1001 Albums: Aja

#379

Album: Aja

Artist: Steely Dan

Year: 1977

Length: 39:56

Genre: Jazz Rock / Yacht Rock / Pop Rock / Jazz / White Soul

“I’ve seen your picture
Your name in lights above it
This is your big debut
It’s like a dream come true
So won’t you smile for the camera
I know they’re gonna love it, Peg”

Peg

I’ve just been on a string of a lot of albums I’ve already heard before. That’s all good and fine, of course, I love revisiting albums, especially albums I love. This year, though, I gave myself the musical challenge to listen to as much new music as possible. I started cataloguing every single album I’ve ever listened to and although it is not a comprehensive list (there’s probably albums I listened to years and years ago that I just don’t remember), it’s pretty solid overall. I realised I’m less than 100 albums away from hitting 2000 albums, so I’ve just been trying to listen to as many new albums as possible to hit that milestone. Unfortunately (but not really) I’m in a section of the 1001 Albums list where I’ve listened to quite a lot of the albums already, which means when I’m listening to them again for these posts, that’s time taken away from listening to something new that could be helping me reach my milestone! I know it seems all dumb in the grand scheme of things, and it is, but when you have a goal, by god you try and reach that goal!

I’m saying this because this was my first time hearing Aja and it was nice to have these two goals align. Not only listening to continue this project I’ve been doing for god knows how many years at this point, but also getting me one album closer to my milestone goal! Kill two birds with one stone as they’d say. Progress is progress and I’ll happily take it any way it presents itself to me. 

I’m also going on about this because I genuinely don’t have anything interesting to say about this album. Up to now, this is about the fourth or fifth Steely Dan album on the list and I just have nothing new to say about them. My general feelings towards this album was I liked it fine and doesn’t seem to go any further than that. I will say, though, as the album went on I liked each song better than the last which means my enjoyment for the album just kept rising with each song, which I think is a pretty good thing. Steely Dan is just some solid Jazz Rock with the production sounding crisp and clean the whole way through. I feel you can play this for anyone and they will mildly enjoy it to some extent. I wish I had more interesting things to say but it seems Steely Dan will always be that kind of band that I like perfectly fine but will never be more than that. I’ll own albums by them and listen to their music once in a while, but that seems to be the extent of where this relationship will go. Sorry Steely Dan, you deserve better than my mild enjoyment. 

This does bring up an interesting question I find myself asking. Is my pursuit to just reach this milestone of 2000 listened to albums taking away from me truly listening to the albums? Am I just listening to say I listened to it so I can rack up those numbers and in doing so am I actually not truly experiencing the album? Could that be why I have nothing to say? Was I just trying to get through it so I can add it to my list and call it a day? It’s very possible this is the case and I think it’s something I need to reassess a bit with my listening habits. I’ve been a little blinded by my goal that I’m losing out on the real experience of truly enjoying the music. This does make me feel I need to take a step back a bit and allow myself to breathe. In February I found I listened to about 130 albums, which is a lot for the shortest month of the year. And if you asked me to tell you how some of those albums went, I truly wouldn’t remember. I’ve had a bit of a musical overload it seems and that could be affecting my experience with these albums. It’s almost like I’ve become addicted to listening to albums and in doing so am getting a negative outcome from it all.

This could be a possibility… but maybe not too. It’s worth thinking about.

Favourite Song: I Got The News

-Bosco

PS. I remember there was this Improv troupe awhile back who would ask the audience for a Steely Dan song to inspire their set. No one answered and after a pause I yelled out Peg, which is on this album. No point to this story, just thought it was amusing.