Product DescriptionA vivid portrait of a 70s record that is still as fresh and memorable today as when it was released more than two decades ago Pioneering pop jazz band Steely Dan formed by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in the early seventies had already secured five Top 40 albums before the release ofAja in 1977 Aja however was to prove to be the biggest selling album of Steely Dan s illustrious career reaching No 3 on the Billboard chart and spending a year in the Top 40 Becker and Fagen renowned for their relentless perfectionism in the recording studio recall the history of an album that was a year in the making but rewarded with a Grammy Award and three hit singles Steely Dan sAja has proven to be one of the most outstanding jazz rock albums in the history of popular music and now its story is told in this fascinating documentary 60 minutes Amazon comThis profile of Steely Dan s elegant 1977 masterpiece Aja is a feast for Dan fans a thoughtful satisfyingly detailed assessment of the album and its bejeweled fusion of jazz R B rock and pop Better yet the documentary s producers elicit atypically straightforward revealing interviews from the group s stealthy principals songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen who jettison enough of their signature sarcasm to touch on the autobiographical threads cultural anomie and serious musical ambition audible in their work In that respect the production rivals any extant interviews with this proudly cerebral occasionally evasive musical team The duo along with producer Gary Katz engineer Roger Nichols and a generous cross section of the crack New York and Los Angeles musicians featured on the sessions dissect the sleek layers of the songs both musically and lyrically both in modern performances featuring the original players and in control room playbacks of the original multitrack master tapes Becker and Fagen prove articulate self aware and dryly funny subjects and the subtlety and richness of the music offer an ample canvas for discovery Sam SutherlandAdditional FeaturesOriginally produced for cable and home video as a documentary project the Classic Albums series offers in depth profiles of enduring rock and pop albums built around first person interviews with the artists producers and musicians that created them That audio focus creates an ironic largely perceptual problem for DVD release since the segments aren t intended to replace the original audio recordings only to expand upon them these are conventional DVDs not harbingers of true audio DVD optimized for sonic resolution and they are not mixed to exploit surround playback If you haven t heard these albums nearly all of them landmarks in late 20th century pop then this isn t the place to start andAja magnifies that issue through the very high standard of theoriginal audio recording itself a true audiophile work If you do know the album however the Classic Albums presentation is a handsomely produced revealing companion Sam Sutherland