funkaholic1972 said:

Good to see people still picking up on this great album!!

Yeah...

Hoping The Dan put out another record after this.

And. Tour. Europe.

ForgottenPassword said:

I'm late to this party but after listening to this CD non-stop along with the new Andy Allo album it has been a great week of excellent music!

DF hinted at touring in a Billboard piece....lets hope he sets some dates for this spring in the US

Definitely a top album of the year!

[Edited 11/29/12 8:04am]

Just haven't found an album I like better this year--I keep coming back to it and the more I hear it, the more I like it.

Keep 'em coming people, spread the good news about this album! Thanks FnkyManifesto7 and 2020, glad you are on board...

purplethunder3121 said:

Just haven't found an album I like better this year--I keep coming back to it and the more I hear it, the more I like it.

Amen!!!

2020 said:

Who knew you could make a song about bowling so friggin cool!

Miss Marlene is one of my favorites from DF ever and that's saying a lot!

Keep waking up with it in my head. :music:

"Can't you hear the balls rumble" line of the year
[Edited 11/30/12 6:52am]

FnkyManifesto7 said:

2020 said:

Who knew you could make a song about bowling so friggin cool! Miss Marlene is one of my favorites from DF ever and that's saying a lot! Keep waking up with it in my head. "Can't you hear the balls rumble" line of the year [Edited 11/30/12 6:52am]

Fagens falsetto at that part personally my favorite parts of the song as well!

I loooooove that part, like I said before that song is pure perfection!

For any musicians here or people interested in the recording process, there's a good (Fagen & Leonhart) interview in the Dec issue of Electronic Musician magazine. I'm not sure if it can be found online.

Lol @ Michael Leonhart's drummer alias, "Earl Cooke Jr"...

A Fagen solo disc tour featuring material from all the discs, including Sunken Condos, would be indeed awesome...

This must be one hell of an album! I'm buying it today!

RodeoSchro said:

This must be one hell of an album! I'm buying it today!

I am sure you won't regret! Let us know whatyou think after a couple of spins...

SamSamba said:

For any musicians here or people interested in the recording process, there's a good (Fagen & Leonhart) interview in the Dec issue of Electronic Musician magazine. I'm not sure if it can be found online.

Lol @ Michael Leonhart's drummer alias, "Earl Cooke Jr"...

A Fagen solo disc tour featuring material from all the discs, including Sunken Condos, would be indeed awesome...

Thanks, will look into this interview!

What is so funny about Earl Cooke Jr btw? I know it is Michael Leonhart on drums, but does this alias have some sort of funny connection?

funkaholic1972 said:

SamSamba said:

For any musicians here or people interested in the recording process, there's a good (Fagen & Leonhart) interview in the Dec issue of Electronic Musician magazine. I'm not sure if it can be found online.

Thanks, will look into this interview!

It is a good article.

For some reason it's not on the EM site yet.

Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

Was wondering if and when Fagen would appear on Letterman... and I stumbled across this totally by chance - I was looking at some Dave Chappele skits... looks like it happened a month ago:

^ Meant to mentioned it but forgot.

A few of the band members...

Wayne Krantz - guitar

Tim Levebre - bass

Keith Carlock - drums

Jim Beard (?) - keys

Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

Nice interview with Donald Fagen and Michael Leonhart in the January 2013 issue of Keyboard magazine.

A few interesting responses...

"Slinky Thing" has a Clav-driven funk groove, but you expand on it with shifting chord movement. You seem to be saying, "The song has to feel good, but it also has to go somewhere."

DF: That's exactly right. I'm just easily bored.

ML: We talked about Igor Stravinsky in this way a number of times-how the magic with him is that you never get bored. His music is always exciting and moving. One of the things that struck me the first time I heard "Slinky Thing" was the end section. Lyrically, it's almost like another song. You don't see that coming, and that's what makes it special.

DF: I thought that song needed a kind of coda to comment on the front section.

There's a sneaky, almost vocal-like synth sound on the intro that answers the Clav. What is that?

DF: It's a f***ed-up GarageBand sound that we ended up keeping from the demo. I think it was some kind of marimba. I liked how the decay on it dipped in pitch.

DF: That song is really a takeoff on certain songs, like "I Will Survive," where the person says, "I'm devastated by this breakup, but I'm gonna keep a stiff upper lip and get through it." I thought it'd be funny if you extrapolated from that idea, so that the person actually starts to mutate into something that's not quite human. Although, it's supposed to make the listener wonder if in fact the guy was so devastated that he's become somewhat psychotic. [Laughs.] It's the "unreliable narrator" device.

That song has a series of descending ii-V changes on the lyrics, "bright arcades in which I bring off heroic escapades."

DF: I still like the cycle of fifths. The composer Bob Telson once gave me a long disquisition on how much he hated it, but I still find it useful once in a while. I mean, it worked for Bach.

DF: It's really not a matter of wanting to innovate. It's a matter of trying to not fall asleep. When you're making a record, you have to listen to these things hundreds or thousands of times. It's like how sometimes you'll see a film with scenes that are so slow you can hardly pay attention. I always think of directors who had to edit films on a Moviola, staring at those scenes hundreds of times. I wonder, "How can you even stand it?"

ML: You don't shoot for innovation-you just try not to be boring.

DF: I have to tell you, it's really just to entertain myself. I think Walter Becker would agree. We always felt a little deficient for not being innovators, in our own minds at least. We loved certain traditions in Jazz and R&B, and we used those as our foundation. That's what gives the music soul. Maybe what we tried to do was combine some things that weren't usually combined. But we never thought of ourselves as innovative. I find that 95 percent of what people call "innovative" or "experimental" is just pure B.S. Most such things are forgotten a year later, because it's often just someone being self-conscious in an attempt to be different. And it usually ends up being really bad.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

For all the keyboard-heads, a nice video tour of the keyboards in Michael Leonhart's studio:

While working on the cover story about Steely Dan frontman and keyboardist Donald Fagen for the January 2013 issue, editors Jon Regen and Stephen Fortner got invited into the studio of Michael Leonhart, who has played trumpet in Steely Dan since 2000's Two Against Nature comeback and recently co-produced Fagen's new solo album Sunken Condos. There, they were treated to a tour of many of the keyboards used on the record, some of which were also the very same units recorded on classic Steely Dan albums. You'll see the Clavinet and Prophet-5 played on Aja in these videos, the Hammond L-100 spinet organ used on Fagen's new song "Memorabilia," and much more. Leonhart also talks candidly about what it's like to work with one of the most seminal and iconoclastic figures in keyboard-driven rock.

http://www.keyboardmag.co...cle/150106

Music for adventurous listeners

tA

Tribal Records

theAudience said:

Nice interview with Donald Fagen and Michael Leonhart in the January 2013 issue of Keyboard magazine.

Good stuff (pun intended), thanks for that!

LEWISTAYLORFAN said:

I am a massive SD and Fagen fan. Donald was at Todd Rundgren's house a week before I got there I must buy these I keep forgetting. Thank you for the reviews. I am Lester the nightfly

purplethunder3121 said:

LEWISTAYLORFAN said:

I am a massive SD and Fagen fan. Donald was at Todd Rundgren's house a week before I got there I must buy these I keep forgetting. Thank you for the reviews. I am Lester the nightfly

Happy to help you out here! :

"I am a massive SD and Fagen fan. Donald was at Todd Rundgren's house a week before I got there " > He/she just missed out on meeting Donald

"I must buy these I keep forgetting." > He/she still has to buy the Sunken Condos tracks/vinyls

"Thank you for the reviews." > This speaks for itself.

"I am Lester the nightfly " > Nod to a famous DF track