I can't retrace the exact steps, but I recall the specific moment. It was a warm morning, heavy with spring blossoms. Toward the middle of the week. Aja hummed on my laptop. I set down my mint-avocado-kale-cucumber smoothie to better read my bank statement, and the revelation opened in my brain like an 18 track harmony: Steely Dan is one of the great American bands. Now, the important left-handedness implied is 'American' as there are only like nine "great" American bands. If we factor in England alone, Steely Dan drops out of the top twenty before you can say, "You know, besides the Beach Boys, the Stooges, and Talking Heads, who do we really have?"
The Doors? (A stranger holds me back as I take aggressive swings at you.)
Steely Dan was initially Trojan Horsed into my life. De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising was one of those tapes I wore out. Years later when a friend played me Aja, I recognized the hook from "Peg," sampled in De La's "Eye Know". Entry point enough, and the next few months Aja constricted around me. Then you find out you already know half the songs on Can't Buy a Thrill, and "Kid Charlemagne's" guitar solo makes you long for when "guitar solo" wasn't such a dirty word, and I was a Dan Man.
Ready to soften what I demanded of music philosophically, I embraced music as something beautiful for my ears. And what beautiful things the Steely Dan speaks. Donald Fagen even cops to it in this relic of an article by none other than Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe:
“We’re proud that we don’t have any cuts or at least ones that we think are inferior. These days most pop critics, you know, are mainly interested in the amount of energy that is…obvious on the record. This is primitive rock&roll energy. People who are mainly Rolling Stones fans and people who like punk rock, stuff like that… a lot of them aren’t interested at all in what we have to do.”
Cuts? Inferior? Pop critics? Punk rock? So, this is just sellout music?
Well, yeah. I'm sure plenty of the Italian loafer--moist with Aramis cologne--set have pulled up from a coke strewn mirror during "I Got the News," and snort-shouted, "Woo! Those licks are fuckin' tasty, brother!" But it's not The Dans fault they're so brilliant.
Catchy by meticulous design, Steely Dan sells. Is their music the byproduct of a studio vacuum where spontaneity is traded for soulless technique? Well no one ever said they weren't dicks. Steely Dan isn't even really a band. It's just two dudes--songwriters Donald Fagen and Walter Becker--and a cavalcade of elite session musicians. As obnoxious as this is, the aspiration for musical perfection is held above the individual. Keith is in the Stones because he was always just...there. Wayne Shorter plays the soul excoriating solo on "Aja," because he was the best man for the job. It reminds me of the way another Walter makes his product. There is a right way, and a formula, but within these rigid walls an artistry so cunning, it seems as simple as following a recipe.
Anyone can make a pop record, Dan erects pop architecture. And Aja is their Versailles.
Every note on Aja sounds like it was laid with a jewelers loupe. Layer after pristine layer of hand poured analog, clean as angel feathers. Fused into a tight latticework of jazz theory and funk rhythms, Aja represents a moment of evolutionary excellence. The Dan, fully upright, with sensibility, studio, and session guys obsessively balanced. A production marvel, every quiver of sound is managed; never asphyxiated, but manicured down to each fine hair.
Despite the architectural feat Aja represents, there is a swampy groove furrowed in this record's guts. The long list of bass players, clavinets, electric pianos, extraneous percussion--up to and including "police whistle"--form the hearty earth where Aja launches her crystalline spires. There is so much technical work, the most overlooked facet of Aja, she's all bottom. Like, my mama's gully-low. Even "Deacon Blues," the album's emotional centerpiece, swings a thick back end.
Of course, this is still a The Dan album. Melodies shimmer like sun beams, and every genre gets its wink, but there is a tight vision at the core. Aja unfolds with a storytellers resolve. Each track--with its unique mood and cast of rogues--keeps one foot planted in a central idea. Not a narrative, but an identity. Aja's stylistic shifts are personality traits, instead of genre send-ups. The most decadent restraint in pop music history. Even the record itself is lean. Only seven tracks: no fat, no filler, just calculated momentum.
The first three tracks--"Black Cow," "Aja," and "Deacon Blues"--represent the height of Aja's potential. The B-side is efficient, and has more straightforward chart appeal. "Peg" is like disco-funk honey, and has a Micheal McDonald cameo. What's there to dislike about that? But the first three tracks are a 20 minute jazz-blues odyssey worthy of a concept so self-indulgent.
"Black Cow," jumps to life like the clink of your parent's keys in a key party fishbowl. An off center groove saunters through warm brass lines. Back-up singers punctuate the story with their soulful glow. A piano solo explores a little creative space. All muddy boots and cymbal hits, "Black Cow," lays the easy listening-psych foundation.
"Aja," follows as the strap-on-your-moon-boots ignition point. What begins as a plodding ramble lousy with absurd lyrics (Zappa refers to Dan's songwriting as "Downer Surrealism"), ascends into the fusion jazz stratosphere. A satin glider aloft on gratuitous key changes, "Aja" soars across vast soundscapes. Notes taken to the edge of unsatisfying melodic resolution collapse into sonic wormholes. A compact region of jazz spacetime where only precision solos survive. Just as the song appears to settle home, the false bottom gives. What remains falls into a chaotic synth vortex. So intricate, yet so far out, only "Aja" could dare to be the titular track.
Then, there is "Deacon Blues." The magnum opus made to be missed. At first blush, it's the lazy track. Some throw-away sandwiched between "Aja's" exploratory commission and "Peg's" radio perfection. But still waters run deep, and you have to dive to the bottom of this track. It should reveal itself in due time. And where this song emerges as the finest on the album, it may be the finest in Steely Dan's catalog. What's it like to finally hear "Deacon Blues?"
You're gonna have to get a real estate license or Series 7 or something. Whatever job of this ilk it is you choose, ensure your performance is mediocre. Through this end, build an unsustainable lifestyle. Leverage your pittance into condos, clothes (at least one pair of high-waisted white slacks--with pleats), and a 1977 Corvette. Not a Monte Carlo, not a Camaro, not a Trans Am, a 1977 Corvette. If the '77 Mustang even crossed your mind, stop. You don't get it.
Drink too much. Feel alone sometimes. Go to expensive bars and mingle with expensive people. Step out of yourself. Watch these lurid images throw shadows on the wall. Succor them with drinks you can't afford. Grasp at what you want. Let it slip through your fingers. When your blood goes bad on whiskey, leave. Say you know of a party "...in Laurel Canyon. With porno girls." Did I mention you live in L.A.? Move to L.A.
Get in your car. Put on "Deacon Blues." Race through the hills. Contemplate the far off city lights. Imagine each one is some tiny possibility--one good thing--flickering in the distance. Remind yourself they're interchangeable lamps on factory made poles. "Deacon Blues," should be on repeat. Chew up another Quaalude. Suck the whiskey spit and pill granules off your teeth. Hock the toxic mix out Shyla's window. Your car's name is "Shyla," and the windows have been down the whole time. A futile attempt, saliva coats your face. "Deacon Blues" is inside you. You're afraid to turn the song off. Anguish plunges in you like sickness.
Pull into a little alcove off the highway's crooked back. When the song starts over, raise the volume as far as it will go. Wail. Moan. Scorn your hollow tears. Take a pull from the flask in your dashboard. Try to sing along. As that one part of the song nears--you know which part--drive your foot into the gas pedal. Lurch toward the black, infinite expanse. Before your car goes over the cliff, throw yourself out. Stand up, toes on the edge. The saxophone's croon disappears into the belly of the canyon. You wait, arms open, for the hot breath of an explosion that never comes.
Curse the Hollywood illusion makers one more time. From the bottom of the ravine, "They got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose," lilts up the craggy walls. Walk home. Watch the sun come up.
After that...you'll know "Deacon Blues." [My attorney says I have to say, "Don't do ANY--repeat ANY--of that stuff." Personally, unless you do every step, I'm hard-pressed to believe I'm liable. Besides, stock trading and real estate are trash right now. Oh, and drugs are bad.]
Aja is the zenith. Aja is the aberration. Aja is the complete vision of Dan-dom in every aspect of the record. You can't get with Dan-dom? Understandable, but the total achievement, regardless of author, is a marvel to behold. The band crowned as the anti-heroes of the 70's, in the twilight of their decade, during their finest hour.
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