It's a fantastic time to be a Steely Dan listener. Not only is their studio catalogue currently getting the audiophile-grade reissue treatment, a long-lost rarity by the celebrated jazz rockers called "The Second Arrangement" has now found its way online.
A brief history: "The Second Arrangement" was recorded in 1979 during sessions for the band's 1980 album Gaucho, only to be accidentally erased from the reels by an assistant engineer. A re-recording was attempted, but taking into account the studio perfectionism of Steely Dan's late era, the new take was scrapped.
For years, incomplete versions of "The Second Arrangement" have circulated online, leading the legend of the song to grow. Often found on unofficial releases or floating around YouTube in lacklustre quality, the most devoted Dan fans spent countless hours cleaning up the audio themselves, or creating Donald Fagen AI voice models to improve the vocal quality. Steely Dan performed the song live once in 2011 as part of a rarities set in New York. It brings to mind the image of a character who keeps the wine flowing as their life crumbles around them, and is widely considered the band's best song they never released.
Now, the previously unshared song arrives in much higher fidelity via the family of late Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols and journalist Jake Malooley's Expanding Dan newsletter. It shares how in 2020, Nichols's daughter Cimcie was sorting through her late father's possessions during the pandemic, and shared a photo of a cassette tape labelled "SECOND ARR." on Facebook.
"Everybody was at home and saw it, and it went viral," Cimcie recalled. "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."
Understanding how the tape could have deteriorated after four decades, Cimcie and sister Ashlee considered that a boombox might not be the safest way to bring the contents to the world. Expanding Dan describes a 2021 trip the two took to United Recording in Los Angeles, where recording and archiving engineer Bill Smith fully transferred the cassette's tape to "a new case that had fresh reels and other components."
The cassette tape version of "The Second Arrangement" is a revelation compared to the versions that preceded it, even with Fagen's lead vocals disappearing in certain places. The tape also included an instrumental mix of the track, and another recording of "Were You Blind That Day," an early version of the song that would become Gaucho closer "Third World Man."
Additionally, the Nichols sisters uncovered a DAT that featured another mix of "The Second Arrangement" with the lead vocal track intact. You can take in the Steely Dan audio, the siblings' trip to United Recording and plenty of Nichols family slides in the players below, and you can hear "The Second Arrangement" without YouTube compression via Expanding Dan. The newsletter notes that the cassette tape will soon go up for auction, framed alongside the sheet music for "The Second Arrangement."
A brief history: "The Second Arrangement" was recorded in 1979 during sessions for the band's 1980 album Gaucho, only to be accidentally erased from the reels by an assistant engineer. A re-recording was attempted, but taking into account the studio perfectionism of Steely Dan's late era, the new take was scrapped.
For years, incomplete versions of "The Second Arrangement" have circulated online, leading the legend of the song to grow. Often found on unofficial releases or floating around YouTube in lacklustre quality, the most devoted Dan fans spent countless hours cleaning up the audio themselves, or creating Donald Fagen AI voice models to improve the vocal quality. Steely Dan performed the song live once in 2011 as part of a rarities set in New York. It brings to mind the image of a character who keeps the wine flowing as their life crumbles around them, and is widely considered the band's best song they never released.
Now, the previously unshared song arrives in much higher fidelity via the family of late Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols and journalist Jake Malooley's Expanding Dan newsletter. It shares how in 2020, Nichols's daughter Cimcie was sorting through her late father's possessions during the pandemic, and shared a photo of a cassette tape labelled "SECOND ARR." on Facebook.
"Everybody was at home and saw it, and it went viral," Cimcie recalled. "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."
Understanding how the tape could have deteriorated after four decades, Cimcie and sister Ashlee considered that a boombox might not be the safest way to bring the contents to the world. Expanding Dan describes a 2021 trip the two took to United Recording in Los Angeles, where recording and archiving engineer Bill Smith fully transferred the cassette's tape to "a new case that had fresh reels and other components."
The cassette tape version of "The Second Arrangement" is a revelation compared to the versions that preceded it, even with Fagen's lead vocals disappearing in certain places. The tape also included an instrumental mix of the track, and another recording of "Were You Blind That Day," an early version of the song that would become Gaucho closer "Third World Man."
Additionally, the Nichols sisters uncovered a DAT that featured another mix of "The Second Arrangement" with the lead vocal track intact. You can take in the Steely Dan audio, the siblings' trip to United Recording and plenty of Nichols family slides in the players below, and you can hear "The Second Arrangement" without YouTube compression via Expanding Dan. The newsletter notes that the cassette tape will soon go up for auction, framed alongside the sheet music for "The Second Arrangement."
