Remember Steely Dan? I had heard of them as a kid, but really got interested in them when two guys from my class in High School were listening to them a lot. Intelligent jazzy pop music by Walter Becker and … Donald Fagen. You may remember Donald from his two solo albums The Nightfly (with radio hits I.G.Y. and New Frontier) and Kamakiriad.

If you are interested in a quick overview of The Nightfly, then you should check out this YouTube video, which plays short snippets of all songs:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvDlRLkI2Ho[/youtube]

Or listen to I.G.Y. (International Geophysical Year) on vinyl (yes, really!):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqUU-GCuppo[/youtube]

But I digress… I wasn’t listening to The Nightfly, although I will probably put the CD on again soon 🙂

I was listening to Donald Fagen’s Morph The Cat – which back in 2006 was his first solo release in thirteen years. I got this album on sale yesterday, on Boxing Day. So it is still quite fresh for me, but the smooth mix of jazz, rock & soul sounded great the first few times listening. But the CD was running while I was working or cooking, so I’ll need some more dedicated listening in order to get to know the songs better.

Any reader’s favourites from this album?

You may also like:

• Donald Fagen on Wikipedia
• Donald Fagen’s own website
• Steely Dan on Wikipedia
• USA: Morph the Cat on Amazon.com
• Canada: Morph the Cat on Amazon.ca
• UK: Morph the Cat on Amazon.co.uk