“Aja”—second song, side one of Aja (1977)

Note: I wrote this about a year ago, then forgot about it. Forgot about that dream! Just read it over, cleaned it up a little, don't understand it all, but now I'm posting it!

When I bought this in 1977, this was the song I liked the least on the record, and maybe by Steely Dan, so far. Things were moving fast. I was 17, drinking heavily, and through with these losers. I kept listening though, of course, as I could really only afford one album per week. “Aja” though—I felt like it was too long and too wishy-washy; it felt like old-person's music, no edge, midlife crisis, giving up. Actually, I felt that about “Deacon Blues” even more, but the placement of the song “Aja” in the middle of those three songs on side one made it seem like filler to me. Now, I love this song, but it's taken me a few decades to come around to it. Last night I had a dream about the song—and as I've been writing about Steely Dan, and soap, lately, the dream mixed the two—so I was a musician, playing a sax part on this song (not the solo) that needed to blend in with the fragrance of a very subtle soap—and somehow I pulled it off! Then I thought, maybe in the distant future, one song that might represent the distillation of the popular music of this two or three century period in which we're now living—it could be this one! Then I got up and listened to the song again.

There is a whistle halfway through that, it seems to me, transforms the song into a movie—about a guy out of his element. Four decades after initially being bugged by him singing “Chinese music,” along with that percussion, it's finally dawned on me that bugging me is exactly what they were trying to do. With all that's going on in this song, instrumentally, you might not notice that the last verse goes: “Up on the hill / They think I'm okay / Or so they say.” That's a lyric that makes me feel uncomfortable if there ever was one. I don't know if it's in here, or intended, but this song makes me think about the uneasy marriage of relationships based on love vs. legalized prostitution, along with merging of Eastern and Western cultures that happened as an aftermath of wars and military action through the Twentieth Century. Meanwhile, each of the solos in this song pull you in another direction, sometimes deeper into the song, and sometimes out of the song. It ends with a pretty remarkable drum part that just won't quit—so much so that it has to fade out, and thus gives you the impression that it might still be going on. Movies don't end this way, and neither do songs, usually. You know what does? Steely Dan. Really, for me, even though this song is in the middle of side one (of course, it's just like them to put the closer in the middle of side one!)—regardless of where the song is presented, this song represents the end of an individual's romanticism, and by extension, the end of the decade (the late Sixties/early Seventies), and the end of Steely Dan.

—Randy Russell 11.24.19