Well, they did it again. You can practically hear Tony blasting it from his car while the feds are in pursuit. Weeks after the holy grail of Steely Dan recordings, “The Second Arrangement,†was exhumed from the audio abyss, another presumably lost track has found the light of day. This one is a short jingle created for the beer company Schlitz, henceforth known as “The Schlitz Jingle,†which was made during some downtime before the sessions for Countdown to Ecstasy began. According to the Expanding Dan Substack, Donald Fagen agreed to take the corporate gig on the condition they would write the jingle themselves and not be bothered by company’s ad men in suits. Have a little taste:
When I get home from a hard day’s work
He says he likes to grab for all the gusto he can get
’Cause you only go around one time.
“As we were doing it, somebody came by from Schlitz’s ad agency — you know, a guy with a powder-blue sweater tied around his neck and quite literally a stopwatch in his hand,†Gary Katz, the band’s longtime producer, said. “He walked into the control room and thought he was going to take over, and that just wasn’t gonna happen. He started asking questions about the song. Donald said aloud to me, ‘Do you have your hand near the red button?’ Then he addressed the ad guy: ‘If you say another word about this song, we’re just gonna erase it.’ So the guy left.†The jingle was ultimately not approved by Schlitz due to an unintentional translation issue: Its spoken-word interlude in Spanish includes the word “grab,†which sounds too close to “fuck†in the language. Just like “The Second Arrangement,†the tapes of the jingle were held by Roger Nichols, the band’s primary engineer, and were now released by his daughter for fans to enjoy. Who wants a cold one?