"Actor: Donald Fagen"

• Steely Dan - Aja (Classic Albums) | DVD | (01/12/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £10.99

  Pioneering pop/jazz band Steely Dan formed by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker in the early 70's had already secured five US Top 40 albums before the release of AJA in 1977. However was to prove to be the biggest selling album of Steely Dan's illustrious career reached Number 3 in the US Billboard chart spending a year in the Top 40 there and also reaching number 5 in the UK. AJA was the first British Top 10 hit for Steely Dan and also the first album by Becker and Fagen as duo. Becker and Fagen renowned for their relentless perfectionism in the recording studios recall the history of an album that was a year in the making but rewarded by a prestigious Grammy Award and three major hit singles Peg Deacon Blues and Josie. Michael McDonald later of the Doobie Brothers who did guest backing vocals on AJA British rock performer and songwriter Ian Dury record producer Gary Katz and the legendary session musicians who worked on AJA also contribute to this fascinating documentary. Steely Dan's AJA has proved to be one of the most outstanding jazz-rock albums in the history of popular music. This is a vivid portrait of a 70's record that is still as fresh and as memorable more than two decades after its release a true Classic Album.

• Steely Dan's Two Against Nature | DVD | (03/07/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Having discreetly disbanded at the dawn of the MTV era, the 1970s' most stubbornly faceless pop subversives returned after 19 years with their first new studio album, followed in short order by this stunning long-form video project. Part concert, part documentary, Steely Dan: Two Against Nature offers a savvy cross-section of both old and new material performed by the latest incarnation of the formidable stage bands that founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have assembled for the periodic tours unleashed since their early 90s concert reunion. True to form, they preside over immaculately arranged, flawlessly executed performances that confirm the Dan's state-of-the-art standards, then undercut that achievement with devilish audience sound bites and their own faux cable-access interviews, as if to debunk their artistry with a blast of anti-celebrity. For hardcore Dan fans, Becker and Fagen long ago distanced themselves from rock culture, their music steeped more in 50s jazz and rhythm & blues, and their lyrics pitched to a darker, funnier world-view divorced from youth culture and self-congratulatory rock personae. Fagen, with his close-cropped hair, austere beard, tinted glasses, and prominent incisors resembles a pale, vampiric Ray Charles as he huddles over his keyboards and croons those dangerous lyrics. His partner's longer locks and steel-rimmed glasses reinforce the spectre of a postbop Franz Schubert who has traded clavichords for custom electric guitars--a studious image reinforced by his dry, articulate gibes in the interviews, if undercut by the twisted imagery and shadowy, second-person perspectives pervasive in the band's lyrics (like the music, written by both men, but conspicuously shaped by Becker). The material hews to the group's later albums recorded after they downsized the band into a de facto studio laboratory and dialled up the jazz accents, with understandable showcases for the sneaky new songs on the Two Against Nature album: sleek, seductive songs about incest, midlife crises, pyromania, designer drugs, and other fun stuff. Sonically, the performances are as meticulously recorded and mixed as the duo's albums, with the performance footage beautifully shot and edited. We'd knock director Earle Sebastian for a few too many tilted camera angles, but then we might have to wait another 19 years for the next one. --Sam Sutherland, Amazon.com

• Concepts For Jazz/Rock Piano | DVD | (01/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £28.99

• Steely Dan - Aja | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Originally 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 optimised 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, and Aja magnifies that issue through the very high standard of the original audio recording, itself a true audiophile work. If you do know the album, however, the Classic Album presentation is a handsomely produced, revealing companion. --Sam Sutherland