Aja

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Music
Genre:	Jazz
Artist:	Steely Dan

Every few years or so, you will discover a real gem hidden in the dusty storage rooms of pop culture. If you are lucky, you will find it in its pristine condition - unsullied by the current profit and personality-oriented music industry. No mediocre remakes by inept teen stars. No "tribute albums" by cash-strapped local few-hit wonders and profit-driven record companies.

For me, this gem came in the form of a song in a pirated CD that was being played in a pickup truck owned by a 50-something office mate back in 2004, when we were on our way to a team-building activity in Laguna. It was an upbeat and very refined song with an excellent mix of guitars, drums, brass instruments and vocals. And it had a cryptic chorus of "... it's your favorite foreign movie."

The band was apparently called Steely Dan and that particular song was entitled "Peg". I made a mental note that I'd research on the band and their music. For some 2 years after that event, however, I simply forgot all about it, no less due to my fixation with Bossa Nova. (Which is, to clarify, the original Bossa Nova with Gilberto, Jobim, et. al. ... and not the pseudo-Bossa inanities that get played in the radio nowadays. More of this in a separate article.)

When I rediscovered Steely Dan in Youtube, I made an effort to digest everything that they ever churned out. Since Steely Dan CDs are rare, I had to content myself with their recently-released "Best of Steely Dan" album. One thing that I observed was that Steely Dan seemingly does not respect genre borders. One moment they sound like a hard rock band, and next they sound like a light jazz band. They also have songs that sound very much like blues and love songs.

So I made a list of their songs that I liked, and discovered, to my delight, that most of them are contained in the album "Aja" (pronounced "Asia"). It was an album that was produced at a time when the band was undergoing a jazz experimentation phase. It later turned out to be their finest and most critically-acclaimed album. It's easy to see why. They employ a seemingly seamless integration of tunes using a vast array of instruments and sound engineering equipment.

Aja can be considered the peak of songwriting by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker - the two musicians that make up the core of Steely Dan. These two individuals are musical perfectionists who won't stop until they have achieved the proverbial golden mean in their music. They have a superb sound when playing rock, and they sound even better applying their genius in jazz.

The blending of Michael MacDonald's many voices in "Peg", is in itself a masterpiece in an already great song. "Deacon Blues", "Black Cow", "Home at Last" and title track "Aja" employ a mesmerizing combination of brass instruments that magnify the depth of the respective songs' lyrics. The deceivingly imperfect sound of Donald Fagen's vocals seem to be illuminated by the immensity of all songs in this great album.

A person who has never heard of Steely Dan might be led to believe that the songs in Aja were made in the late 80s - judging from the crisp, refined sound that generally characterize jazz musicians of that period. It will then be a surprise to learn that Aja was produced in 1977, well into the disco vs. heavy metal period of the 1970s. The album was clearly ahead of its time and escaped the attention of most listeners, with the exception of the most discriminating ears.

While some bands that undergo a change in musical direction can be said to suffer from an identity crisis at best (or being sellouts, at worst), Steely Dan's transition from rock to jazz renders these derogatory terms inapplicable due to the tremendous leap that their sound has made from their earlier works.

You don't need to be a jazz aficionado to appreciate this great album. Even if you get to hear the music for free in any site, I guarantee that you'd end up wanting to purchase the album anyway just to honor this great band.