Payne's Pretzels

We all have our own favourite albums (I would say records but that's an antiquated term now) and mine have changed many times. From the top of my head, my answers over the past few years include Wish You Were Here, Let It Bleed and One Of These Nights. Yes, these are all old records that haven't been popular for twenty years. However, my personal progress of musical discovery started with all the big major artists and has moved forward with the lesser known ones. I'm becoming better at accepting new artists and finding where the new pioneers are. However, if I did a survey of my Last.fm, I could probably guess 80% – 90% of my library is from pre-1990.

My current top record, without question, though is The Nightfly by Donald Fagen. It was his first solo recording after the partnership of Fagen and Walter Becker broke up in 1980 and the album has something magical about it. The topic is Fagen's childhood – the futuristic view forward from a young man. In fact, the title track gives this away. The International Geophysical Year (or IGY) was 1957-1958 so, put yourself into the mindset for this album. It moves from the notions of teenage romance to the future, the cold war and late night Jazz radio. Some records are made to be listened to at night, and The Nightfly is one of them. It's also something to be listened to as one piece.

There are few live recordings of Fagen around but the nearest thing is this performance on Night Music of the album opener, IGY. You can see Fagen, the fellow in the grey shirt on keyboards who appears. This performance certainly takes the tempo of the song up with a different approach to singing and saxophone work by David Sanborn. The song looks to the future – what a wonderful world it is going to be, how technology will have evolved and how happy we will all be. Just like those futuristic images from the 50s showed how we would be living in twenty years time. Although the topic is old, the musical is crisp, clean and very early 80s. It never feels nostalgic. Synthesiers can be found but they don't overrule the record. The first twenty five seconds the record set the perfect tone for the whole record – laid back, easy, futuristic and late night.

Check out the original full recording here too, it's a thing of beauty.