There was a time when the only music I listened to was whatever industry peddled pop stuff was being played on the radio… some of it better than others, but never anything with too much depth. I can remember being in my Dad´s car, dreading it, because while I wanted so much to hear the latest single by, oh I don´t know, Jessica Simpson, I knew my choices would be between NPR or whatever too sophisticated for my 13 year old tastes CD my Dad wanted to listen to. Thus, I was introduced to Steely Dan, one of my Dad´s favorite artists and one of the greatest musical machines to come out of the US, at an age when I definitely wasn´t anywhere near being able to appreciate them. But times change, kids grow up, and this week I found myself listening to Steely Dan´s jazz infused 1970´s album Aja and appreciating in a way that I never thought I would the downright genius structures of their songs and lyrics.

Aja is actually Steely Dan´s most successful album; of the 30 million sales they have made worldwide, 5 million alone were from Aja, one of the first albums to ever sell over a 1 million copies in the US. Like all of Steely Dan´s records, core members Walter Becker and Donald Fagen brought in the best, demanding perfection in their well known obsessive way.

Peg, the fourth track on Aja which has found recent popularity out of the mouths of artists like Nerina Pallot and my own geeky guitar playing crush Jason Mraz, gives a great example of the kind of perfectionist tendencies Becker and Fagen were known for, and the sort of brilliant results it can produce. The band went through 7 of the best studio guitarists they could find before working produce and song writer Jay Graydon over for 6 hours and selecting his rendering of the guitar solo as just right. On the TV series Classic Albums, which featured the album Aja shows some of the behind the scenes work and opinions of other artists who appeared on the track Peg, including Michael McDonald featured on vocals and drummer Rick Marotta.

Peg, about an aspiring actress being promised her big break, is an excellent track, and this week´s featured karaoke. I think it´s certainly a challenge to try and match Steely Dan´s studio perfectionism, are you up for it? Check out the forum and post your rendition of Peg.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 12:09 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.