Psychedelic electro jazz waltz with cryptic lyrics. A genre that could only come from the mind of Walter Becker

Haven't listened to this one in a while and the e-mail notification urged me to put it on. One observation I have is this song has a instrumental stylistic sound (to me) similar to the Rippingtons. Mainly the pan-flute style solo. Interestingly, where I am The Rippingtons have been used for The Weather Network's background music which kinda ties the seasonal thing together in a neat way! Regardless I love this song, thanks again :)

Was listening to this wonderful tune for about the umpteenth time today when I was suddenly struck by the similarity of the keyboard part with that of Dave Brubeck's 'Take Five' piano.

"The one time" assumes I only made a particular number of suggestions :-)

Well then D-Mod... what was the one time he did follow your suggestion??

o god...i fairly BEGGED him to add this to their tours! Maybe as the band intro song or something... I swore even the clueless would go wild for it. Alas. But typical; I think my batting average for suggestions to accepted suggestions was about .001

The bloddy brain tap shuffle lose your mind...ha ha. Suppose after that FIDELITY did become a priority!

awwww, Honey Honey.....some classic bubblegum right there! In the Sound On Sound article on "the making of...", Walter mentions that he had a start on a few of the songs that ended up on C$ -- that's your classic pipeline right there. He mentioned Upside and Audrey, and there might have been shreds of a few more ---but he also says they "wrote all the songs from scratch over a period of about a year," Strokes > different < Folks.

Wow, so 2003. I imagine Becker always had tons of bits and pieces and song starts laying around - probably going all the way back to the early 70's, that he probably perused when starting a new album. Unless, He and Larry started the "Circus Money" from more or less scratch - which, knowing the SD method, means a writing period of, at least, ten years.

Thank you for your quick response. As a songwriter, myself, in fact, I'm the son of Jeff Barry, the Brill Building legend who probably stared aghast at Donald and Walter in New York in the late 60's when they tried to play him "Brain Tap Shuffle," I am a great student and fan of the songwriting process and these demos and insights have proven fascinating and so entertaining. While my father may have written "Be My Baby" and "Sugar Sugar," I grew up in the 80's, a fan of folks like Elvis Costello and Tom Waits and agree with those who understood Becker and Fagen were so much more "punk rock" and subversive than the Sex Pistols dared dream to be. I should ask my father if he remembers Donald and Walter from back in the Brill Building, although he, himself, moved out to Los Angeles about the same time they did. He probably even knew them from out here, as well - as much as one can claim to "know" Becker and Fagen - or, for that matter, even SEE them outdoors in sunny California during their extended stay on the west coast.

Either way, thank you again for your response and my deepest, most sincere condolences for the lost of your good friend. What you are doing here is a true gift which enriches soul, brain, heart and ears.

Best,

JCB

Hi nepilcot, deep thanks for those wonderful sentiments, boy it makes me feel good when these little shreds of unadorned melodies inspire appreciation (or re-appreciation) for the breadth of his talent. He never tried to prove anything throughout the long years of some pretty belittling assumptions about his talent or contribution. And even in the face of some robust revisionism of recent years, he just sat out the turf wars entirely. I admired him for that. Still...

Dave Russell's inimitable script tells us the final 2 mixes were completed a few days before my '03 birthday. Christ, almost impossible to realize how long ago that was...

Hi, thank you so much for sharing these intimate and remarkable songs with us. I've aways been an enormous fan of Becker as both a solo artist way beyond his contribution to Steely Dan. These rare demos and recordings only solidify what I knew - he was an equal partner in SD and Fagen's solo material , while brilliant, often suffers from "phantom limb syndrome" os missing what Becker brought to the table.

I was curious what the basic date/era this track comes from? I apologize if I missed that information in the above posts, also I did scan look for it.

Either way, this site is remarkable and thank you again for keeping the memory of Walter alive and continuing to share his magic with the world.

I think Denise is right. I know I got it the day it came out, and then got the U.K. version for Dark Horse Dub

D-Mod, I already had bought a copy, so I did not pickup another. I suspect all Walter's fans had already gotten a copy by that time - it had been out a few months.

Matthew, I totally agree.

Just want to add my two cents about this great track...

After Walter's death in September, I was middling inconsolate. Even though I hadn't been in steady contact with Walter since circa 2003, it still felt like there was a chance that I'd wake up one morning, check my email, and receive an invitation to check out a new track, come to a show, or whatever. It sure as shit didn't feel like it had been seventeen years since the Two Against Nature tour, a summer packed with almost as much Steely Dan as I might desire. Instead, I woke up that morning to the devastating news that I had lost a hero—not the kind of hero that flies about in the distance, but the kind that occasionally mails a cd or tour shirt to a sixteen year old fan, or asks when he sees you how each show was, if it sounded okay...who genuinely seems to give a shit and remembers what you talked about last time and says nice things about you to people you respect.

So when the request came from walterbecker.com, I jumped on the chance to give something back, in the form of the Hey19 Raps archive at www.dandom.com/hey19, which I worked on with longtime community leader and all around good guy Jim "Hoops" McKay. When our beloved moderator asked if I would be willing to help with a few other projects, I of course responded in the affirmative. When she asked if I would be willing to help her fulfill a promise she had made to Walter, to share with his fans any material that was worthy of being heard, this was the first track she shared with me. I laid on the couch in my living room in the middle of the night listening to this song, at once both broken by the immeasurable sense of loss that I knew we had all suffered, myself and this community much less that Walter's family and friends, and giddy with the prospect that that what had felt so brutally final could be in some way moderated by this song and the prospect of more to come. It made the loss feel deeper and greater, while at the same time making sense of it all. There is only one season here.

The song is unmistakably Walter. Even in 6/8, you immediately know you're at home. The process of shifting the context is fascinating, illustrating the versatility and intelligence that has long imbued all of Walter's music with that special something that is so hard to capture. Without waxing musical theory, Walter manages to effortlessly compose something familiar and radically different from what's come before, reminding me of everything I fell in love with in my initial discovery of the Steely Dan catalog, and in his solo efforts.

In this track I am reminded of what we lost, but also of all we were given by this remarkable writer. And he, and his wife, keep giving now, with no expectation of reward. That is a damn remarkable thing, like hourstuff said above, that I don't see prior precedent for in modern pop culture. It is touching to me that Walter cared about his fans enough to request this kind of thing, and that his wife has done all of the hard work of preparing and disseminating each track for us to greedily consume. It really helps.

Thank you.

On The Corner - thanks for the rec to "Still Bill" - great flick! Great artist. He was on some of the Rock N Soul dates I believe

Thanks, Denise.Now the Q we all want an answer to; did you get a copy? Was watching people exit and they seemed most eager to get outside on the street. So even GIVING it away had a middling batting average. -sigh - lol

I believe it was the Beacon in NY. I remember him saying it, and I attended shows at NY & Boston that year - I'm pretty sure it wasn't in Boston.

I wish I could remember where it was, sorry. There was some natural opportunity in the "stage repartee" with DF (long story about the merch table) that gave him an easy opportunity.

also, i was not at the show where becker gave away copies od Circus Money, but i rememebr hearing about it... was it at the beacon?

i loved that album and was holding out hope for a solo WB tour to support it after nothing from it was played during that summer’s Steely Dan tour.

moderator writes:

”In that moment he was likely running the phrase through some kind of " context thesaurus" where the phrase takes on other meanings. I came to think of this as a type of untethered, superflexible three-dimensional engagement with language that "regular" Folk just didn't naturally have without trying for it. His song typifies this notion.. ”

reminds me of scenes the fantasic bill withers documentary, Still Bill. He talks about how he‘d often ask someone to write down particular turns of phrases he’d hear and eventually write songs around them... im sure many songwriters do that, but very few set a scene and tella story like Becker has here (and to be fair, Withers did too).

many thanks to D-Mod for sharing this, it’s really wonderful to hear.