(Photos by Jackie Canchola.)

So, this is what Baby Boomer triumphalism and opulence look and sound like. Steely Dan won. Their fans won, too. These folks, most of them white and over 40, could afford the $60-$175 ticket prices to wallow in the gilded nostalgia of hearing Steely Dan’s immaculately conceived and executed 1977 LP Aja performed in its entirety—topped off with a generous dessert of myriad Dan hits from their artistically successful and lucrative run from 1972-1980.

I felt privileged to witness this spectacle.

Steely Dan represent the pinnacle of a certain kind of American band: the rare convergence of genius musicians/arrangers/composers/producers doing precisely what they want and making incredible bank while doing so. Steely Dan’s brain trust, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, had the best session players at their beck and call, plus the best studios, the best drugs, and probably some of the best groupies at their disposal during the music industry’s booming ’70s. Their music blossomed from neurotic perfectionism and came filtered through a neurasthenic Jewish soul. And hundreds of thousands of people still care enough in 2009 to shell out more money than I spend on food in a month for the honor of witnessing them. Steely Dan win.

Aja was perhaps the Dan’s last classic album, and it certainly is worth hearing all at once in a large venue with many rabid, affluent fans. The sound could’ve been sharper, especially the bass, but overall, people seemed very, very happy with what they heard coming from the 13 (!) musicians onstage and celebrated the completion of each song with ovations that wrung every cent out of that $60-$175.

Besides Becker on guitar and Fagen on keyboards, melodica, and vocals, Steely Dan consisted of a bassist, three female vocalists, a pianist, another guitarist, a four-piece brass section (saxes, trumpet, trombone), and monstrously talented drummer Keith Carlock.

After a brief, jazzy knuckle-cracking sans Becker and Fagen, the well-rehearsed ensemble cruised through Aja’s seven tracks with all the ultra-competent finesse of musicians at the absolute zenith of their formidable games (backing vocalist Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery prefaced the Aja recreation with a placing of a needle on the record itself and turned it over and did it again after “Deacon Blues” concluded). So, yeah. “Black Cow,” “Aja,” “Deacon Blues,” “Peg,” “Home at Last,” “I Got the News,” “Josie”: You (should) know the drill. This record is the epitome of smooth jazz funk, with rock chilling in the back garden with an aged scotch whiskey most of its duration. Every surface gleamed like diamond-encrusted stars.

Aja is sophisticated sonic pleasure incarnate, the soundtrack to the (very) good life, but tinged with a cynicism and sly wit beneath the rich, all-is-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-worlds exterior. Aja is built to last, still rewarding after hundreds of listens, still very much alive on the stage and adaptable to the whims of its two creators. I say this even as my 18-year-old self is apoplectic with disbelief. Note to my 18-year-old self: Go to hell.

Carlock impressed most mightily, generating powerful yet subtle funk, and his handful of solos made many of us shake our heads in awed admiration. Meanwhile, bassist Freddy Washington was criminally muted; he should’ve been much higher up in the mix. Come on, it’s Steely Dan. How can sound issues even be tolerated? Guitarists Becker and Jon Herrington picked out fluid, glinting leads and piquant, spectral solos all night. The three backing singers wore short, black glittery dresses and danced very lackadaisically, probably at Fagen’s insistence.

It should be noted that “Deacon Blues,” with its beautifully watery intro and supple melancholy would never be a hit in today’s chart ecology. It’s way too ambiguous, but there’s no denying the tremulous thrill as its verses lean into the chorus. But it’s hard to imagine a line like “I crawl like a viper/Through these suburban streets/Make love to these women/Languid and bittersweet” resonating with the young masses now. Last night’s extended coda of it was a nice touch.

“Peg” probably received the wildest response and it sounded about as incendiary as Steely Dan will get in 2009. But did anyone else notice Fagen's vocal inadvertently encroaching on Herrington’s guitar solo? “I Got the News” was urgently funky yet buttery, with Carlock’s ultra-tight drumming locking it in. As a bonus, Fagen gave us some Keith Jarrett-y keyboard-god movements, as if his chordings were giving him fingergasms. “Josie” was archetypically slinky funk played as if the band were in a perpetual wink. Throughout this song—and the whole night, for that matter—Fagen’s voice sounded raspily soulful, though he’s lost a bit of range. Still, he’s not bad for 61.

After Aja was completed, Fagen told the crowd that Steely Dan had played their first gig in Paramount in 1972, opening for the James Gang. Now with the crowd even deeper in the group’s hands, Steely Dan tore through 13 non-Aja songs, including “Black Friday,” “Time out of Mind,” “Bodhisattva,” “My Old School,” “Hey 19,” and “Kid Charlemagne.” Both “Show Biz Kids” and “Do It Again” received different arrangements: with the former, they didn’t enter that unstoppable, entrancing groove until near the middle of the song instead of diving right into it; with the latter, they omitted the rococo, raga-tastic organ jam (Carlock took a typically rambunctious solo instead), which I think is the best part of the song. Nevertheless, while they were inferior to the recorded versions, Steely Dan deserve credit for messing with their formulas. Another nice deviation: playing the Supremes’ “Love Is Like an Itching in My Heart” while Fagen introduced the band.

Let the record show that history may have occurred during “Dirty Work,” as the group flubbed the opening section of this sublime, heartbreaking ballad, causing Fagen to halt the song and apologize. “We want everything to be harmonically elegant for you.” Aw, what a sweetheart. But, dude, seriously—Steely Dan making a mistake? It was a miracle Fagen didn’t fire the band right then and there.

Steely Dan encored with an uproarious “Reelin’ in the Years.” Because that’s what they do—with utmost harmonic elegance.