From: vze3vvj2@verizon.net   
      
   Mixing songs old and new, Fagen finds the groove   
      
   By Siddhartha Mitter, Globe Correspondent | March 13, 2006   
      
   Donald Fagen at Boston Opera House, Saturday   
      
   No one has taken the place of Steely Dan. A generation ago, guitarist Walter   
   Becker and singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen built an unmatched creative hub   
   connecting rock, jazz, blues, and soul. Their taut sound, technical yet   
   warm, and their lyrics, crucial vignettes of '70s dystopia and Reagan-era   
   dyspepsia, sped them into the pop pantheon. There's a finality to Steely   
   Dan, a sense of arrival, that wards off imitators and apprentices.   
      
   So it is left to Steely Dan's founders to be themselves, both as a duo and   
   individually, in what Fagen, performing Saturday night at the Boston Opera   
   House, demurely called his ''three widely separated albums over the past 25   
   years." On tour behind the newest, ''Morph the Cat," out this month, Fagen   
   and his characteristically excellent band delivered a generous two-hour set   
   of some new and many old songs, plenty to feel the magic.   
      
   And magic it was, once Fagen, in imperfect voice due to a cold, growled   
   through ''Green Flower Street" from 1982's ''The Nightfly," and into that   
   record's title song, eventually locating the right power and pitch. The   
   residual hoarseness brought out the bluesiness of the next song, ''New   
   Frontier." ''Bright Nightgown," a big guitar and keys jam from the new   
   record, made the already loose band more so   
      
   Reverence set in with the opening bars of Steely Dan songs. They were   
   non-obvious picks at first, the reflective ''Third World Man" and guardedly   
   optimistic ''Home at Last," leading into ''Black Cow" from the pinnacle   
   album ''Aja."   
      
   The good vibes flowing, Fagen moved to some new songs and a 1950s cool-jazz   
   piece before returning to the classics. The seven-man band and two back-up   
   singers had ample room to express the outrageously tight musicianship that   
   marks the Steely Dan experience, with saxophonist Walt Weiskopf in   
   particular called on to work overtime.   
      
   Near evening's end Fagen rolled out ''FM," the Steely Dan number whose   
   refrain, ''No static at all," describes both the ultra-precise sound and a   
   state of mutual connection and ease. There was little doubt that most in the   
   audience could second that emotion.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)