04/11/2024
Un disco registrato magistralmente che si può ascoltare dall’inizio alla fine: tutto bello!
Quanti altri dischi conoscete con questa prerogativa???
On this day in 1982, the Donald Fagen released LP “The Nightfly” debuted on the US Billboard 200 Albums Chart at #45, and the UK Albums Chart at #44 (October 30)
Fagen moved away from his longtime Steely Dan collaborator Walter Becker to record his debut solo work, which was essentially an autobiographical piece.
As he says in the liner notes:
“The songs on this album represent certain fantasies that might have been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties, i.e., one of my general height, weight and build.”
He later revealed “I wanted to do an autobiographical album, and I really put everything I knew into the Nightfly album.”
In doing so, he also took Steely Dan’s reputation for excellent production to the next level, with “The Nightfly” becoming one of the very first examples of a fully digital recording in popular music.
The new technology, and Fagen’s neverending quest for perfection, made the project extremely challenging. In the end, the album took eight months to record, used 31 session musicians, and was mixed in 10 days.
As a result, the album remains a favorite among audiophiles.
Paul White, editor-in-chief of Sound on Sound magazine, said The Nightfly “is always a good reference for checking out monitoring systems and shows what good results could be obtained from those early digital recording systems in the right hands."
In addition to its use in recording studio tests, Clive Young of Pro Sound News called Fagen's "I.G.Y." the "Free Bird" of pro audio, claiming that almost every live sound engineer uses the song to test the front-of-house system's sound response.
EQ Magazine rated “The Nightfly” as among the Top 10 Best Recorded Albums of All Time, alongside the Beatles's “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Beach Boys' “Pet Sounds”.
Click on the link below to hear “I.G.Y.”:
https://youtu.be/Ueivjr3f8xg
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