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| Obligatory crappy phone-shot. |
This was a first for us, in fact. Beyond videos (shadows on the wall, really) I'd never seen them play — their concerts here inevitably coincided with family events in the prairies (some years ago when I played best man to my friend the groom, an attendee at the wedding greeted me with, “You're not at the concert!”). This year was exceptional, so there we were.
The Bobby Broom Organi-Sation — a trio of guitar, electric organ and drums — opened, with a set of slyly tweaked and infectious selections from the Boomer Soundtrack, plus a little Fats Waller. I've gone and added Broom to my Saturday/Sunday morning soundtrack.
Then it was on to the headliners. This is, in the main, a band that has been performing together for the last 15 years. “Tight” was surely a given, but I was not expecting the energetic pow! that followed and carried the evening to a satisfying conclusion nearly two hours later. Donald Fagen has famously groused that his audience is increasingly geriatric, singling out Toronto as particularly moribund. While he and Walter Becker are unquestionably producing primo grade Dad Rock, last night's audience included no shortage of daughters several decades removed from their cohort kicking up a fuss in the aisles — until house security shooed them back to their seats (fire regulations, I'm guessing).
There isn't a member of the band that doesn't deserve a massive shout-out, but drummer Keith Carlock was a particular revelation. The norm for the session drummers of most Dan (and Fagen solo) albums is to take a deep cleansing breath, then settle in to the business of holding down the back-beat. Carlock brings an energetic muscularity to the music, attacking his kit with Gene Krupa-like vigour. “Aja” is the acid test for drummers — Steve Gadd's imprint on that track is singularly deep, but Carlock ably walks the high-wire, pulling off a performance that acknowledges the source without succumbing to pallid imitation.
Similarly guitarist Jon Herington has the unenviable task of producing solos which have to be recognizable enough, while adding some element of surprise or revelation to keep the performance fresh — to take what a host of others have carved out, and somehow make the entire mash his own. Formidable task, but damned if Herington doesn't have the chops and the attitude to pull it off with aplomb.
All in all a swell night. No disappointments to speak of, though I would have enjoyed a few more inclusions from their two latest albums (judging from the slightly muted response to “Janie Runaway,” Fagen & Becker might well have taken note from past Toronto dates and steered the playlist predominantly to their 70s catalog). Also, Fagen was clearly fighting some laryngitis-type bug, but what are you gonna do? Dude gave it his all in the “Kid Charlemagne” encore and somehow squeezed out “Yes, there's gas in the car!” — the highest string of exclamatory notes all night. I'm amazed he wasn't pulled off the stage in a stretcher.
Alright, here's the setlist, cobbled together in recollection some hours later, as written, with corrections footnoted (I've likely got the order botched, particularly the middle numbers, but not the song titles):
- band, unknown (Mancini?*)
- Black Cow
- Aja
- Hey Nineteen
- Black Friday
- Bodhisattva (order could be off after this)
- Janie Runaway
- Dirty Work (girls sing)
- Daddy Don't Live In That NYC No More (Becker sings)
- Green Earrings
- Rikki Don't Lose That Number
- Josie
- Peg
- Babylon Sisters
- Showbiz Kids
(unknown — Ike Turner?**)
- Reelin' In The Years
- My Old School
Encore
- Kid Charlemagne
- band, theme from The Untouchables
*”Cubano Chant,” Ray Bryant
**”I Want To (Do Everything For You),” Joe Tex
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