Album cover of the week: Aja
Steely Dan consistently suffered from some of the ugliest artwork of the ’70s, but pulled it together for their 1977 hit album, Aja. This brilliantly simple image belied the alluringly complex music contained within.
The songs on Aja (pronounced Asia) have been dissected and examined countless times over the last 30 years, so I’m giving this great artwork its due. According to Wikipedia, the name Aja belonged to the Korean wife of Donald Fagen’s friend’s brother. I’m not sure if that’s true but it sounds plausible, so I’ll pretend it is.
Credit for the cover image goes to Hideki Fujii, who took this striking photo of model/actress Sayoko Yamaguchi.
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Thom
Great cover. And I was fortunate enough to snag the mp3s on sale at Amazon a couple weeks ago. If I ever get around to the album per year meme this just might make it.
Chris
Yeah, it didn’t connect with me at first but I love it now. Steve Gadd’s drumming on the title track is legendary. It’s actually not my favorite SD album though (that honor goes to The Royal Scam).
Thom
I’m at a disadvantage with Steely Dan as a roommate in college used to blast them (yes, that’s right, he blasted Steely Dan) so that I ended up hating them for years. So it took me awhile before I could even pick up their greatest hits.
TImmy Richardson
Good stuff. Keep up the good work.
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