Donald Fagen

Pioneering pop/jazz band Steely Dan, formed by Donald Fagen and Walter Backer in the early '70s, had already secured five U.S. Top 40 albums before the release of Aja in 1977. Aja however, was to prove to be the biggest selling album of Steely Dan's illustrious career, reaching Number 3 on the U.S. Billboard chart, spending a year in the Top 40 there, and also reaching Number 5 in the U.K.Aja was the first British Top 10 hit for Steely Dan and also the first album by Becker and Fagen as a duo.

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.

Excellent addition to any rock music collection.
The title Heavy Metal is somewhat misleading. Sure, this terrific soundtrack from the 1981 animated cult favorite features heavy metal and hard rock numbers.

When Steely Dan released Two Against Nature in 2000, their first album in 20 years, it was an unexpected gift, since all odds seemed against Donald Fagen and Walter Becker reteaming for nothing more than the occasional project, let alone a full album. As it turned out, the duo was able to pick up where they left off, with Two Against Nature seamlessly fitting next to Gaucho and earning the band surprise success, including a Grammy for Album of the Year, but the bigger surprise is that the reunion wasn't a one-off – they released another record, Everything Must Go, a mere three years later. Given the (relatively) short turnaround time between the two records, it comes as little surprise that Everything Must Go is a companion piece to Two Against Nature, and sounds very much like that album's laid-back, catchy jazz-funk, only with an elastic, loose feel – loose enough to have Walter Becker take the first lead vocal in Steely Dan history, in fact, which sums up the Dan's attitude in a nutshell.