It took a mere six months for Steely Dan to issue Countdown to Ecstasy, the follow-up to their stunning 1973 debut disc, Can't Buy a Thrill. The group's third studio album, Pretzel Logic, followed a mere eight months  later--at which point songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen  reconfigured their group as a studio-bound, many-headed musical creature,  spending ever more time and money behind the mixing boards and recruiting  an ever-larger battery of players in order to realize their creative  visions.