“New Frontier”—first song, side two of The Nightfly (Donald Fagen) (1982)

I made the executive decision to write something about songs on other than the first seven Steely Dan albums, if acquired on vinyl—that's the important thing—so I got this record, Donald Fagen's first solo record, The Nightfly—which I was kind of surprised to see was from way back in 1982 (which I hold out as personally being the craziest year of my life, aside from all the MTV I watched). I happened to be listening to it, not for the first time, but damn near, while I was picking a SD song using my random system—which happened to pick the song that had just ended, called “New Frontier.” Seems appropriate. This song is a bit of a goof about having a party in a bomb shelter. The dude character in the song would seem to be pretty young, living at his parents' house in the suburbs, looking at moving out, to the city, going to school, going to Europe. He also has his eye on this woman because she reminds him of Tuesday Weld and likes Dave Brubeck—he's no doubt a bit out of her league—so I think the whole thing is a fantasy, including his proposition in the final verse. I picture him as that kind of young guy who wears a tie, dress shoes, and old-man glasses, on purpose. I think we can both relate to him, make fun of him, and a little bit feel sorry for him.

Musically, this is a song I'm never going to come around to. It chugs along like no human was invited to the rhythm section, and there's nothing particularity compelling here, except for maybe how the chorus ends and runs right into the next verse without a breath in between. But both are just so wishy-washy—it's beyond me how anyone can find anything moving about it. What's worse is there is some insipid harmonica both at the beginning and the ending of the song, just to ensure that watered-down Jimmy Buffett vibe. And then there's a little guitar noodling, stopping off here and there, sounding like nothing so much as gastric disturbances. I hate this song. Just to, I don't know, try to find something I am missing, I watched the video, back from the bad ole' days of MTV, which has some nice nostalgia-soaked animation in it, as well as a couple of live actors (the guy looks like the character I envisioned, above). The shocking thing is that the shortened, single version is actually—aside from cutting out that dreaded harmonica at the end—is actually worse, because it cuts out the fourth verse, when they fuck.

—Randy Russell 1.26.20