The Nightfly

After Gaucho, Steely Dan essentially disappeared, and for nearly 20 years, there were no new Steely Dan albums.

During that hiatus, Donald Fagan released a successful solo album, 1982's The Nightfly, which became an audiophile favorite thanks to its superb digital recording quality.

Meanwhile, Walter Becker worked as a producer and session musician.

In the early 1990s, Becker and Fagan surprised fans by returning to live performance.

But when Dan reformed with Two Against Nature and then what turned out to be their final album, Everything Must Go, those two albums...

in my head, feel closer to sort of extensions of The Nightfly than they do extensions of Gaucho.

So weirdly, the sort of solo Fagin, or this album, is a sort of stepping stone to Steely Dan's Return, with two albums which are both very good, there's no doubt about it.

But those two records, I think, sound more like The Nightfly than they do AJAR.

But the Nightfly doesn't sound much like Aja, which is sort of interesting, even though that was relatively, you know, four years or five years prior to this record coming out.

Yeah.

So it's produced by Gary Katz.

It is, but also reflective.

It lends itself to that.

It's funny that you have Marcus on because I hear, I was going to say about the whole album, it has that common thread feel almost like the Nightfly, like Donald Fagan's Nightfly.

It has that feel like all the tunes kind of fit.

And Marcus is on the Nightfly.

Oh, I'll be darned.

Well, yeah, the Nightfly does have great continuity.

And that's what I wanted with this record as well.

I mean, you know, again, I'm sort of old school in a couple of ways.

Um, other examples could be like with something that's b- multi-tracked digitally, but then mixed down and mastered to tape.

For example, you know, Brothers in Arms like you just talked about, uh, or The Nightfly.

So, and then s- other naive reissues where the infrastructure to make the CD Or the vinyl was still, you know, play the tape and then get it, get it to the CD or get it to the vinyl, right? That was just the infrastructure that was in place at the time.

So a lot of times people go back, you know, to The Nightfly or Brothers in Arms or Peter Gabriel So, and they talk about, you know, "That was all digital." It w- well, yeah and no.

I mean-

[laughs]

YouTube and hearing, hearing feedback from folks, it really seems like dragon quest plus did a better job of expanding, expanding the world while still keeping that same feel while still, you know, exploring this giant, giant continent all by yourself and having, and having to face all these monsters without, without it being so, so overwhelming and so overly difficult, um, And also just adding just enough extra story elements to where it still feels like the same game.

One thing that Nightfly did that I like a lot, and it's such a small thing, he added a house for the hero just up in the hills north of the castle.

And I think that's such a better introduction than just waking up in the middle of the forest and then running into the guards.

I mean, I don't I don't know.

So, I mean, it was fun.

But Dwayne, 100 percent with you.

I when I played two years ago, the Dragon Quest Plus by Nightfly, I absolutely love that.

That made me feel like I was playing Dragon Quest one.

But I guess before we address briefly, at least, the afterlife-

... of Steely...

Yeah.

Yes, we wanna talk about the one episode from this period that I think is great.

It's the Donald Fagen solo album, The Nightfly.

Um, I know we talked about it the last time we did this episode.

I think we said that this is the final Steely Dan album that should have been, because I think it's, it's superior to Gaucho in every single conceivable way.