Donald shut the garden door (on new music)

As mentioned before, the Dan's Don has a new album out this week, reviewed badly by some stupid schmuck here. To celebrate he has a ginchy noo site here which is most interesting for his its archive of the rather good criticism, satire and spoof that now pours from the pen of the man who has now quite obviously beaten any writer's block.
However, while the mighty Morph is a fine album by any standards, it hardly breaks any new ground, either stylistically or lyrically; so how come he can get away with saying this stuff, found via a link on mp3.com here:

Chris: And I'm curious do you--well it sounds like maybe you've answered this--but do you consciously sort of shut out anything that's going on with contemporary music trends or...?

Donald: It's not really necessary, because I don't think anything has happened for 30 years or so.

Chris: Really.

Donald: Not really. You know there's a new kind of...you know they have different names for like crunk and stuff like that, or there's this kind of music, but you know aside from some fairly subtle things, and like, maybe they use a drum machine instead of drums or something. But that's really kind of the opposite of evolution as far as I can say so. It's really...I don't think there's anything really...I don't see any sort of major thing that's happened since maybe reggae music in the '70s that's really different.

Chris: So you wouldn't consider, say, rap music to be new?

Donald: Well, I mean it's more of a theatrical forum really...or poetry with music type of thing, which certainly isn't new. And the beats are basically funk, or something else, only played by machines, it's really not...it doesn't sound new to me. I mean, what's new about it?

Well, for a man who claims to only listen to: '...the same 40 jazz records I had in high school pretty much.' (wonder WHICH jazz albums?) and that: 'with the death of Ray Charles, we come to the end of American culture as we have known it.' - it's not so surprising. I guess at 58 he's earned the right not to be interested in music any more. But it's a shame...Steely Dan with a laptop would have been interesting...

On the forthcoming radar...

The mighty Donald Fagen has a new album out in March, entitled Morph The Cat. Apparently (according to the press release): 'the project gained focus two years ago as Fagen began to tackle issues of mortality.'
Whereas Fagen's two other albums took place in a utopian remembrance of things past (The Nightfly) and things future (Kamakiriad) this one's set in contemporary Manhattan. Sez the Don: "There's nothing sexier than the Apocalypse".

Sounds good to me, Don...my copy arrived today and one play puts it in the usual 'perfect groove' status that both his and The Dan's work has been sitting for the last ten years. Almost too perfect? maybe...but maybe it'll make tonight a wonderful thing. Watch this space...