Do It Again

[Homz]

So does anyone else think the Skunk Baxter solo in "Do It Again" to be odd? I mean it's probably different then most solos you hear. It doesn't seem to follow the flow of the song at all. I do like it a lot, but I can't even come close to playing it. I can at least come close on many others I play. Our band does this song and I think I'll just let the keyboard carry the song. Do it again

[surfpup]

So odd it works! (As in crazy like a fox). I read somewhere they (Fagen and Becker) would have different guys take passes at the solos and then pick what they wanted later. It's hard to imagine a different solo in that song now that I've heard it the way it is for so long.

[NeoConMan]

I see what you mean.

I was never a big Steely Dan fan but that stuff has been on the radio for nearly 40 years.

I know most of those songs by heart though I never really sought to learn them - beyond Reelin' In The Years.

 

I never heard what sort of effects they used on the solo, sounds like it's played through a synth.

Cool structure though.

[The Mick]

The Dan is one of my favorite bands of all time.

[FirstMeasure]

Yeah, sounds like Roger McGuinn meets Jimmy Page (ala Fool In The Rain). Octave Doubler on a Twelver String {edit, just a guess}. Skunk Baxter's one underrated Player.

[The Mick]

He plays that lead with his mustache

[rocketman]

Hmm, I always thought that it was an electric sitar played by Denny Dias not Baxter, but I may be wrong...

[The Mick]

I found this

 

 

Steely Dan's first hit single and to this day the song most associated with the duo (the tagline on ads for the reunion album Two Against Nature was "Back, Jack, to do it again"), "Do It Again" is remarkably odd material for a Top Ten radio hit. It's a six-minute shuffle based on a sleepy bossa nova rhythm tapped out with Latin percussion by expatriate British jazzman Victor Feldman, lacking any kind of bridge or middle eight. It features not one but two lengthy solos, the first on an electric sitar (by 1972, a hopelessly out of fashion instrument last heard on the pop charts on the Box Tops' "Cry Like a Baby" and B.J. Thomas' "Hooked On a Feeling") played by the overall-clad man mountain Denny Dias and the second on what the liner notes termed "an inexpensive, imported plastic organ" (actually a Yamaha YC-30, a cheap combo organ with a unique sort of built-in theremin feature called a portamento strip), which Donald Fagen abuses to create an odd, high-pitched wailing effect similar to the odd noises Joe Meek got on the Tornados' "Telstar" a decade before. Bracketing those solos is a trio of lengthy verses filled with the sort of quasi-mystical Americana that covered the first two albums by the Band, delivered in Fagen's snickering whine of a voice and concerning the seductive power of addiction. Not much about this description screams "smash hit!," but "Do It Again" quickly became both one of the defining soft rock tracks of the '70s and the perfect introduction for a band that would go on to even odder and more wondrous creations over the next eight years.

 

 

Just say'n

[Rocky4]

Did you know he works for US missile defense?

[rocketman]

Did you know he works for US missile defense?

 

Yep he's a consultant for them. He's pretty apt from what I hear. He also is a member of NASA's Exploration Systems Advisory Committee (see here). But back to the thread. I think we've established that he did not play the solo...

[Homz]

I heard a rumor he was challenged, by a fellow at Oxford, to cure cancer on a Friday afternoon at 4pm and he had the cure on the challengers desk by Saturday morning at 9am. :-

[deepblue]

Did you know he works for US missile defense?

 

and damn it, hes just plain pretty!