DU3 Album of the Day: "Aja" Steely Dan

[gratuitous]

They got a name for the winners in the world
I want to name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blue

Autumn 1977: An impossibly young gratuitous comes back from summer break and finds his roommate sampling cuts from a new album. There are only seven songs, so it doesn't take long. "That sounds pretty good," offers gratuitous. "You like that?" his roommate responds. "The whole album sounds like that."

Back in the olden days before the internet and the relentless disclosure of every fact and facet of entertainment lives and developments, a new album might be released without so much as a full-page ad. "Aja," the new Steely Dan album for summer 1977 had been rumored in the works for months. A stray comment here in Rolling Stone, a mention in Cream of a studio musician doing a track, and that's about all a fan had to work with.

"Aja" is probably the perfectionist pinnacle of the legendarily perfectionist musical marriage of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Working with session musicians and producer Gary Katz, Steely Dan put out an album for the ages.

Black Cow
Aja
Deacon Blues
Peg
Home at Last
I Got the News
Josie

[cliffordu]

1. Deacon Blues - one of the best of all time, IMNSHO.

Used to sing it, drunk, at 4 am.....

[progressoid]

5. We played a bad version of that

in our high school jazz band (we sucked a bunch). At the time I didn't realize how much we were butchering a great song.

Ah, good times...

[guitar man]

2. Awesome album

The music is off the hook and the sonic character is unrivaled for a rock album. As a recording engineer, when I'm shopping for a new set of studio reference monitor speakers, my Aja cd goes along with me to test them.

If the speakers survive the first 30 seconds of Josie, they've got a chance of being bought

[RZM]

3. I think this is my father's favorite album of all time

Years ago I remember making him a mix CD. I knew he liked the album, so I decided to put a song from it on there. I didn't know which to pick, so I just picked on at random.

After he listened to it I told him I didn't know which were his favorites on the album, so I had just picked one out of a hat. He said: 'Doesn't matter. Every single cut on it is a classic.'

LOL. People like this album a lot

[av8rdave]

4. I still have that in vinyl somewhere

Great album.

The lyrics from Deacon Blues are particularly appropriate today.

[LynneSin]

6. Gotta love Steely Dan. Stil one of the best concerts I ever saw

Mainly because anyone under the age of 20 avoided it like the plague so we weren't surrounded by a bunch of rookie drinkers & druggers overdoing it and puking up. And yes, I had done that before at concerts, the LynneSin of today wouldn't want to hang out with the 19 year old LynneSin that went to see the Hooters at City Island - that much I do know!

[gratuitous]

7. OMG, that was YOU at the Hooters concert?!

I can keep my mouth shut for a {ahem} small fee . . .