Play It Again

Song 258: This week's playlist track will get you to Do It Again by Steely Dan, written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Rock and roll had begun to lose its luster by the fall of '72. The radio still played plenty of good songs by new and established artists, but music fans felt the lack of something truly dynamically new. The previous decade had featured acts that practically exploded onto the scene, with a dizzying variety that ranged from The Beatles to Hendrix, Dylan to the Doors, and many seemed to widen the range of possibility with each new release. Near the end of the following decade's 3rd year, rock and roll had not yet produced any really exciting new sounds, and as the listeners wondered how much longer it would take until the Magic Next Big Thing would arrive, this single popped up on the airwaves. It sounded dramatically different from everything else, suggesting magic new musical directions, with lyrics that hinted at poetic possibilities. The album title Can't Buy a Thrill payed homage to Dylan, and raised the prospect that perhaps the Supergroup of the '70s had finally arrived -- a band which would mix the best of the '60s RnR influences together into a unique and timely brew, with words and music that matched the current calendar page. This track sounded so good then, and still does today, but alas, the rest of the album didn't quite fulfill the expectations raised by this cut, even though the LP had plenty of other fine songs. As it turned out, that decade did not produce any acts that truly qualified as the '70s Beatles, the '70s Hendrix or any other updated versions of '60s musical icons, but for a brief moment in the fall of '72, this track raised the possibility that Steely Dan might blaze a new musical trail that would define the era. If you had waited for the arrival of the mythic Supergroup of the '70s, and you thought the wait was over when you heard this song, unfortunately, you had to go back, Jack, and do it again -- waiting, that is, and specifically, waiting for the band that never arrived.