I started with the best of intentions. When I created this blog, I told myself that I’d be writing every day, serving up bite-sized slices of musical lore to share my love of records and music with a world eager to receive it. Well, there were two things wrong with that assumption:

1. I thought I could find the time to spend on this pet project on a daily basis.
2. I ain’t all that. The world isn’t banging down this door to hear what I think about anything.

So the project languished.

Let’s Do This Thing

Must-Have Albums, #1

The first pick in this series is 1978’s “Aja,” by Steely Dan.

Those who know me know I’ve been a lifelong fan of this thing that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen created. They created a marvelous body of work together over the course of nearly 60 years, until Walter’s untimely death in 2017. There’s always been something about the Dan’s skewed view of life that attracted the cynic in me. Fagen, from New Jersey, and Becker, from NYC, had the sense of humor that only comes from living in a city that’s outgrown itself by a hundredfold, and having a wonky sense of humor myself, I was hooked the first time I heard them on the radio.

“Aja” wasn’t the first Dan Lp I owned. That honor goes to “Katy Lied”, which a teenage me found a used copy of in a stereo shop. I fell in love at first listen; as the offspring of an accountant myself, I immediately identified with the desperate ultimatum of Fagen’s protagonist in “Don’t Take Me Alive”, in which a bookeeper’s son, unable to take it anymore, holes up with some sticks of TNT in a Mexican standoff that presumably didn’t end well.

But it’s “Aja” that holds top spot in my catalog of Steely Dan productions. I was at Cam Floria’s Christian Music Camp in Big Bear, California in the summer of ’78, and not only was this album played by a lot of people, it was specifically used as an example of a first-class record by well known Christian recording artist Jaime Owens and her husband and producer Dan Collins. They waxed poetic over the Hideki Fuji cover photo of Japanese actress Sayoko Yamaguchi, which is still stunning over 40 years later. They talked about the amazing sound, the engineering and audio, and of course, the songwriting. It made an impression on my teenage brain.

And then of course, I heard songs from “Aja” on the radio continuously for the next 2 years. There was the resentful “why not me?” of “Deacon Blues”, and the  jazz-rock propulsion of “Peg” and “Josie”, which were massive Top 40 radio hits. And, on SoCal FM stations like KMET and KLOS, I also heard the extended late-night groove of the title track, and the mythological warning of “Home At Last.”

Shown to the left is my Mobile Fidelity pressing, acquired new in the early ’80s. It’s a near-perfect pressing, sonically, and of course it’s Becker and Fagen’s magnum opus.

Why It Matters

By nature, Steely Dan has always been a thinking-person’s band. Fueled equally by Becker & Fagen’s iconoclastic view of the world, their obsessive perfectionism, and their mission to meld classic jazz sensibilities with rock riffs, the Dan appeal to people who like to do more than just hum along to the music.

“Aja” is perfection: the lyrics are sweetly sour without being dour; they make you laugh when you start to really think about what they’re saying. The musicianship is without peer; the players read like a who’s who: Victor Feldman, Joe Sample, Paul Humphrey, Larry Carlton, Wayne Shorter, Michael Omartian – the list goes on. Even the backing vocalists are legendary: Venetta Fields, Sherlie Matthews and Clydie King, the legendary Blackberries, make sure the harmonies are tight all the way through.The musical changes are unexpected and flawlessly executed, and repeated listening is rewarded with little instrumental delights you’ve probably heard for years but never noticed.

In short: “Aja” is a magnum opus, and it belongs on any music fan’s shelf.