May 2003

1993 Remembered: Kamakiriad

Note: This article - a collection of thoughts, really - is the latest in my year-long series about 1993. I have told some stories, but this month I've reserved this space to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of one of my favorite albums of all time.

If I lost all of my CD's in a fire, replacing them would be expensive and time consuming. While I can count on my loyal brothers-in-arms to help me out by burning what CD's I may have lost, there is one album I would replace immediately: Donald Fagan's album, Kamakiriad. This joint is the fucking Rosetta Stone for me - I'm serious. Since it's release in May of 1993, it hasn't left my side. Not a month has passed that I have failed to play it at least once.

* * *

I should say at first that I expected to like this album. But, very much like Steely Dan's Katy Lied, it crept into my consciousness after repeated plays and deep thought about it's relevance. Some Dan records, like Can't Buy a Thrill, or The Royal Scam, are enjoyable, but were never earth shattering for me. I understand them in their place, but they don't necessarily stand alone in the same way the others do in my mind.

After Steely Dan broke up (stopped making records…went on hiatus…whatever) Fagan released 1983's The NightFly: a concept album about a boy's dreams of the future. That one, lyrically, at least, was different from where SD had left off with Gaucho. The jazz influence remained, but the biting sarcasm was pretty much exchanged for a trip back to the early 60's..

I would be a moron to suppose that the young kid in The Nightfly is the protagonist in Kamakiriad. This is another person under the control of Donald's psychic powers. He's a man with a vegetable powered car on a metaphorical drive across his life some time in the future. He finds adventure, past loves, and is beset by sexy aliens. In the end, the hero meets a manifestation of the banality of life, and promptly runs away. It's no wonder Steely Dan went back on the road that summer.

Back to the album…One minute and forty-two seconds into the second song, "Countermoon", the spirit of the album is revealed. The first song, "Trans-Island Skyway", had already set the mood, but in "Countermoon", we've arrived at a destination. Somewhere along the 'Skyway', our hero's companion is 'struck' by the light of this bad-ass moon, rendering her either frigid or just plain mean.

"Hand in Hand / You walk along the river / You stop to clutch and caress / A coutnermoonbeam / Comes sweeping off the water / She says 'You're not my Jackie. / My Jackie was the best.'"

I've made out to this album, drank and used various drugs alone and with friends to this record. In college, I played hours of Civilization and Colonization listening to it. I liked to listen to this driving down Rout 301 in Delaware and Maryland after visiting Bigfoot before we get married. I've listened to this album in Canada. No matter where I am, or what I've been doing, I'm not LISTENING until I hear that line - "You're not my Jackie" - because that line is the whole album to me.

The line is delivered by one of Fagan's back-up singers, and speaks to the sudden change of heart she has. Call it what you like, but the moon-beam is some kind of dreaded reality in his world, and men can't do anything to prevent it from changing their ladies into wolves. But in this world, he can always drive to another town along the Skyway and find solace in past loves - that is the next song, "Sprintime", a light-hearted trip down memory lane far from the reaches of the "cruel countermoom."

Along with "Countermoon", the songs, "Snowbound", "On The Dunes" and "Florida Room" are the best cuts on the album (that's not to say any tracks are not worth hearing.) Smooth, jazzy and funky all at once. They exemplify Fagan's ability to refine the sound he created with Steely Dan back in the 70's without dating the music, or rendering it irrelevant. Lyrically, however, they are different from SD, but the lyrics are almost unnecessary. With music as tight as this, who needs words anyway?

* * *

I have this theory for any album released by an already established artist: I imagine if someone else, an unknown, had put it out, I ask "would I want to listen to it?" I measure pretty much every album I hear with that theory. That's why Kamakiriad is the fucking Rosetta Stone for me. The Grandpa Theory of a Record's Worth came about as a direct result of my contemplation of Kanakiriad.

In fact, I'm sure this album is responsible for my transition to having better taste in music. Only a jazz and funked-out album about a guy driving a vegetable powered bubble car that kicks it as hard as Kamakiriad does could reinvent my musical taste. Fagan walked this imaginary line between the stupid and the brilliant with this album. Actually, he made an excellent album, period. Sure, the concept is strange and many of the words are made-up, but it works. I don't know if I would have found this album on my own, but it would have found me.

* * *

It's difficult for me to separate Kamakiriad from 1993 because the album and the year weigh heavily on my mind whenever I think about the past. But unlike other CD's or tapes I hang onto from back in the day, K is the only one which I play in the company of others. So much about me had changed that I cannot bear to relive it anywhere but alone.

Kamakiriad, somehow, never changed. Rather, I changed over time, and I have been catching up to it for over ten years.

Honestly, I would hate to finish this thought experiment with that line, so I decided to linger on the page for a few more sentences, and to let the album come to an end.

As I mentioned earlier, the final track, "Teahouse on the Tracks" finds the hero facing a choice - banality, or more movement. Our hero chooses to keep moving, knowing that someday he will have no choice but to stop at the 'Teahouse' for good. He carries with him, in his veggie-car, the real and simulated memories of a life in motion, and to rest anywhere would leave him with nothing more than that. His life would end.

The 'Teahouse' may be heaven, for all I know. It's at the corner of 'Bleak and Divine', two words for me which describe the land beyond the Pearly Gates. (Of course, the 'Teahouse' could also be representative of marriage, adulthood, or membership to a country club to the author, but I give him more credit than that.) I was never able to understand why men longed for heaven in the first place. Sure, it's better than nothing, and it's supposed to be a reward for good behavior, but it's no less stagnant than plain old death itself. I can understand why someone might turn away from the 'Teahouse' at 'Bleak and Divine', putting off the inevitable for another while, in search of a life they alone control.