Steely Dan: Aja (Original MCA Version - CRC Pressing) CD Track Listing

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Steely Dan Aja (Original MCA Version - CRC Pressing) (1977)
Aja (Original MCA Version - CRC Pressing)\n\nOriginally Released 1977\nGold CD Edition Released October 5, 1988\n"Citizen Steely Dan" Boxed Set Released December 14, 1993\nRemastered Edition Released November 23, 1999\nJapanese Mini LP Version Released May 3, 2000\n2000 Universal Victor, Inc. - Japan\n\nAlbum Details (Mini LP CD Packaging)\nDigitally remastered Japanese limited edition featuring a miniature gatefold LP style sleeve for initial pressing. \n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW:Steely Dan hadn't been a real working band since Pretzel Logic, but with Aja, Becker and Fagen's obsession with sonic detail and fascination with composition reached new heights. A coolly textured and immaculately produced collection of sophisticated jazz-rock, Aja has none of the overt cynicism or self-consciously challenging music that distinguished previous Steely Dan records. Instead, it's a measured and textured album, filled with subtle melodies and accomplished, jazzy solos that blend easily into the lush instrumental backdrops. But Aja isn't just about texture, since Becker and Fagen's songs are their most complex and musically rich set of songs -- even the simplest song, the sunny pop of "Peg," has layers of jazzy vocal harmonies. In fact, Steely Dan ignores rock on Aja, preferring to fuse cool jazz, blues and pop together in a seamless, seductive fashion. It's complex music delivered with ease, and although the duo's preoccupation with clean sound and self-consciously sophisticated arrangements would eventually lead to a dead end, Aja is a shining example of jazz-rock at its finest. -- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide\n\nAmazon.com Editorial Review\nHistory gives Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen the last, hearty laugh on this, the crown jewel in their remarkable canon of '70s Mensa pop. Sneaking onto the charts a half-decade earlier with sinuous, jazz-inflected "rock," the dysfunctional duo's acerbic, anti-heroic visions had been critically lauded for their band identity and killer guitar riffs, then promptly challenged when the two songwriters retired from the road, dissolved any formal band lineup, and used the studio as laboratory. Aja carried the added indignity of its increased focus on sophisticated jazz models and musicianship, which carried the Dan's ambitions even further in terms of suave harmonies, intricate song structures, and brilliant playing. Time has proven them wiser than their rock crit detractors: These seven songs abound in knotty plots, sneaky imagery, and drop-dead brilliant performances from a blue chip studio repertory studded with first-call jazz players epitomized by Wayne Shorter's towering solo on the title song. From the hard-boiled jazz romance of "Deacon Blues" to the twisted Homeric vamp of "Home at Last," the veiled but ominous swing of "Peg" to the sci-fi eroticism of "Josie," Aja is a modern pop classic and the coolest fusion record no one ever thought to lump in that category. --Sam Sutherland \n\nCD Connection Review\nSteely Dan: Walter Becker, Donald Fagen. \n\nAdditional personnel: Joe Sample, Larry Carlton, Tom Scott, Steve Gadd, Wayne Shorter, Bernard Purdie, Michael McDonald. \n\nEngineers include: Roger Nichols, Elliot Scheiner, Bill Schnee. \n\nRecorded at Village Recorders, Los Angeles, California; Producer's Workshop, Warner Brothers North Hollywood Recording Studios, ABC Recording Studios, Sound Labs, Hollywood, California; A&R Studios, New York, New York. Includes liner notes by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. \n\nAll tracks have been digitally remastered. \n\nThis represents the pinnacle of Steely Dan's gradual transition from rock band to their own brand of jazz-influenced white soul. Guitars were replaced by keyboards, and saxophones became more common. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were only interested in spending time in the recording studios, while the fans pined and waited. The result set new standards in recorded excellence, and is regularly used as a hi-fi shop demonstration. The ambitious title track was deemed too difficult for radio play and only the two overtly accessible tracks `Josie' and `Peg', gave them valuable exposure. \n\nAmazon.com Customer Review\nAn Alternate Child's Garden Of Verses., December 3, 2001 \nReviewer: David S. Minjares from Montebello, CA. USA \n1977 was an absolutely miserable year for me: 6th grade, some teacher named Bettendorf (I kid you not. He looked like Pat Boone's down-and-out brother...and he was the school coach), kids into Boston, pimples, disco and much, much peer pressure.\n\nLike a ray of some weird, cosmic ray of rude white light, Steely Dan's "Aja" entered into my life and was the blueprint of what I am today (don't ask).\n\nIt was obvious that by the photos of Donald Fagen (and his killer Husky dog) and Walter Becker (looking like an angry Fu Manchu with a natural wood toned Fender Stratocaster), they were just like me. They hated life and all of the phonies and their children THAT WOULD GROW UP JUST LIKE THEIR PARENTS!!\n\nOn the other hand, they loved jazz...and so did I.\n\nThen there were the lyrics. THOSE LYRICS.\n\nWhile other kids were singing and playing air guitar along to "Black Dog" or "More Than A Feeling" (which to my jazz affected ears misinterpreted it as "Roman Cathedral". Plus, I was in Catholic School), I was playing air sax and singing "Black Cow" & "Home At Last" (that what happens when you play the Gato Barberi 'Last Tango In Paris" soundtrack too much...and you're NOT EVEN TEN!). \n\nBut I loved melody and great arrangements. And great playing. And sarcasm...lots of it.\n\nThe title track, if you heard it today, could pass for a righteous satire on pretentious New Age philosophies. What starts as a mystically haunting song is ripped to shreds by drummer Steve Gadd's intense drumming and Wayne Shorter's out-there tenor solo (my true jazz impression cherry was broken by this very passage. The above's contributions were the jazz-fusion equivalent of that obscure Elmer Fudd cartoon (shoegazer/scooter-riding/bulbnose era) whith the uttered line: "Peace, he says? We'll give him P-P-P-P-P-PUH-LENTY OF PEACE!!"\n\n"Peg", as good as it is, is the most dated track, but it's still good with it's quaint disco overtones (yes, you read right...quaint). "Josie" should've been their killer Top 40 success but, alas, Debbie Boone mugged way too much for Casey Kasem that year. (Pimples & Debbie Boone. Go figure.)\n\n"Deacon Blues" has to go down as the very first saloon song that the whole family can sing along to, while "Home At Last" taught me something about James Joyce (according to Michael Phaelen's obnoxious Friday Night Quarterback liner notes)...which was 'nothing'.\n\nWith lyrics like Becker & Fagen, it was obvious that they thought the beatniks of their era were poseurs. They loved the Brill Building, but hated Jack Kerouac. (But they did love jazz.) Would Paul Anka's 'Diane'-cheeze voice have stood it? Or even Little Eva (whome they loved)? Or even Nina Simone (no comment)?\n\nNo. That's why these songs still mess with our minds nearly 25 years later. These had to be the most austere pop songs around in 1977 and this was before you had anything like dream-pop or ambient music to do that job. There was notthing else like them then and let's forget about today's possibilites.\n\nIf you were that outcast child in 1977 and you're reading this, you're probably a late-bloomer beautiful swan. Alienation had a great soundtrack, didn't it? Otherwise, you would be with the rest of the weekend warriors singing "The Heat Is On", "Couple Of Days Off" and "Oops! I Did It Again" at the sports bar.\n\nI love to singa, 'bout the moona-and-a-juna-and-and-springa. THAT (and Steely Dan) was music. \n\nCD Now Review (January 1, 1999)\nOn Aja, its sixth album, the seminal '70s duo Steely Dan distilled the various musical components that had come to define its style and crystallized them into a work that was immaculately conceived and pristinely rendered. \n\nOnce a full-fledged six-piece outfit, by the mid-'70s Steely Dan had been pared down to co-founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who employed crack session players to execute their increasingly complex compositions. The resulting shift in focus, first apparent on 1974's Pretzel Logic, was an innovative sound that eschewed the communal flavor of most rock & roll in favor of a more studied detachment. \n\nReleased in 1977, Aja was the masterpiece that Steely Dan had been aiming toward. Characterized by glorious pop hooks, horn-fueled jazz flourishes, lightly sprayed funk, and harmony-laced vocals, the album pieced together a multitude of musical forms, and seamlessly blended them together into something both familiar and new. \n\nSuch FM classics such as "Deacon Blues" and "Peg" found Becker and Fagen weaving sophisticated melodies into intricate arrangements, while more adventurous songs (such as "Home at Last" and the title track) utilized outlandish time signatures that exemplified the notion of "jazz-rock fusion." And of course, true to Steely Dan's reputation for cryptic themes, the lyrics on Aja were as inscrutable as the men who wrote them. \n\nFor all the daring evidenced by their songs, Becker and Fagen were sometimes lambasted as studio obsessives whose insistence on sonic perfection conferred a sterility upon the music they created. In retrospect, however, it's easy to detect warmth, and even humor, in Steely Dan's compositions. Perhaps the truest indication of Aja's value, though, lies in the fact that the album sounds as contemporary as it did when it was released 23 years ago.
This rock cd contains 7 tracks and runs 39min 59sec.
Freedb: 5c095d07
Buy: from Amazon.com

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