After a couple of seconds to allow for the silent lead-in groove, this years version of the band started the song “Black Cow," from the album Aja: bass and drums behind the beat, 13th chords from the guitar.
“Aja" was performed in full, nearly flawlessly, on Tuesday at the Beacon Theater, the first in a series of such nights. Its an easy concept for the bands new tour, Rent Party. (The album Gaucho was to follow on Wednesday but has been rescheduled to Aug. 12; “The Royal Scam" and a repeat of “Aja" are to come in the next two weeks, as well as a few nights of fan-request shows.)
In 1977, Aja created a new standard for the relationship between jazz and rock, one that was basically irreproducible, by Steely Dan or anyone else.
It was also a perfect counterbalance to punk: while Steely Dan spent five months on the mixing alone of Aja, checking circuitry on its luxury liner of an album before its launch, the Sex Pistols were setting off pipe bombs with “God Save the Queen".
It was a progressive jazz record with backbeats, a 70's hipsters extension of what had been Gil Evanss vision two decades earlier. Like Evans, the groups two principals, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, became obsessed with thematic development through long pieces.
They didnt lean on a conventional pop formula for musical structure. The songs on Aja have multiple strains and fascinating bridges; the horn and guitar solos often worked with entirely new sets of changes. It has light surfaces and deep rhythm-pockets with whispers of disco.
It is one of the all-time great drumming records. Its also one of the all-time-great how-good-is-your-stereo records. Its perfectionism could seem oppressive or fishy, lab-based and possibly android. Hearing its songs on the radio reminds me of the smell of new plastic.
But all seven songs on Aja album three on the first side, four on the second, as Ms. Leonhardts ritual trips to the turntable reminded you are quite beautiful in motion.
Steely Dans Rent Party tour continues at the Beacon Theater intermittently through Aug. 12 schedule changes and other information at .
