A quick search on Billie Holiday in Amazon music turns up more than a thousand hits—selections, collections, anthologies, boxed sets, imports, bootlegs, DVDs and even remixes—which begs the question of whether we really need yet another Holiday CD for the holidays.

I feel like I completely understand the weirdness of Donald Fagen. In the fall of 2007, on a truly strange Saturday night, I visited the campus of Bard College—the place that inspired the ire of “My Old School” and the oddball outsider feel of “Barrytown,” to name just a couple among Steely Dan’s pathos-laden catalog. On that fall eve, I had an unquestionably surreal experience at the liberalest of East Coast liberal arts colleges, and maybe, just maybe, a small part of the wit and twisted wisdom of Mr. Fagen was imparted to me. Or maybe not. That’s another story for another time. Still, it makes me ready to accept what is being called the Nightfly Trilogy. Of course, I suppose I was ready for it from the get-go. Like a strand of DNA borne by any reasonably hip folks nearby a turntable in the mid 1970s, the tight horns and detached cool of Steely Dan was a part of my bloodwork. In 1982, I got my first radio—a Panasonic alarm clock complete with AM/FM—just in time for Fagen’s The Nightfly. Thusly, as delivered over the warm and even waves of FM—with no static at all—“IGY” will always be the perfect radio song for me. I will always be chasing that idealized wheel in space while there’s time.