Posted on 06/27/2023 12:20:26 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Steely Dan’s long lost song "The Second Arrangement" has surfaced online.
The track, recorded in December 1979 while the band was laying down material for their 1980 album Gaucho, has long held a kind of mythological place among Steely Dan fans. As the story goes, the group recorded the majority of the song, with only a few simple additions needed to bring it to completion. After heading home for the night, they returned to the studio the next morning, only to discover that the "The Second Arrangement" tapes had been accidentally erased. The band tried to recreate what they’d recorded, but Donald Fagen was reportedly disappointed in the new version and decided to scrap the whole song.
In all the years since then, a studio version of "The Second Arrangement" has never been released. Bootleg editions have floated around and Steely Dan performed the song once, during a 2011 show in New York, but that has been the extent of the song’s existence… until now.
Expanding Dan, a Substack newsletter dedicated to everything Steely Dan related, has posted the complete recording of "The Second Arrangement" as it existed prior to the original tape’s erasure.
Roger Nichols, the band’s longtime engineer, made a rough mix of the track on a cassette tape – something he regularly did during his studio work with Steely Dan. Nichols, who also served as the band’s de facto historian, kept the tape along with an overwhelming amount of Steely Dan-related material. He died in 2011, and his adult daughters, Cimcie and Ashlee, took possession of his belongings.
They were already aware of "The Second Arrangement"'s history when they discovered their father’s cassette tape of the song. In 2020, Cimcie posted a picture of the tape on Facebook and was shocked by the overwhelming response it got from the band’s fans.
"Everybody was at home and saw it, and it went viral," Cimcie explained to Expanding Dan. "I actually had no idea the tape was gonna be such a big deal. I started getting hounded by Steely Dan fans. There were GIFs under my post of Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. I was like, ‘Oh my god, what am I gonna do now?’ I was excited that people wanted to hear the tape, but I didn't want to do anything wrong. I didn't want to just get a Casio boombox and pop in the tape."
Cimcie and Ashlee took the tape to a professional recording facility that was able to extract everything from the tape, which included not only "The Second Arrangement," but also a mix of "Were You Blind That Day," the track that became "Third World Man."
You can listen to “The Second Arrangement” exclusively at the Expanding Dan site.
The cassette tape has been framed along with sheet music of "The Second Arrangement" and will be going up for auction soon. Cimcie and Ashlee are working on a documentary about their father, and proceeds from the auction will go towards production costs, as well as the money already spent on restoring and transferring the audio from the tape.
Bkmrk
That’s pretty neat. There are a lot of stories with many bands losing tapes, accidentally erasing tapes and finding things discarded in dumpsters. I guess that doesn’t happen anymore since most recording is now digital an goes to hard drives.
Now they lose it when the producer erases it, because it’s not woke.
Literary mysteries: Books that have been permanently lost
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/12/books-book-question-lost
I agree with this list.
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/steely-dan-albums-ranked/
Gaucho is next to last. And this song does not ring my bells.
jeffry skunk baxster is a trip
I still love Pretzel Logic era. Yeah, it’s pure pop before they got into the whole jazz thing. But I love it.
We’re seeing producers erased actually. Record labels are not paying producers enough. I believe they are paid indirectly from a cut of the revenue given to the artist. Song writers get so much from the cut, producers get so much, sound engineers get so much and so on. Labels are not giving as much to the artists so everyone including the artists are not making as much money as in the past. Many artists, less the most elite, are doing their own sound and production work to make up the deficit. It seems to be second nature to these kids, since they grow up with laptops and DAWs.
The PBS member station I worked at in a former life cleared the tape vault that was one huge room, a respectable medium barn I guess.
There was a period of two weeks where large portable dumpsters were being filled regularly.
All kinds of analog formats.
I snagged a quad tape just to have it.
Tons of vinyl records were tossed as well.
I saw Steely Dan in March 1973 at the Shady Grove Music Fair in Gaithersburg MD. SGMF was a relatively small venue with a circular stage that slowly revolved; the audience sat around the entire stage. The wasn’t a bad seat in the house.
They gave a great show playing songs for the “Reelin’ in the Years” album and some they had not released yet.
Skunk Baxter was playing lead guitar. His equipment malfunctioned and gave him a shock. He quit playing and the band then unexpectedly took a break. The band’s crew came out and checked and changed out some of his equipment. When they came back on stage Baxter explained what happened.
I think this was their first national tour and after it they quit touring for many years as I recall.
Note to self: Proof read before posting.
I’d jump all over that vinyl.
You made a GREAT call in going to see them..Steely Dan in the round! Awesome!
I saw two guys doing that at a farmer’s market recently, and it was great.
jeff was a spook too
I thought songwriters get royalties, not upfront money?
Literary mysteries: Books that have been permanently lost
Epstein’s black book.
I saw them in 1973 as well. Tight band with Fagen on keys and Walter on bass. Besides Baxter there was also another guitarist named Denny Dias in those days. He was known for the electric sitar solo in Do it again and a great player. When live he performed that solo on a regular electric.
“Gaucho is next to last.”
Next to last among Steely Dan fans, perhaps, but second to none among Yacht Rock fans.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.