many of the musicians had also played on Steely Dan records, including Jeff Porcaro, Rick Derringer and Larry Carlton. Similar to the Aja and Gaucho albums, a large number of studio musicians were employed, with the liner notes crediting 31 musicians as having played on the record.
The album's cover artwork features a photo of Donald Fagen as a deejay wearing a collared shirt and tie, speaking into a microphone (an RCA 44DX). Before him lies a turntable (16 inch '50s model, with a Para-Flux A-16 tonearm), an ashtray, and a pack of Chesterfield King cigarettes. Visible on the table with the record player, is the cover of the 1958 jazz album Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders (also credited in the liner notes). On the wall behind Fagen is a large clock, indicating that the time is 4:09.
Gale Sasson and Vern Yenor are credited with the cover's set design. George Delmerico acted as art director, and the picture was taken by noted art photographer James Hamilton. The Wall Street Journal writes, "The cover adds another layer of autobiography. On the front, we see Mr. Fagen as a crew-cut deejay on the graveyard shift. On the back is his audience, a single lighted window in a row of tract homes -- or maybe the artist as a young man, drinking in inspiration."
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic4.5/5 stars[4]
Robert Christgau(A)[5]
Rolling Stone4/5 stars[6]
Uncut5/5 stars[7]
The Nightfly was met with almost universally positive reviews. Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and Uncut all gave the album high marks. Jason Akeny of AllMusic rated The Nightfly at 4 and 1/2 out of a possible 5 stars, calling it "lush and shimmering, produced with cinematic flair by Gary Katz; romanticized but never sentimental... crafted with impeccable style and sophistication."
In February 2010, Vatican City's L'Osservatore Romano appointed The Nightfly to its official Top 10 Albums list. EQ Magazine rated The Nightfly as among the Top 10 Best Recorded Albums of All Time, alongside The Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.
The Nightfly reached the #11 position on the US Billboard Charts, and the #24 position on the US Billboard R&B charts. In the UK, the album was certified Platinum in 2004, despite only reaching #44 on the charts following its release. It has also gone Platinum in America.
Paul White, editor-in-chief of Sound On Sound magazine, said The Nightfly "is always a good reference for checking out monitoring systems and shows what good results could be obtained from those early digital recording systems in the right hands." But the music isn't limited to recording studio tests, Clive Young of Pro Sound News called Fagen's I.G.Y. the "Freebird" of Pro Audio, citing that almost every live sound engineer uses the song to test the front of house system's sound response.

Notable cover versions

A number of prominent artists have covered songs from The Nightfly. Howard Jones covered "I.G.Y." in 1992, while Mel Tormé included "The Goodbye Look" on his 1988 album Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dektette – Reunion, as well as recording "Walk Between the Raindrops" on another album. Tormé also reportedly covered "Maxine" at some of his live shows in the 1980s.
All songs by Donald Fagen, except where noted:
  1. "I.G.Y." – 6:03
  2. "Green Flower Street" – 3:42
  3. "Ruby Baby" (Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller), Arranged by Donald Fagen – 5:39
  4. "Maxine" – 3:49
  5. "New Frontier" – 6:21
  6. "The Nightfly" – 5:47
  7. "The Goodbye Look" – 4:50
  8. "Walk Between Raindrops" – 2:33 
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