Fagen is Live

"You had to be there" tends to be how I feel when I listen to live albums.   That's the experience - being in the same space (even if you're in the nosebleed section) breathing the same air as the artist: hero, villain, or however you view them.  They become real, no longer just some hallowed fantasy on a recording.  You're also sharing time with them, and for me that makes up for any deficiencies in their renditions of the music.  Often, the songs I love are presented in an almost haphazard fashion, even if there is plenty of energy.  All the phrasing that made them so great is cast to the wind.  All too often I am smitten by studio recordings and anything less (or one that dares deviate) becomes a disappointment, when listening to a live recording afterward.  Not if you're there and all caught up in the atmosphere.  

This is especially true for Steely Dan.  Years back I devoted several entries to them.  Their history, and my appreciation.  They were studio mavens who stopped touring after only two years of their existence.  The subsequent albums would become increasingly sophisticated in their production.  Almost twenty years after Donald Fagen and Walter Becker parted ways, they returned with another studio album, but by then had already returned to the circuit with a vengeance.  And they haven't stopped (save the delays by COVID).  Well, you know that Walter passed in 2017, but Donald has trudged onward with his carefully selected band.  In 2019, that band was captured at The Beacon, the Met Philadelphia, the Orpheum Theater, and elsewhere. These recordings comprise the second legitimate Dan live album, Northeast Corridor.

I never did purchase 1995's Alive in America, but it, like its successor, is a pleasant affair.  The changeup of arrangements are, for the most part, entertaining.  Sometimes a trumpet will come in where a guitar once did.   Northeast Corridor's setlist favors the old (and best) material. Only "Things I Miss the Most", from 2003's Everything Must Go represents the 21st century offerings.  It's an agreeable rendition.  My current faves are a groovy, playful take on "Hey 19" (though Fagen does not attempt to continue Becker's infamous live "raps"), an appropriately spare "Any Major Dude Will Tell You",  and "Aja" - still impressive as ever.   The rest are fine (though "Black Cow" ain't nowhere nearly as groovy as the original cut) and Fagen's voice, while never as pitch perfect as it was in the '70s (especially around the time of Aja), has a sort of breathy tenor that is oddly appealing.

That voice is used to even greater effect on The Nightfly Live, in my opinion the better of these two albums.  Fagen's nostalgic masterpiece was originally sung with a sort of innocence infused with the wryness of someone who knows how it all turned out.  Here, Don matches the crispness of the band with a really clean, almost stark vocal delivery.  While I found some of the musical ideas/variations on Northeast Corridor a bit weak and iffy, everything here illustrates why Jon Herrington and company are so good.  Really tight.  The wistfulness is also still intact, even when Fagen relinquishes the vocals of "Maxine" entirely to his backup singers: Carolyn Leonhart, Catherine Russell, and La Tonya Hall.  They are simply great on both albums.

Neither Northeast Corridor or The Nightfly Live joins the select ranks of truly great live albums like The Name of this Band is Talking Heads or Little Feat's Waiting for Columbus, but for Dan fans they are indispensable as we wait for Fagen's new solo stuff.