Steely Dan - Aja

10.0 - USA - 1977

- Masterpiece - 

A few facts about this album, which may or may not necessarily all be scientifically accurate:

1. It is Steely Dan's masterpiece. While not, perhaps, the greatest album of all time, it is certainly the finest album ever made.

2. Smooth and polished to the point of frictionlessness, it can be touched, but not felt.

3. The first run of Sony's CDP-101 released in 1982 came with copies of this record as a test disc to demonstrate the hi-fidelity capabilities of the new compact disc format. (This required an early application of time travel technology as a compact disc release of Aja was not issued until 1984). However, because the Sony CDP-101 only had one Digital-to-Analog Converter and no Sample-and-Hold circuitry, the 11µs delay between the left and right channel undermined sound quality and prompted the group's lawyers to issue Sony with a cease and desist order. As of this writing, the technology to hear this record in its full form has not yet been developed.

4. The opening rhythm for "Black Cow" -- a track which unfolds slowly with the deliberate elegance of a robotic orchid unfurling -- has been used to set the pulse for the more up-market atomic clocks.

5. The guitar solo for single "Peg" required over 50 takes by at least dozen session guitarists before Jay Graydon's take was settled upon.

6. "Peg" does more in its four minutes of "pantonal thirteen bar blues with chorus" than most groups do in their entire catalogue.

7. Steve Gadd's drumming at 7:27 in the title track is perhaps the greatest break of all time.

8. In order to prevent any possible contamination, the record was mixed in the same dust-free facility that assembled the Voyager space probes.

9. However, the album's September 1977 release -- just over a month after the launch of Voyager II -- meant that no cut from the record could be included on the Voyager Gold Record. A shame, as any advanced, space-faring alien race would obviously be into the Dan's brand of slick, sophisticated jazz-rock.

10. Aja is the exact polar opposite of Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols, which was released about a month later. However, despite what the wags at NME may say, and despite the Dan's L.A. cocaine disco jazz gloss, Becker and Fagen are the real punks (for reasons that cannot be fully elucidated in this space) whereas Rotten, Vicious et al were merely a pre-fab boy band.

11. And so on and so on.

Best quote from the reissue's liner notes: in a transcription of a purported conference call between Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, music executive Michael Phalen (who wrote the original liner notes to Aja) and a realtor from upstate New York mistakenly contacted due to sharing the same name as the former president of ABC records Steve Diener): "Fagen: Bastard! Becker: Liar! Fagen: You shitheel! Phalen: Is that you, Donald? Becker: Guess again, dicknose!" (and so on and so on)