Steely Dan - "The Bear"

 

In 1980, Steely Dan released Gaucho, the band's first album in three years, and last before Donald Fagen and Walter Becker regrouped for a new album in 2000.

Several outtakes from Gaucho remain officially unreleased, although they’ve appeared on bootlegs and the Internet over the years.

I wanted to see if I could use outtakes to create a new Steely Dan album that theoretically could have been produced around 1981-82.

SIDE A

1. Kulee Baba

2. I Can't Write Home About You

3. Kind Spirit

4. Stand by the Seaside

SIDE B

1. The Bear

2. Talkin' About My Home

3. The Second Arrangement

Five known outtakes from the Gaucho album are "Kind Spirit," "Kulee Baba," "The Bear," "Talkin' About My Home," and "The Second Arrangement." I think the demo for "I Can't Write Home About You" also dates from the sessions.

“The Second Arrangement” was supposed to have been included on Gaucho, but an assistant engineer accidentally erased the track. Becker and Fagen reportedly didn’t want to start recording the song again from scratch. However, a version on a cassette was later discovered, and cleaned up and posted online by fans.

In fact, the amazing results of new software and fans’ creativity have resulted in what I think are good-sounding versions of all these leftovers.

"Stand by the Seawall" is an instrumental outtake from the Aja album. If it had been completed, it would likely have had lyrics, but I use it here as an instrumental ending for the album's first side.

Granted, seven songs make for a fairly short album, even if all the tracks range in the 4 to 5-plus-minute territory. As arranged, the album clocks in at 32:19, more than five minutes shorter than Gaucho.

And many purists will roll their eyes at the idea of using these revamped tracks to create a “new” Steely Dan album, especially given the well-documented perfectionism of Becker and Fagen. But after I arranged these songs and hit “play,” it sounded like a long-lost Steely Dan album to these ears.

I decided to use “The Bear” as the title track and then searched the Web for artwork. I found this rustic-looking image, and since it kind of looked like the California flag, I used a font similar to that used on the flag.

Here's a YouTube playlist of the album.