Steely Dan Aja released

Aja Steely Dan

Released: September 23, 1977 Peak: 3 US, 5 UK, 3 CN, 9 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 2.0 US, 0.1 UK, 5.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: jazz rock

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Black Cow [5:10] (16 CL) Aja [7:57] (11 CL) Deacon Blues [7:35] (4/1/78, 19 BB, 17 CB, 22 GR, 26 HR, 40 AC, 6 CL, 14 CN, 4 DF) Peg [3:57] (11/19/77, 11 BB, 8 CB, 9 GR, 17 HR, 9 RR, 30 AC, 7 CL, 20 CN, 14 DF) Home at Last [5:35] I Got the News [5:07] Josie [4:33] (8/26/78, 26 BB, 21 CB, 13 GR, 26 HR, 20 RR, 44 AC, 10 CL, 7 CN, 15 DF) All tracks written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Total Running Time: 39:54 The Players: Donald Fagen (vocals, synthesizer, etc.) Walter Becker (guitar, bass, etc.)

Rating: 4.366 out of 5.00 (average of 27 ratings) Quotable: “A shining example of jazz-rock at its finest” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AllMusic.com Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Not the Typical Rock Band “Steely Dan is not your typical rock band.” TB They formed “as a reaction against the huge-selling soft-rock groups of the era” TB and their “albums stood apart from most of their contemporaries.” TB They “initially operate[d] within the confines of the traditional rock band, recording and touring the albums Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972) and Countdown to Ecstasy (1973) with a permanent drummer, guitarist, and vocalist.” TB However, primary members Donald Fagen and Walter Becker “became disillusioned with that line-up and with life on the road.” TB Over the next few albums, they started to “draw on a pool of impressive session musicians” TB instead of relying on the five-piece band format, which allowed Fagen and Becker “to concentrate exclusively on studio work” TB “in their attempts to produce the slickest, most densely layered recordings possible.” TB The Group’s Peak Steely Dan albums “were always immaculately produced and full of musical complexity” TB but on their sixth album, Aja, Becker and Fagen’s “obsession with sonic detail and fascination with composition reached new heights.” AM The album “captures the group at its official and commercial peak.” TB It “is one of the most impressive feats of musical excellence this world has seen – a spectacular display” PM “of sophisticated jazz-rock,” AM “a shining example of jazz-rock at its finest.” AM The album fuses “cool jazz, blues, and pop together in a seamless, seductive fashion.” AM “Aja has none of the overt cynicism or self-consciously challenging music that distinguished previous Steely Dan records. Instead, it’s a measured and textured album, filled with subtle melodies and accomplished, jazzy solos that blend easily into the lush instrumental backdrops.” AM “Embedded within these tunes are chord sequences more demanding than you’ll find in most jazz.” TM This is “complex music delivered with ease.” AM It is “a coolly textured and immaculately produced collection” AM which “never hits a wrong note.” PM The Songs “Aja isn’t just about texture, since Becker and Fagen’s songs are their most complex and musically rich set of songs.” AM “The duo penned moving vignettes of love, aspiration and dejection.” PM The album “perfectly utilized the services of over 40 acclaimed musicians and was gorgeously produced by Gary Katz.” PM “Where Steely Dan’s earlier works had been mostly guitar based, on Aja the songs are led by swathes of keyboards and saxophones.” TB “Black Cow sets the mood – metropolitan and wry, it tells the story of a cheated-on lover who finally loses patience. Victor Feldman’s Fender Rhodes solo is a deft delight, while elegantly syncopated horns ride the bop to the end with impeccable class.” RD “The title track is a different proposition – a tone poem to the mystique of the Orient, which broadens into philosophical reverie, ‘Aja’ is the album’s center of gravity. The song builds a delicate, opium-tinged world, then destroys it in Steve Gadd’s shattering drum finale, while Wayne Shorter cries murder on tenor sax.” RD Even the album’s simplest song, “the sunny pop of Peg, has layers of jazzy vocal harmonies.” AM That song and Josie, “a slick homecoming boogie,” RD were both top 40 hits, as was Deacon Blues, a “swan song for an aging L.A. hipster, as tender as it is bleakly humorous.” RD

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com by Stephen Thomas Erlewine RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 380. TM Tom Moon (2008). 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.: New York, NY. Pages 738-9. PM PasteMagazine.com (6/3/2024). “The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time” TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 187. WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Links: First posted 4/3/2008; last updated 8/27/2026.

Steely Dan Pretzel Logic released

Pretzel Logic Steely Dan

Released: February 20, 1974 Peak: 8 US, 37 UK, 5 CN, 18 AU, 12 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Genre: jazz rock

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Rikki Don’t Lose That Number [4:32] (5/4/74, 4 BB, 3 CB, 7 GR, 5 HR, 7 RR, 15 AC, 3 CL, 58 UK, 1 DF) Night by Night [3:38] Any Major Dude Will Tell You [3:07] (20 CL, 27 DF) Barrytown [3:20] East St. Louis Toodle-Oo (Duke Ellington, Bubber Miley) [2:47] Parker’s Band [2:37] Through with Buzz [1:32] Pretzel Logic [4:31] (9/28/74, 57 BB, 59 CB, 77 HR, 10 CL) With a Gun [2:17] Charlie Freak [2:44] Monkey in Your Soul [2:40] Songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 33:45 The Players: Donald Fagen (vocals, keyboards) Walter Becker (bass, harmonica, backing vocals) Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (guitar) Denny Dias (guitar) Jim Hodder (backing vocals) Jim Gordon, Jeff Porcaro (drums)

Rating: 4.264 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings) Quotable: -- Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: “Before Donald Fagen and Walter Becker became the songwriting duo behind Steely Dan, they were tunesmiths with ABC, penning hits for such notables as Barbra Streisand.” RD When the band’s second album, Countdown to Ecstasy, fell short of the promise of their debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, “Steely Dan responded by trimming the lengthy instrumental jams that were scattered across Countdown and concentrating on concise songs for Pretzel Logic.” AM That is, “the pair returned to Tin Pan Alley.” RD “Using three-minute pop as a framework, they decided to play ironic games with style and genre.” RD “While the shorter songs usually indicate a tendency toward pop conventions, that’s not the case with Pretzel Logic. Instead of relying on easy hooks, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen assembled their most complex and cynical set of songs to date. Dense with harmonics, countermelodies, and bop phrasing, Pretzel Logic is vibrant with unpredictable musical juxtapositions and snide, but very funny, wordplay.” AM The album was also significant for marking the end of Steely Dan as a band and their beginning as a studio collective. Fagen and Becker “began to assume control of the operation and started calling in the cream of L.A.’s studio musicians to record Pretzel Logic, using band members only for occasional overdubs. It was an arduous process, but the resulting album was worth the effort.” CRS “The opening track typifies the album.” RD “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number, opens with a syncopated piano line that evolves into a graceful pop melody.” AM It “is an affecting story of unrequited love which switches between light samba and piano ballad, until Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter’s beautifully phrased guitar solo shoots a thread of California country rock straight through the middle.” RD “The title track winds from a blues to a jazzy chorus – Becker and Fagen’s craft has become seamless while remaining idiosyncratic and thrillingly accessible.” AM “The backhanded Dylan tribute Barrytown can sit comfortably next to the gorgeous Any Major Dude Will Tell You,” AM which “is illuminated by beams of Orange County sunshine.” RD “The group had not forgotten how to bite…Monkey in Your Soul, which somehow crosses Noel Coward with Stax, is a wonderfully bitchy poison-pen letter.” RD “The wounded petulance of envy is given darkly comic treatment in Through with Buzz.” RD “The defiance of the lonely man is given cop-show dynamism in Night by Night.” RD “The bungled homicide of With a Gun should be made into a Coen Brothers movie.” RD “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo is playtime for the band and notable for introducing pedal steel guitar to the ragtime genre if nothing else.” RD “ Since the songs are now paramount, it makes sense that Pretzel Logic is less of a band-oriented album than Countdown to Ecstasy, yet it is the richest album in their catalog.” AM “Steely Dan made more accomplished albums than Pretzel Logic, but they never made a better one.” AM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 333. CRS Tim Morse (1998). Classic Rock Stories: The Stories Behind the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin. Page 189. WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Links: First posted 4/3/2008; last updated 8/27/2026.

Steely Dan released Countdown to Ecstasy

Countdown to Ecstasy Steely Dan

Released: July 6, 1973 Peak: 35 US, -- UK, 49 CN, -- AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.5 US Genre: rock

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date song first charted, chart peaks) Bodhisattva [5:16] (14 CL, 26 DF) Razor Boy [3:10] The Boston Rag [5:40] (22 CL) Your Gold Teeth [6:58] Show Biz Kids [5:24] (7/28/73, 61 BB, 30 CB, 53 HR, 15 CL) My Old School [5:39] (10/27/73, 63 BB, 56 CB, 71 HR, 7 CL, 12 DF) Pearl of the Quarter [3:43] King of the World [4:56] All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Total Running Time: 40:46 The Players: Donald Fagen (vocals, keyboards) Walter Becker (bass, harmonica, backing vocals) Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (guitar) Denny Dias (guitar) Jim Hodder (drums, percussion, backing vocals)

Rating: 4.112 out of 5.00 (average of 28 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album Steely Dan’s founders, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, “honed their skills working as staff songwriters at ABC Records, but forming their own band gave them a free hand to let their musical imaginations run riot. Their debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, included two major hit singles, ‘Do It Again’ and ‘Reelin’ in the Years’” TB and pushed the album to platinum success. The band lost vocalist David Palmer, putting “Fagen’s intellectual sneer moved front and center, proving to be a better vehicle for the band’s scathingly acerbic critiques of the U.S.A.’s foibles.” TB The group’s sophomore album, Countdown to Ecstasy, failed to generate a top-40 hit but what it “lacks in hits is more than compensated for in sophistication.” TB The album “expand[s] the scope of the band’s material.” RD It is “a riskier album, musically speaking, than its predecessor.” AM It “introduces more of the jazz influences and oblique lyrics that define their later work.” RD The album’s “eight songs are rich with either musical or lyrical detail that their album rock or art rock contemporaries couldn’t hope to match.” AM “The swing-meets-heavy-metal-groove of Bodhisattva” TB “is a beauty. A satirical blast at karma-conscious California, the song plays like high-IQ rockabilly, the highlight an outrageous lead-guitar duel between Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter and New York jazz shredder Denny Dias.” RD While most of the album’s “songs are subtly textured” AM this one and Show Biz Kids, with its “strutting cynicism,” TB “sound like they were written for the stage.” AM “The loud guitars and pronounced backbeat of” AM those two songs and “My Old School camouflage” AM the album’s jazz leanings. The latter is a “straight ahead rock number about collegiate misdeeds, barbed with guitar hooks from…Baxter” RD along with the Stax saxophone and stuttering guitar battle in the middle.” TB “The hard bop tribute Your Gold Teeth reveal Becker and Fagen’s jazz roots.” AM The song “employs Dias again but in more tangential style – telling the story of a jaded female grifter who lives off her looks and cunning, the song is like an Elmore Leonard novel in miniature. The verse is given glacial cool by Victor Feldman’s vibes and the edgy electric piano of Fagen, while the solo section visits strange psychotropic regions.” RD The album also features “Razor Boy, with its murmuring marimbas,” AM “the country-flavored Pearl of the Quarter and the ominous, skittering King of the World.” AM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 301. TB Thunder Bay (2005). Albums: The Stories Behind 50 Years of Great Recordings. Thunder Bay Press; San Diego, CA. Page 163. WK Wikipedia Related DMDB Links: First posted 4/3/2008; last updated 8/23/2026.

Steely Dan Can’t Buy a Thrill charted

Can’t Buy a Thrill Steely Dan

Released: November 1972 Charted: December 2, 1972 Peak: 17 US, 38 UK, 4 CN, 46 AU, 14 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 1.0 US Genre: jazz rock

Tracks: Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Do It Again [5:57] (11/18/72, 6 BB, 7 CB, 6 GR, 8 HR, 34 AC, 1 CL, 39 UK, 12 DF) Dirty Work [3:09] (7 CL, 7 DF) Kings [3:47] Midnight Cruiser [4:12] (47 CL, 22 DF) Only a Fool Would Say That [2:55] Reelin’ in the Years [4:37] (3/10/73, 11 BB, 7 CB, 3 GR, 6 HR, 1 CL, 1 DF) Fire in the Hole [3:29] Brookly (Owes the Charmer Under Me) [4:21] Change of the Guard [3:39] Turn That Heartbeat Over Again [4:58] All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Total Running Time: 41:04 The Players: Donald Fagen (vocals, keyboards) Walter Becker (bass, vocals) Jeff “Skunk” Baxter (guitar) Denny Dias (guitar, sitar) Jim Hodder (drums, percussion, backing vocals) David Palmer (vocals)

Rating: 4.363 out of 5.00 (average of 21 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: The duo of “Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were remarkable craftsmen from the start, as Steely Dan’s debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill, illustrates.” AM BBC Music’s Paul Lester said the album is so “fully-formed…that you would scarcely believe that it’s their debut.” WK “Those that saw them as just another polished West Coast rock outfit were missing the point.” RD The album “brought the notion of the ‘intellectual’s rock record’ – an innovation which immediately attracted respect and a worldwide following.” WR It was “the first of a series of smart, listenable records which successfully carried Fagen’s jazz-honed sensibilities into rock – a rare achievement, and one which endears him to Jazz FM and its listeners to this day.” WR “While the vocal harmonies here are often suggestive of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, the arrangements reach new levels of sophistication.” RD “Each song is tightly constructed, with interlocking chords and gracefully interwoven melodies, buoyed by clever, cryptic lyrics. All of these are hallmarks of Steely Dan’s signature sound, but what is most remarkable about the record is the way it differs from their later albums.” AM Originally a five-piece band, Steely Dan would transition in later albums to a duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen supported by session musicians. Even here, Fagen handles most of the vocals although drummer Jim Hodder takes the lead on Midnite Cruiser. The album also features “vocalist David Palmer, a professional blue-eyed soul vocalist who oversings the handful of tracks where he takes the lead.” AM He was brought in as the lead vocalist when the studio executives insisted the group should tour to support the album. Fagen ‘expressed terror over the prospect of singing live.” WK he and Becker had seen the group as a “studio-only band.” WK “Palmer, who did not feature on any later albums, has his finest moments on Dirty Work even if he lacks Fagen’s snarl and bite.” RD It was the only track from the album to feature horn instruments. WK “Palmer’s very presence signals the one major flaw with the album – in an attempt to appeal to a wide audience, Becker and Fagen tempered their wildest impulses with mainstream pop techniques.” AM Consequently, there are very few of the jazz flourishes that came to distinguish their albums” AM However, “when Fagen’s vocals drop in after the exquisite Latin jazz intro to Do It Again, you know these guys were really on to something. When Denny Dias’ electric sitar solo comes in, you know they could really nail it.” RD Reelin’ in the Years was the second single from the album, although it has become the more iconic song. It “sounds like a classic hit single after just a few bars. Unforgettable buzzy guitar solos give way to indelible lush choruses propelled by Walter Becker’s bass. It’s foot-stomping fun but executed with a precious that was to become a Steely Dan trademark.” RD “The lyrics of Kings are about the death of King Richard I of England and the political turmoil that followed before his brother John ascended the throne. Elliott Randall has said that his guitar solo on the track was inspired by his emotions over the recent breakup of his first marriage.” WK “Fire in the Hole, which features ‘angry, strident piano’ by Fagen, takes its title from a phrase used by American soldiers in Vietnam, and alludes to the many students who evaded the draft in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Becker and Fagen included).” WK “Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me) was written about ‘President Street Pete,’ the tenant who lived under Fagen’s apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, New York, and what Fagen and Becker imagined he was owed for.” WK “Turn That Heartbeat Over Again is an extended form piece with disparate sections and multiple key changes.” WK Denny Dias said that song and ‘Fire in the Hole’ were his two favorites on the album “because they were more ‘sophisticated’ than the others.” WK “Compositionally, these [songs] aren’t as innovative as their later work. Even so, the best moments…are wonderful pop songs that subvert traditional conventions and more than foreshadow the paths Steely Dan would later take.” AM

Reviews: AM AllMusic.com review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine RD Robert Dimery (2006). 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Quintet Publishing Limited: New York, NY. Page 257. WK Wikipedia WR The Wire (June 1992). “The 100 Most Important Records Ever Made” Related DMDB Links: First posted 11/16/2010; last updated 8/27/2026.