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Wednesday 30th October 2024 - kick-off 8pm

Scottish Premiership: Aberdeen v Rangers

What are you listening to?


Kowalski

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The Very Best of Steely Dan :thumbsup:

 

Going to follow it up with listening to Donald Fagen's first sole album, the brilliant Nightfly

 

The Nightfly is the first solo album by Steely Dan co-founder Donald Fagen, released in 1982. It was one of the first fully digital recordings of popular music. Although The Nightfly includes a number of production staff and musicians who had played on Steely Dan records, it is notably Fagen's first release without longtime collaborator Walter Becker.

 

Unlike the majority of Fagen's work before this point, The Nightfly is almost blatantly autobiographical. Many of the songs relate to the cautiously optimistic mood of his suburban childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and include such lyrical topics as late night jazz deejays, bomb shelters, and tropical vacations.

 

The Nightfly was certified Platinum in both the US and UK, and produced two popular hits with "I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)" and "New Frontier". It also received several 1983 Grammy Award nominations. This relatively low-key but long-lived popularity led the Wall Street Journal in 2007 to dub the album, "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces."

 

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Thirty years on and still one of my favourite tracks of ALL time.

Do yourself a favour, click on the youtube link and listen to this.

Absolutely pisses all over todays music. Still remember as if it was only yesterday seeing them performing this live :thumbsup:

How the fuck was this not a hit in the UK ???

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrbAGIAZ6bY&feature=related

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Thirty years on and still one of my favourite tracks of ALL time.

Do yourself a favour, click on the youtube link and listen to this.

Absolutely pisses all over todays music. Still remember as if it was only yesterday seeing them performing this live :thumbsup:

How the fuck was this not a hit in the UK ???

 

 

Calm doon old timer  ;D

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  • 2 weeks later...
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Listening on BBC I Player to the Old Grey Whistle Test 40 series with Bob Harris.

Some absolutely brilliant old tracks being played together with interviews and new sessions.

 

Especially for the Rocket.......36 mins into programme three what Bob Harris describes as probably one of the greatest performances on OGWT, 18th Dec 1973, SAHB performing NEXT

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b0140k1d/Old_Grey_Whistle_Test_40_Series_1_Episode_3

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Cashier No 9

 

Stumbled upon them and I'm quite pleasantly impressed so far.

 

Don't know anything about them though.  Think I'll have to have a dig.

 

last.fm says they are similar to King Creosote and Pete and the Pirates so will give them a shot on spotify tonight

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Cashier Number 9 sounds interesting if they're getting compared to The Aliens.  Will check them out.

 

EDIT: BBC Review of the album:

 

Right from the off, it’s clear that Cashier No.9 are not another of those bands who seek to revel in self-pity and navel gazing. Goldstar, this debut LP’s opening track – also released as a single earlier this year – quite literally shimmers with joy, its keyboards sparkling, its melody persistent, kettle drums rolling as though the song is dramatically introducing celebrities to a red carpet ceremony. It’s little wonder that, with songs like these under their belt, the band have made friends fast, and To the Death of Fun is studded with as many similar gems as it is with star turns: Jason Faulkner (formerly of Jellyfish) and Tommy Morgan, a veteran harmonica player who performed on The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations and provided the introduction to The Hollies’ He Ain’t Heavy, both make cameos, while the album was mixed by Hugo Nicolson, co-producer of Primal Scream’s legendary Screamadelica.

 

The biggest influence on the album’s jubilant atmosphere is, however, fellow Belfast resident David Holmes, who as producer gets to indulge a passion for Phil Spector’s expansive Wall of Sound whilst accommodating the many influences that Cashier No.9 exhibit. The fact that he does it without bowing to nostalgia is particularly impressive: To the Death of Fun sounds every bit as contemporary as it does timeless. What Holmes has done is to make their mixture of West Coast harmonies, chiming guitars, laidback tempos and addictive hooks utterly appealing rather than an exercise in musical archaeology. Thus, while there’s an immediate and welcome familiarity to the album, the slow recognition of its antecedents stands not as an obstacle to its enjoyment but rather an enhancement.

 

So the effortless shuffle of To Make You Feel Better has a certain Byrds-ian twang, A Promise Wearing Thin offers the allure of a Supremes classic, albeit draped in plaid shirts, and The Lighthouse Will Lead You Out sounds exactly like the kind of thing that The Stone Roses should have recorded within a year of their debut album, a lazy swagger buried within its lush psychedelia. This baggy influence is also on show for Oh Pity, which has echoes of Primal Scream’s pre-ecstasy dabblings in jangle-pop on their debut, Sonic Flower Groove, though Lost at Sea is more reminiscent of the melancholic, sun-dappled songs of Australian band The Go-Betweens’ overlooked 1988 classic, 16 Lovers Lane.

 

Overall, though, it’s not so much about whom it sounds like so much as how great it sounds, as well as how memorable the songwriting is. Introspection be damned: summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the streets…

 

Sounds right up my street.

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