Steely Dan "Aja" MFSL Original Master Recording LP - still sealed!

Buy It Now and get FREE shipping PLUS an extra copy of this album (MFSL!) see below...

Steely Dan's masterpiece recording, "Aja" in a rare, sealed, out-of-print Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (MFSL) Original Master Recording album. This sonicmasterpiece is still sealed (in the factory 'loose-wrap' plastic) with recordstore label (can you believe these sold for only $16 new??) Keep as acollectible or crack it open and hear the music as it was intended to be heard!A true audiophile experience.

Steely Dan are currently touring the country doing live performances ofthis and two other classic Steely Dan albums, "Gaucho" and "The Royal Scam".This MFSL recording is the next best thing to being there! Don't miss thischance to own a true collectible and gem from Steely Dan.

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If you Buy It Now, you will also receive a used copy of this album that you can play (MFSL Orginal Master Recording as well!) FREE!

BUY IT NOW and you get FREE shipping, PLUS will get TWO of these MFSL Aja albums, one sealed and one used.

The used copy has a very worn cover but the vinyl inside is in very good condition. The sealed copy is shown in the picture above.

FREE shipping and the FREE bonus (used) MFSL copy of Aja for Buy It Now ONLY!

Steely Dan "Aja" stock album cover art

Track List for Steely Dan "Aja":

Side one

1. "Black Cow" – 5:10

2. "Aja" – 7:57

3. "Deacon Blues" – 7:37

Side two

4. "Peg" – 3:57

5. "Home at Last" – 5:34

6. "I Got the News" – 5:06

7. "Josie" – 4:33

Here is the lineup of the fantastic musicians on thisalbum:

* Donald Fagen - synthesizer, keyboards, vocals, background vocals,whistle

* Walter Becker - bass, guitar, electric guitar, vocals

* Chuck Rainey - bass

* Timothy B. Schmit - vocals

* Paul Griffin - keyboards, electric piano, vocals, background vocals

* Don Grolnick - keyboards, clavinet

* Michael Omartian - piano, keyboards

* Joe Sample - keyboards, electric piano, clavinet

* Larry Carlton - guitar, electric guitar

* Denny Dias - guitar

* Jay Graydon - guitar, electric guitar

* Steve Khan - guitar

* Dean Parks - guitar

* Lee Ritenour - guitar

* Pete Christlieb - flute, tenor saxophone

* Chuck Findley - horn, brass

* Jim Horn - flute, saxophone

* Richard "Slyde" Hyde - trombone

* Plas Johnson - flute, saxophone

* Jackie Kelso - flute, horn, saxophone

* Lou McCreary - brass

* Bill Perkins - flute, horn, saxophone

* Tom Scott - conductor, flute, tenor saxophone, lyricon

* Wayne Shorter - flute, tenor saxophone

* Bernard Purdie - drums ("Home at Last", "Deacon Blues")

* Steve Gadd - drums ("Aja")

* Ed Greene - drums ("I Got the News")

* Paul Humphrey - drums ("Black Cow")

* Jim Keltner - percussion, drums ("Josie")

* Rick Marotta - drums ("Peg")

* Gary Coleman - percussion

* Victor Feldman - percussion, piano, keyboards, electric piano,vibraphone

* Venetta Fields - vocals, background vocals

* Clydie King - vocals, background vocals

* Rebecca Louis - vocals, background vocals

* Sherlie Matthews - vocals, background vocals

* Michael McDonald - vocals, background vocals

Rolling Stone's review for the album:

Aja Is TheThird Steely Dan album since songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagendiscarded a fixed-band format in late 1974. Since then they have declined toventure beyond the insular comfort of L.A. studios, recording theircompositions with a loose network of session musicians. As a result, theconceptual framework of their music has shifted from the pretext of rock &roll toward a smoother, awesomely clean and calculated mutation of variousrock, pop and jazz idioms. Their lyrics… remain as pleasantly obtuse andcynical as ever.

Aja willcontinue to fuel the argument by rock purists that Steely Dan's music issoulless, and by its calculated nature antithetical to what rock should be. Butthis is in many ways irrelevant to a final evaluation of this band, the onlygroup around with no conceptual antecedent from the Sixties. Steely Dan's sixalbums contain some of the few important stylistic innovations in pop music inthe past decade. By returning to swing and early be-bop for inspiration--beforejazz diverged totally from established conventions of pop-song structure--Fagenand Becker have overcome the amorphous quality that has plagued most otherjazz-rock fusion attempts.

"Peg" and"Josie" illustrate this perfectly: tight, modal tunes with good hooks in thechoruses, solid beats with intricate counterrhythms and brilliantly conciseguitar solos. Like most of the rest of Aja. these songs are filled out withcomplex horn charts, synthesizers and lush background vocals that flirt withschmaltzy L.A. jazz riffs. When topped by Fagen's singing, they sound likeproduction numbers from an absurdist musical comedy.

Music thissophisticated wouldn't work if it weren't for the consistently tastefulemployment of top studio musicians. Aja features two Miles Davis alumni (WayneShorter and Victor Feldman), Bernard Purdie, Tom Scott and a slew of others. Inparticular, Becker and Fagen have showcased a number of crack guitarists(Becker included), many of whose recent efforts elsewhere have been fairlybland (Elliott Randall's New York. Larry Carlton on recent Crusaders' albums,most of Rick Derringer's material). But with Steely Dan they are given strongmelody lines with original chord changes, resulting in some of the finestguitar solos ever recorded--try Katy Lied's "Gold Teeth II," "Kid Charlemagne"on The Royal Scam or "Peg."

The title cutis the one song on Aja that shows real growth in Becker's and Fagen'ssongwriting capabilities and departs from their previous work. It is thelongest song they've recorded, but it fragilely holds our attention withvaguely Oriental instrumental flourishes and lyric references interwoven withan opiated jazz flux. "Aja" may prove to be the farthest Becker and Fagen cantake certain elements of their musical ambition.

Lyrically,these guys still seem to savor the role they must have acquired as stoned-out,hyperintelligent pariahs at a small Jewish college on the Hudson. Their imagerycan become unintelligibly weird (Frank Zappa calls it "downer surrealism");it's occasionally accessible but more often (as on the title song) it elicits asort of déjà vu tease that becomes hopelessly nonsensical the more you thinkabout it. Focus your attention on the imagery of a specific phrase, then let itfade out. Well, at least it beats rereading the dildo sequence in NakedLunch.

The last album,The Royal Scam. was the closest thing to a "concept" album Steely Dan has done,an attempt to return musically to New York City, with both a raunchierproduction quality and a fascination with grim social realism. The farthest Ajastrays from the minor joys and tribulations of the good life in L.A. are thedreamy title cut and "Josie," which hints ominously about a friendlywelcome-home gang-bang. The melodramatic "Black Cow" is about love replaced byrepulsion for a woman who starts getting too strung out on downers and messingaround with other men. "Deacon Blues" (a thematic continuation of "Fire in theHole" and "Any World") exemplifies this album's mood: resignation to the L.A.musician's lifestyle, in which one must "crawl like a viper through thesesuburban streets" yet "make it my home sweet home." The title and first linesof "Home at Last" (presumably a clever interpretation of Homer's Odyssey--Idon't get it) put it right up front: "I know this superhighway This brightfamiliar sun I guess that I'm the lucky one."

More than anyof Steely Dan's previous albums (with the possible exception of Katy Lied), Ajaexhibits a carefully manipulated isolation from its audience, with no pretenseof embracing it. What underlies Steely Dan's music--and may, with this album,be showing its limitations--is its extreme intellectual self-consciousness,both in music and lyrics. Given the nature of these times, this may beprecisely the quality that makes Walter Becker and Donald Fagen the perfectmusical antiheroes for the Seventies.

RollingStone

MICHAELDUFFEY

(Posted: Dec 1,1977)