In the wee, littlest hours of May 29, 2018, the official walterbecker.com site dropped on us a previously unheard track. The short story for how this track came about goes like this, per his widow: “I wrote him a birthday haiku. He wrote me a song. It’s good enough that we thought of posting it on online.” The fuller story is fleshed out here, and worth checking out, as there are far too few personal anecdotes outside the studio about this private but witty, intelligent and caring individual.
There’s also some formal information about the latest seepage from the vault of the late, great Walter Becker, “Just One Season.” It was apparently recorded in 2003 and Becker recorded the whole damned thing himself.
A bouncy, waltzy ditty, “Just One Season” takes the idea of being in a physical place where it’s harder to mark the passage of time because the weather doesn’t change much, and applies that to different contexts. The lyrics flow just like you’d expect coming from an old pro like Becker. It flows so well, you don’t have to fully understand the meaning to appreciate how well written it is (good thing!).
The audio quality is rather good and Becker’s vocal even gets the double-track treatment for the chorus. The ‘homemade’ feel comes from the programmed rhythm track and Casio sounding keyboards, and a solo break from a faux vibraphone, a favored jazz instrument of both him and his surviving musical partner, Donald Fagen. All done on an ‘Opticode,’ which not only stumped me but apparently Dr. Google as well. Eh, I’ll mull over that minor detail some other time.
So what’s the moral of this musical parable from the hereafter? That Walter Becker could knock out a release-worthy catchy jingle with probably about as much effort as it takes most of us to write something clever on a greeting card.
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