The Showbiz Kids: On the turntable this Father's Day Sunday...Aja

Sunday, June 19, 2011

On the turntable this Father's Day Sunday...Aja

Aja (pronounced /ˈeɪʒə/ like "Asia") is the sixth album by the jazz-rock band Steely Dan. Originally released in 1977, it became the group's best-selling album. Peaking at #3 on the U.S. charts and #5 in the United Kingdom, it was the band's first platinum album, eventually selling over 5 million copies.^{[citation needed]} In July 1978, the album won the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Non-Classical Recording. In 2003, the album was ranked number 145 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album is ambitious and sophisticated, and features several leading session musicians. The eight-minute-long title track features complex jazz-based changes and a solo by renowned saxophonist Wayne Shorter, as well as dextrous drumming by Steve Gadd - most notably at the end of the track.

Aja is also the subject of one of the Classic Albums series of documentaries about the making of famous albums. The documentary includes a song-by-song study of the album (the only omission being "I Got the News," which is played during the closing credits), interviews with Steely Dan co-founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (among others) plus new, live-in-studio versions of songs from the album, and the opportunity to hear some of the rejected guitar solos for "Peg," before Jay Graydon produced the satisfactory take.

When DTS attempted to make a 5.1 version, it was discovered that the multitrack masters for both "Black Cow" and the title track were missing. For this same reason, a multichannel SACD version was cancelled by Universal Music. Donald Fagen has offered a $600 reward for the missing masters or any information that leads to their recovery.^[2]

On April 6, 2011, the album was deemed by the Library of Congress to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" and added to the United States National Recording Registry for the year 2010.^[3]
^{(Originally posted in Wikipedia)}