Home At Last (Steely Dan, 1977)

Listening to AJA on vinyl  --- 1977: the vibe was good, the feeling of being alive at the time. Listening to ‘Home at Last’ or any of the songs awakens my memory to that time and all that has since passed---what an amazingly rich thing it is! As though peering down a well lit corridor, unthinkably large and deep---my view of this phenomenon---what an amazing thing the warehouses of memory. I see it all not at once but each thing in its duly carved richness. Of course it is the music that ‘takes the memory sailing’ ---it connects all of this analogically! Yes I do recall this Eric Gale guitar line, even before I knew what guitar was, I knew this guitar line on Josie. It could be Becker, I don’t know [Larry Carlton, ed.]. 

Cast my memory back there, yes, what a rich and sumptuous feast. To be honest I was not a big fan of AJA at the time, my musical loves laid elsewhere, most likely Jethro Tull. 

Somehow this album marked it all for me, set a boundary. I can see past it to my boyhood (I turned 14 in march of ’77)---to a murky brew of adolescent self-awakening. The actual sense being that my memory of this sophisticated music reinforces the idea that I did not understand the music, nor indeed the world in which this music inhabited---the cultural world lives through my memory. in 1977 I did not understand my being-in-the-world but I was alive! Though seething in adolescent sneering and yearnings as large as Alaska, an indomitable thirst, a hunger for experience. Sumptuous, luxuriant desire. Desire after desire and above and below and behind desire, as I plotted my next raid upon flowering sense. And I can see and hear all of this in AJA!

How or why? I cannot say: American-ness the quiddity. Apperceived “thematically”! In particular “home at last”  (see link below)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMjGaiIxtY

I could express this in terms of philosophy but I will avoid the temptation. Seventy-sevenness, Hollidaysburg, PA. Corney’s the Y, Pete the Greek, Blinky, Uncle Dunkle, Rack and Snack, Sugar Bear, The Jolly Green Giant, or more broadly---the Big Apple “...chinese music always sets me free and the banjo sounds good  to me. Aja, when all of my dime dancing is through, I come to you (Becker/Fagen 1977).” WFBG big John Riley, garibaldi, Donald Fagen singing, “...they call Alabama the Crimson Tide ... they call me Deacon Blues.” It broadcast a mercurial magic on the airwaves, 6th avenue BG in Altoona, Scott, pat and Kevin...Runes...Father O’Friel and scoops. 

Elvis bites it on August 16th, my first trip to Manhattan--- staying at the Pierre hotel I can still recall the canary yellow perfumed french soap. Dad driving the blue Olds ’98 through the hot august avenues getting lost driving up into Harlem! :) Buddy I was there up above 120th street, pretty scary. This gnarly street dude slams his fists onto the Olds' hood cover. Whoomphh. Mom was like: “Herb, we need to get back to the hotel!” And later at the Madison Square Garden dad tips this this older guy with a dime, and he says “shit, man, a dime?” and tosses it to the ground. 

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