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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,...

On December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas aired on TV screens across America and instantly captured the hearts and ears of a generation. Bolstering the animated special, based on Charles M. Schulz's immensely popular PEANUTS comic strip, was an engaging score from Bay Area jazz artist Vince Guaraldi, who brought characters like Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Snoopy to life through his evocative cues... Guaraldi's soundtrack, meanwhile, has since become one of the best-selling jazz albums in history, second only to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, and regularly ranks among America's top-selling holiday albums every December.Vince Guaraldi Trio - Christmas...

Jeff "Skunk" Baxter has earned eight platinum records in a music career that started in the 1960s, and he has received numerous security clearances and contracting jobs since the 1980s as a self-taught expert on missile-defense and counterterrorism. Baxter was one of many luminaries at the White House on Thursday to watch President Donald Trump sign the Music Modernization Act, which reforms copyright laws. Unlike every other musician in the room, including Kid Rock, Baxter has built a successful second career as a defense consultant. Baxter dropped out of college in Boston in 1969 to join a short-lived psychedelic-rock band....

Not only is Jeff "Skunk" Baxter a ponytailed former guitarist for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, he's also an expert on missile defense who advises the Pentagon and enjoys what he calls "high-level security access." "I wrote a paper a long time ago and gave it to a friend, Dana Rohrabacher," the Republican House member from California, Baxter told us. "The next thing I know, I'm advising members of Congress and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization at the Pentagon." [snip]"It's a changing world, and a lot of people haven't caught up to it yet. Somebody has to take the...