You old bastard, you.

At 7:00 am (in the morning) I was backing out of the driveway. Renee Montaigne was just giving the highlights of the news to come, but right before the break she wished a happy birthday to Donald Fagen. "The man who sang 'Hey Nineteen' turns 60,"
she said.

I have always known and loved Steely Dan. I have been a "Steely Fan" for only 16 years. I recall an evening in '92 or '93 when I was in the backseat of a friend's car with my girlfriend coming back from somewhere during my first (or second) year of college somewhere in small-town Pennsylvania (Pee-Ay, as we say). A local radio station was playing an evening of "B sides". Obviously, at this point, the cd had replaced the record, but the station was playing the second half of a series of albums. I'm (somewhat) sure they played Peg and Hey 19, but it has been a while. At the break the DJ announced that it was a 'best of' album by Steely Dan. It was one of those moments of revelation. I recognized just about every song that was played, but could not put a name to the band before that night. As a child I would hear the songs on pop radio, so I knew them, but not really. They sounded different that night. I had recently played in a high-school garage band and knew a little more about music than I previously had. This "pop" music had depth, layer, texture, color, flavor... I was completely surrounded by ORCHESTRATED sound and I fell in love, as if I had heard these old, tired, familiar songs for the first time. Soon thereafter I bought my first copy of 1976's Aja, at a now defunct record store, and yes, it was on vinyl. It wasn't long before I got the boxed set, Citizen Steely Dan, which collects all of the studio albums onto 4 cds. I saw them live in 1996, then in 2000, then in 2003, and finally in 2006. I truly love these guys.

Anyway, I am listening to 2006's Morph the Cat by Messr. Fagen as I type. While the title track of his first solo album, The Nightfly, ranks among my all-time favorite songs ("you say there's a race of men in the trees, you're for tough legislation, thanks for calling, we wait all night for calls like these") and his second outing, Kamikiriad, has delightful jazz-pop tunes, there is no question that "Morph" is his finest. So I say, if at 58 Donald Fagen recorded his second finest work (only behind Aja), then I wish him a happy 60th birthday, and look forward to the next, productive 60 years!