In 1979, a studio technician by accident erased a brand new Steely Dan music referred to as “The Second Association.” Makes an attempt to rescue the recording have been futile, and everybody assumed the tune was misplaced to historical past. They tried to file the entire thing once more, however Donald Fagen was so displeased with the completed product that he determined to scrap it. Nobody realized that the band’s longtime engineer Roger Nichols had already created a tough mixture of the unique “The Second Association” recording, taken it residence on certainly one of numerous stray cassettes, and finally filed it away right into a desk drawer.

As Increasing Dan explains, it wasn’t till after Nichols’ loss of life that his daughters found the tape marked “SECOND ARR” in 2011. They have been conscious that “The Second Association” was the music that had been deleted, however they didn’t know what to do with the tape and have been preoccupied with clearing out their father’s important archive of possessions. Through the pandemic lockdown of 2020, Nichols’ daughter Cimcie was taking a more in-depth have a look at her dad’s stuff within the hopes of supplying some documentarian with materials to inform his story. She posted a photograph of the tape on-line with the caption, “We’ve by no means performed it. What ought to we do with it? It appears like a magical treasure that my mother has stored protected for many years.”

They have been nervous the tape might need disintegrated over the course of 40 years and have been being hounded by Dan followers on-line. In September 2021, they took the tape to United Recording in Los Angeles, the place archival engineer Invoice Smith bodily transferred the cassette’s magnetic tape to a brand new case. They performed the tape and found “The Second Association” in addition to an instrumental mixture of the music and “Had been You Blind That Day,” which later grew to become “Third World Man.” The Nichols sisters didn’t wish to simply throw it up on YouTube, however at the moment the total cassette — in addition to one other DAT with a model of “The Second Association” lacking some vocals — is posted at Increasing Dan. Hear it there and preview it beneath.