aja (1977) - steely dan: abc records, AA-1006

There are some musical styles that simply define the decade in which they emerged.  Doo-wop is inseparable from the 50's.  Surf guitar is one-hundred percent 60's.  And soft pseudo-jazz fusion is utterly 70's.

Steely Dan was like Santana without huevos.  A band that not only embraced their era, but probably did as much to make 70's jazz-rock ripe for satire as anyone else.  A couple of  musically talented white dudes who felt their true nature was a darker shade of pale, and who thought they could fuse jazz, funk, latin, r&b, and rock - hoping that they could make something transcendent - even though they were probably better suited to Montavani or Bacharach.  Aja was their claim to fame, and wildly embraced by white dudes trying desperately to capture some soul.

Aja had all the markings of being a staple in late-70's album collections.  It was exactly the sound for when you got lucky at the singles bar and brought a lady home.  It was mood music with a capital "O".  A soft, non-threatening groove, with just a hint of seduction.  An easy-listening mood ring. Yeah, baby.

Side A: Black Cow Aja Deacon Blues
Side B: Peg Home At Last I Got The News Josie

The songs are all pretty safe.  Easy listening and quite memorable. All the cuts on side one are good - with Deacon Blues being perhaps the strongest of the lot - and both Peg and Josie on side two stick with you, even if lyrics like these from Peg are incomprehensibly ridiculous:

"when the shutter falls
you'll see it all
in 3-D
it's your favorite foreign movie"

What really hit me this time around, however, is that these songs are a perfect example of how when you try to do too many things at once - in this case throwing jazz, r&b, rock, and some funk beats into a blender - you end up with something where the total is far less than the sum of the parts.

The real impact is the album cover.  The incredible glossy black only broken by a long, thin red & white ribbon and just the hint of a woman's face in profile breaking through the darkness.  I've always found it to have the same sort of magnetic mystery about it as the Mona Lisa, and no matter how many times I have held the album, I always end up just staring at the cover, wondering if I will see something new. Unfortunately, the gatefold ruins the sublime quality of the cover due to some verbose text telling you all about the songs to which you're listening, as well as giving a bit of puff to the band.  Bleh.

But as memorable as the songs are, ultimately, Aja is a time-capsule of the part of the 70's I always associated with dudes with shirts open to their navels, wearing gold chains and astrological pendants,  ordering tequila sunrises in bars hoping to score.  Today, this seems more appropriate of background music in a dentist's waiting room than a soundtrack to some 70's lovin.

Up next: An immersion in ambience