I suppose it’s a sign that life has been pretty good to me when I mention that one lingering disappointment I have is that that Donald Fagen hasn’t written and recorded a lot more music.
A second disappointment is that because of some combination of zealous lawyers and lack of appeal to the MTV generation, it’s difficult to find much of his work on youtube or any of the other places one can go to watch small, grainy, lo-fi videos of their favorite artists.
Fortunately, I found one elsewhere:
http://www.clevver.com/music/video/138545/donald-fagen-new-frontier.html
It’s not the one I was hoping for–I wanted to find “Trans-Island Skyway”, but I wasn’t able to find a good recording online. Perhaps you’ll be able; please post a link…
“Trans-Island Skyway” starts with a naked but surprisingly subtle riff and builds slowly to full orchestration; a perfect layering of several rhythms and harmonies. Like a fine mechanical watch, the exquisite complexity of the interrelationships of all the parts is implicit and all that one sees is the resulting piece of jewelry. The lyrics provide a human vision of the future, but the song ends abruptly without resolution.
“New Frontier”, in contrast, begins in full flight–in the video, as you will see, the music begins when someone turns on the radio–as if the music had already been playing, somewhere, for some time already. Instead of the future, it reviews one of the great struggles of our time: on one side, nuclear war, MAD, stifling conformity, stereotypes; while on the other side, progressivism, Kennedy, Brubeck, Picasso, Tuesday Weld… The fear that we would all die together as a race if we could not learn to live with and accept our differences, balanced against the optimism and idealism of the New Frontier.
“New Frontier” ends the way “Trans-Island Skyway” begins, but in reverse. There is a gradual peeling away of the layers until fewer and fewer remain. When you listen to the last minute of the song, you’ll hear what I mean. Finally, there is only one instrument, which, as if it suddenly realizes that it is alone, begins playing a new melody.
And this is pop music?
Who is your favorite undiscovered or unheralded genius?
What song sings to you?
