Happy to report that I managed to catch the third and final show on Sirius satellite radio with Donald Fagen acting as guest DJ.The news of the three shows was posted on donaldfagen.com six days before the first show was aired.
February 7 he was a guest on the '70's channel and Magic Matt's Celebrity Thursday.
I never bothered to check out the possibility of listening over the web as I recalled that I had tried that a couple of years ago and found out that you couldn't listen from outside the US. Either way I was sure fans in the States would listen and/or record to report what was said and what was played.
But the reality of it was that not one word was reported on the Steely Dan fan-sites. Odd. Strange. And slightly weird. Surely at least three or four diehard fans in the USA had access to the Sirius satellite radio signal and would tune in and listen?
In the end Carsten from Denmark seem to be the only one who caught at least part of the show. Online using the free three day trial. A bit wiser I signed up to catch Donald's next appearance.
Wednesday 13 was the day he was a guest DJ on the Margaritaville channel. I signed up a day or so before and everything was working fine. Except my grasp of time and when the show actually aired. To me - used to a 24 hour clock and view of the day - "Wednesday 12.00 midnight" could mean either midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday or midnight between Wednesday and Thursday. I finally chanced on it being the latter as that would fit in better with my working week. That - of course - made me miss the show by a mere 12 hours! Damn "a.m." and "p.m."!!!
Just like the first one this didn't result in any reports or reactions on the fans pages. A couple of posts asked for what was played, but no answer appeared.
Quotes from the excellent, original and still first choice for Steely Dan news; dandom.com's BlueBook:
- As i had my radio all set up to record DF on Sirius 70s I heard about 20 seconds of banter when, for the first time since December, my signal cuts out and I lose transmission. OF COURSE, murphy's law at its finest.
- So I guess no one heard the first Sirius Fagen event at all since there are no reports????
- Anybody got the playlist f. Sirius?
- So how was Donald on Sirius this past Thursday?
- May anybody post the playlist of the sirius show?
Saturday 16 was the final show and the final chance for me to listen in. I had to sign up for another three day trial but finally caught Donald on Pure Jazz/72, where I heard him play his and Walters jazz favourites.
The show was 90 minutes long and I managed to record it.
Donald told some memories and stories to go with the music and I'll get back to those, but right now I have to get some sleep - it's 6 a.m. here! So I'll end with a listing of the artists/tracks played:
- Cannonball Adderley - Toy
- Gene Ammons & Sonny Stitt - There Is No Greater Love
- Miles Davis - It Could Happen To You
- Red Garland - Birk's Works
- Dizzy Gillespie - Dizzy's Business
- Dizzy Gillespie - On The Sunny Side Of The Street
- Dizzy Gillespie - Something In Your Smile
- Horace Silver -Song Of My Father
- Coleman Hawkins - Swingin' Skotch
- Charles Mingus - Slop
- Gerry Mulligan - Blueport
- Benny Goodman - Good-Bye
P.S. My guess is that the fans will focus on Donald's comments before he played Horace Silver's Song Of My Father. Some will believe that Donald didn't catch the similarities between the tune and the opening of Rikki Don't Lose That Number, while some will stick with the "borrowed" theory.
4 comments:
Well, I'm sure glad it worked for you this time around and that you were able to catch at least one of the Fagen shows. I'm even more glad that of the three events you were able to catch the one you most wanted to hear!
Yeah, the lack of reports (so far) over on the Blue (or anywhere else) is mystifying. Like you, I figured that there would at least be a playlist posted for the Margaritaville gig or anecdotal reports of key talking points.
A shame about the "midnight" date confusion. It has long been my understanding that a day begins at midnight, so I definitely would have recommended a slightly earlier signup had I known there was any confusion.
Me, I didn't sign up as I wasn't convinced that my dialup connection (yes, I'm an internet dinosaur!) would be able to handle the stream and didn't feel like suffering the frustration of having it zotz out on me in mid stream. In retrospect, maybe I should have at least tried, but I honestly thought there'd be all sorts of reports enough to satisfy my curiosity on the fan boards from actual Sirius subscribers and 3-day trial-ers.
Thanks for posting the playlist of the PureJazz DJ gig and any followup comments/impressions to come...
(P.S. --- I posted this comment once, but then noticed a minor typo. I then noticed the ability to delete the comment myself, so I did that in order to then re-post with the typo corrected. So the deleted comment was me also and essentially what you see here now.)
Any chance of sharing the recording from Pure Jazz on 2/16?
Skipper:
I only have myself to blame for missing the Margaritaville show. Would've been easy enough to tune in (if that's what you do online?) just to check the station 6 a.m. instead of 6 p.m. But that early possibility did clash with me getting up and ready for work so I basically dropped the ball on that one.
Oh well...
Been a busy Sunday, so I haven't had time to go back and listen, but I'll try to get some sort of review up by Tuesday if nobody else beats me to it.
I do recall that Donald before playing three in a row with Dizzy Gillespie said that he preferred Dizzy's not always tone/note perfect singing to both Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. More genuine feeling in Dizzy's voice.
Dave: radiodupree@yahoo.se (wink, wink!)
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