Steely Dan - Album By Album - Aja (+FM)

(from the Done Up In Blueprint Blue department)

Two separate reviews - but they kind of belong together.  You'll see.  I had to remove a name from this post - and remove some other non-review material - but otherwise - unchanged.

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In 1974, I was 9 years old - and an avid AM radio listener. We didn't have FM in my house back then - but that's another story. I remember hearing Rikki Don't Lose That Number on the radio and loving that song. I didn't know it was Steely Dan at the time - or even who Steely Dan was!

Flash forward to 1977 and 12 year old me - now in Junior High School - had started listening to music of his own choosing.  I remember hearing the song Peg on the radio and thinking it was amazing. A friend had the Aja album, so I made a cassette copy - because that's what kids with limited funds did back then. 

I remember listening to it with my weird music background, and thinking, "Well Peg is great. Shame about the rest of the album, though."  I quickly moved on to the next albums I had convinced my parents to buy me - Barry Manilow's Even Now, Al Stewart's Year Of The Cat and Christopher Cross's Christopher Cross.

Throughout high school and college, I became a huge Beatle-head - then moved into prog rock, then new wave & punk. I played in a Goth Band (!) then got into music engineering school and played in a Seattle band. (We were more R.E.M. than Nirvana - but hey - it was Seattle, and you could get away with that here for a while.)

At some point, I started collecting the odd Steely Dan album here and there - on vinyl! I have an MCA Countdown to Ecstasy, a quad Pretzel Logic, and the Don'n'Walt demo collection The Early Years from back in those days. Then - as mentioned earlier - I heard that Joe Jackson cover of "King Of The World". That really flipped my whole Steely Dan perspective around - and so I avidly started collecting all the Steely Dan I could, starting with the 2000-era CD re-masters.

As part of this - I rediscovered Aja.

So - my Aja review.

It's definitely part of the "last phase" of the original Steely Dan 7®. The "rock" bits that were still present in the Katy Lied/The Royal Scam twins were completely excised at this point, in favor of a more jazz/pop direction. It took me a while, but I finally realized that "Peg" is not the only Amazing Song On Aja®. The title track "Aja" is a tour de force. When folks here mention that it might be their pinnacle, I find it very hard to disagree with them. "Black Cow" and "Deacon Blues" are almost like mini-movies - long-form, yet still melodic.

Side 2 - with shorter songs - seems more Beatle-esque. I still love "Peg" - and keep finding new bits every time I really listen to it. (i.e. I just noticed the little shouty bit of "PEG" during the fade out.) I love the literary allusions to Greek myths in "Home At Last" - even the Retsina is a call back to Greek culture. I will admit that I hadn't really paid attention to all of the double-entendres in "I Got The News" until recently. I just liked the angular melody, the groove and the kind of "boppy" feel. Finally "Josie" wraps up the album in grand style - all flashing eyes and fire.

It's still not my favorite Steely Dan - that remains Countdown To Ecstasy - but it's really, really good. When I'm in a more "jazz" mood - it really hits the spot. Intense, yet laid back. Quite possibly the most fully realized album Steely Dan ever made.

Unfortunately, Aja also pointed in the direction that Steely Dan would follow on their next albums - more reliance on groove - less on pop hooks. A continuation of the trend that a fellow reviewer on the Steve Hoffman forums noted on The Royal Scam: "harmonic and rhythmic hooks instead of melodic and lyrical hooks".

But - for this album - it seemed more like a new direction than an eventual dead end.

Cheers,
Paul

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BONUS Review: FM

As mentioned earlier, FM (No Static At All) is a song that Steely Dan did for the movie FM. The movie isn't great - some might even call it terrible. Mostly - it's just unimaginative and kind of clichéd. Sad too - it's a great cast: Cleavon Little, Martin Mull, Eileen Brennan and Alex Karras. And there's live performances from Jimmy Buffet and Linda Ronstadt.

Luckily, it had a pretty cool soundtrack. Many of the acts were managed by Irving Azoff - including Steely Dan - hence their inclusion on the soundtrack album.

Steely Dan contributed two tracks: FM (No Static At All) and FM (Reprise). Most Steely Dan compilations rename the song to simply FM. And - as has been mentioned - from the Gold Expanded Edition CD onwards, FM is usually an edit of FM (No Static At All) and FM (Reprise), replacing the track ending guitar solo with a saxophone solo. (A quick way to tell: the "guitar outro" version is 4:50, while the "sax outro" version is 5:06.)

Either version is wonderful. 

I'm more familiar with the "sax outro" version - that's the first version I ever heard. But the "guitar outro" version is pretty damn tasty, I must say.

As has been mentioned, the lyrics are kind of a play on FM radio - and seduction. "No Static At All" was one of the selling points of FM radio. Unlike AM, FM radio always sounded clear - immune from lightning strikes, appliances, and other noise generating sources. 

You play the cool music - you'll get "No Static At All" from "The Girls". Tasty guitar - smoking sax - pretty much a classic Steely Dan song in almost every way. 

Cheers,
Paul