In 1981 Steely Dan broke up. Don't worry. They got back together again in 1993 and are still together today. But after the breakup, Donald Fagen went off and wrote himself a humdinger of a jazz-rock album--The Nightfly. Because of the way it was recorded and mixed in the studio, the entire album, but especially the song "I.G.Y.," is a favorite among audiophiles. Now I'm a country boy, so I don't understand why someone would have such an unnatural attraction to hi-fi stereos, but apparently audiophilia is an actual thing. I'm sure Pete Welsh has a picture of an audiophile in the act, and I DON'T want to see it!
Only a few of the songs on the album hit the charts, and my favorite among them was "New Frontier," probably because the video depicted what it would be like to party in an underground bomb shelter like it was 1959. At the time this song charted--early 1983--as a nation we were still concerned that the Soviet Union might bomb us to oblivion, so the song definitely touched on contemporary themes in the early 80s, even though it harkened back to the late 50s. I would guess that most teenagers in 1983 at one time or another wondered if they'd like living in an underground bunker for several months (or years?) until the radiation from the nuclear bombs got back down to tolerable levels. To a small extent, teenagers thought about getting nuked so much in 1983 because of this song and video, but mostly they thought about it because that's when War Games came out in theaters. After seeing that movie, I was pretty sure I could survive a thermonuclear war if I had a girlfriend like Ally Sheedy. Or Annabeth Gish. I can never tell which one is which now.
Okay. Time out. I have to say that in my teenage years, I would have been very capable of telling the difference between the two girls below (I think the girls are the ones on the left).
But in my older years--as well as their older years--I have a very difficult time telling the two women apart. I watched halfway into season 9 of the X-files while wondering to myself, "Am I looking at Alley Sheedy or Annabeth Gish?"
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| Agent Gisheedy |
Can you immediately tell which one is which in the pictures below? Or do you have to look at them several times before you think you know who you're looking at?
I suppose my confusion is all part of the dementia slowly destroying my 50+-year-old brain. Pretty soon, I won't be able to tell the difference between Maureen McCormick and Christine Taylor either.
Hopefully, my dementia will be miraculously cured by high doses of radiation from the nuclear bombs dropped on us after Donald Trump causes an international conflict by tweeting something incoherent in the middle of the night.
Anyway, here's what I hope my life in the bunker will be like for me and my jazz-loving girlfriend.
About three years after this song came out, I was shopping in a grocery store in Sweden when I saw this album in a bin full of discounted tapes. I said to myself, "When I get home, I'm going to buy this album and listen to it as much as I want."
And guess what. I did.
In fact, I had my Swedish companion Elder Skinner come visit me in Pocatello after he got off his mission. He was studying jazz music at Berklee College of Music in Boston. He always talked about jazz music the two months we were together. During our visit, when he saw all of the other music I had, he basically turned up his nose at it all and would only listen to The Nightfly. I took him to Yellowstone Park, and this was the only tape he wanted to listen to on the way. He also listened to it in his Walkman when we got back home to the Standrod House. I haven't heard from him since that visit. But I always imagine that he's probably somewhere playing Ruby Baby on the saxaphone at some jazz club somewhere in Sweden. And I hope he survives the worldwide nuclear conflagration of 2019, because we've got to have some music on the new frontier!
HOLY CRAPOLEY! On a whim I googled "Adam Skinner jazz Sweden" and found my old companion playing a Billy Joel song on the piano!
He's got the right dynamic for the new frontier!
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