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    WB's 'Hey 19 Rap' of the Week

    1. Walter Becker Media Forum
    2. Rarities & Unreleased
    3. He Wants You (Out)
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    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 9, 2019
      ·  Edited: Aug 5, 2019

    He Wants You (Out)

    1997




    He Wants You (Out)

    words & music

    Walter Becker (1997)

    © Zeon Music LLC 2018


    Well we all ride together in this world

    Fall together where we stand

    And we all got one slim chance to be heard

    It's all written in the plan


    This is all I ask of you

    Tell me sweetness tell me true

    From that very first soul kiss

    You knew it would be like this

    We all ride together in this world

    Well didn't we just girl


    He reads you — he reads you loud and clear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here

    He needs you — you and what army dear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here


    Well we all need protection from the pain

    For protection we will pay

    And we all seek the shelter from the rain

    Here comes that rainy day


    It won't make it real again

    Not all the horses all the men

    It won't do you any good

    Not all the pills in Hollywood

    We all need protection now and then

    Here it is again


    He loves you —he loves your story dear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here

    He sees you — he sees you disappear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here


    Well we all ride together in this world

    Wait forever on the curb

    And we all ask for much more than we need

    And we get what we deserve


    He hears you — he's seeming not to hear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here

    He's got you — he's had you up to here

    He wants you — he wants you out of here

    He needs you — you and what army dear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here

    He reads you — he reads you loud and clear

    He wants you — he wants you out of here




    Another one of Becker's infamous "Love Songs"!

    Anyone woman at all familiar with his Whack work and demos would think long and hard before sweetly trilling "write me a love song, dahling!" -- knowing she was as likely to get one of these than an Almost Gothic or a Paging Audrey. That musical bouquet of his was always as likely to conceal a shiv than sweet-nothings.


    This tune was one of three demos Walter sent me on a DAT in late 1997  (ever-thoughtful, he bundled it with a portable "Walkman"-type DAT player. Sort of like Voyager. I was impressed). I asked him: "so these are rejects from Whack?" to which he replied nah,  just a few things he'd been working on lately. By this time he was  deep into writing for Two Against Nature with Fagen, so it took me a couple of beats to realize that after his Whack work, he and his Opcode had apparently just kept on trucking along. 


    He must have liked this one, must have been keeping it on his "potentially active" list, since he was still occasionally listening to it few years later... 

    ...as he was one afternoon in late '99 ....




    PS: His vocals on these three '97 demos were uncommonly lackluster, to put it kindly.  One of them, in fact -- a tune called The Love You Ax -- will remain forever sealed, falling into the rare category of the demo vocal  he would never allow out of the box. It's a nice tune though; perhaps one day 'll post an instrumental of its solo and outro, for a sense of its feel. I just have to guess first  if that would make more of you pissed or pleased.

    Dan Belcher
    Jul 9, 2019

    Whoa! The synth bass on this demo is SUPER funky. Love it! I can't really say I find the vocals are "uncommonly lackluster" on this track, Walter sounds in fine voice to me, and it finds the vibe of the song and the lyrics really well. This one is definitely near the top of my list of these demos and unreleased songs, very cool tune. BTW neat the see the "And we all ask for much more than we need / And we get what we deserve" bit show up here as a bit of a precursor to the "I'm leaving with all I need, but less than I deserve" line on Downtown Canon.

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 9, 2019

    yes Dan, interesting those 2 lines, here and n "DC"...especially since they seem to present polar opposite -- well maybe not polar opposite, but certainly "adjusted' -- philosophies :-)

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Dec 6, 2020

    well I'm only a year late. on this Dan, but I was listening to this again tonight and yeah, deep digging that fantastic synth Bass. He really was an uncommonly great bassist. That's clear enough on the SD (and C$) tracks, but all these demos really hammers (so to speak) it home.

    Tony Favia
    Dec 6, 2020

    @Moderator: D-Mod It's also eye- (and ear-) opening when you listen to the drums/bass/vocals only mixes of Snowbound and Trans Island Skyway (Snowbound especially). Walter's bass playing in such bold relief is so clear and beautiful. I wish we had more of those kinds of mixes to listen to, so that more folks could really appreciate his greatness.

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    rob hewett
    Jul 9, 2019

    Perfect day for a WB update. In morning traffic, listening to one of the Philosophize This podcasts it popped into my head that today I should finally determine if "susponed" is a word (well of course it is a "word"). Later in the day, focus squirming away from compensated tasks, I think, boy, Greg (tonefreak guitarist friend) really should be made aware of Adam Rogers' sound on Surf... Better listen to it right now to make sure... then I remember the morning's dictionary question, and that I'm in around the same song for entirely independent reasons. Then the Demo from '97 email drops in, and as I write this the bass clarinet flourish from Girlfriend is going by (uncredited? Sheppard? anyway a gem). My new Bose 'phones are aural telescopes in to galaxies of sound and tone, can I just say that Perowsky/Ephron on Surf are the absolute, er, _stuff_?! Anyway, somewhere during all this just needed to hear the Down in the Bottom solo and the spoken vocal cue-out, and it's safe to say I'm feeling pretty Walterish today. Now I'll listen to the demos; thanks for that.

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 9, 2019

    feeling Walterish today....sigh. No other kinda day for me anymore it seems. Thanks for the company....

    Tony Favia
    Jul 9, 2019

    Really digging this one! It sounds like it's kind of from the same musical family as Sanpaku and maybe a couple of others from this time period, but just unique enough to make it interesting... as usual. Some of the sounds are so fascinating; almost thought there was about to be a bagpipes solo there in the middle, when he hung on that one note for a while! Now that would have been different. Lots more to dig into, as always with his stuff, but on first listen I'm already in a great mood. Thanks D! Appreciated the quick add to the Downloads section too...

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 9, 2019

    Downloads is Matt's thing. Thanks Matt!!

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    Gracie
    Jul 11, 2019

    Great tune. Just nails it for me. Great bass line and sound: funky and yet plodding, stalking, monster-like (is it "he"?). And the lyrics, somehow comforting, spelling out pain, ambiguity, rejection and togetherness. It's all quite relentless and wonderful. Love it! Not a lackluster performance vocally at all, it's his delivery that rounds out the tune, playing the friend clueing you in to the truth. Thank you for posting it.

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 12, 2019

    Thanks Gracie! I'm very gratified so many people seem to like this one...I like it too...and as we've seen, he heard some potential in it as well. How interesting you find the lyrics...comforting? To him. Her? us? Well, personally, I always adored when he showed that shiv. Everybody's little Teddy Bear ---good ol cheerful Uncle Walt --- HA! they had no idea!!


    (And very few people were graciously grateful for his "truth", as you imagine they might be :-) )


    To you and all: As far as weak singing goes, please note that you are hearing this tune, which sounds fine...it's one of the other three that's over the "lackluster" line into something else "-)

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    Dan Belcher
    Jul 12, 2019

    Hey D and Matt, I noticed the FLAC and MP3 versions on the download page have the audio turned up too high and it's clipping making it sound distorted. The YouTube version doesn't have that problem and sounds fine. Here's a comparison screenshot where you can see the waveform getting clipped on the FLAC version but not on the Youtube version.


    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 12, 2019

    Thanks Dan - I may have sent Matt the "wrong" version....although I always correct for clipping and volume ((n Audacity or something) and send the cleanest version (.wav). Matt, any ideas?

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    Matthew Kerns
    Jul 12, 2019

    @Moderator: D-Mod Hmmm...lemme look and see what's going on.

    hourstuff
    Jul 12, 2019

    @Matthew Kerns Matt - I noticed something similar with the song 'Much Has Been Done...' The download version contains a lot of hiss and the music/vocals are very low in the mix, whereas the version via the mobile users link on the Rarities & Unreleased page sounds great!


    Otherwise, thanks for all you do and the "little sly graphics" as D-Mod mentions below are always top-notch!

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    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 12, 2019

    By the way...I love Matt's little sly graphics he uses on the downloads page. Gotta get that boy to come out and do more of this creative thing HERE! Doesn't everybody agree?!

    hourstuff
    Jul 12, 2019

    Yes, I totally agree. Love 'em!

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jul 12, 2019

    @hourstuff I hasten to add, though, that the majority of movies and slideshows that have appeared with our clips have been Matt's.

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    Matthew Kerns
    Aug 22, 2019

    This one came up in my shuffle today, and I was thinking about the contradiction inherent in the chorus:


    He wants you - he wants you out of here. He's got you - he's had you up to here. It reminded me of the old "Furry Years" track Undecided, with it's chorus: "I love you - Go away I hate you - No please stay" I was thinking of Walter's "context thesaurus" that d-mod has mentioned, and how in the clips that were shared on walterbecker.com he was revisiting songs like Jones. Clearly those old songs were fodder for reimagining, rewriting, reinterpreting, whatever. In this case it seems vague and ethereal, just the inclusion of a set of contradictions in the chorus section to make us question the verse narrative, but it was another a-ha moment for me about the way in which Walter's gifts as a songwriter were expressed. I see it pop up elsewhere in specific phrases "on the cellular level in case we have to call someone" in Our Lawn and later in Darkling Down. I suppose there were just phrases ideas and structures that didn't let go until they'd found proper expression in some song or another. I would further assume that this phenomenon, while easy to see and point out in lyrics, exists in chord changes and song structure and melody and harmony as well, though it would take a much more attuned ear than mine to point it out. Call it economy of ideas or call it genius—and I believe it to be a bit of both—but it is another interesting facet in understanding what makes a song or a songwriter great.

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Aug 24, 2019

    Lyrics, definitely — I mean, we saw “skating backwards at the speed of light” in an early 90’s notebook…and many others.


    But musically, I don’t know. It may simply be that his melodies and progressions were such strange geese... most of them simply unique. I think if there were echos as obvious as those we find in lyric phrases, we’d hear them.


    rob hewett
    Aug 26, 2019

    @Moderator: D-Mod

    Skating Backward: I think what we have here is not harmonic but rather rhythmic lyric synergy of which the Two were masters.  Let's look at some examples of what this could mean.

    As a baseline consider I Think I Love You (Partridge Family).  While admittedly a huge hit, the clownish lyric phrasing of the chorus made us snicker even in its day. Move up from near zero to the effective heights of Satisfaction (Rolling Stones); the guitar intro is the signature riff but the actual hook is the contrasting lyric phrasing of the main line, in the verse the emphasis is on "can't" and "no" while the chorus is "I" and "get". Higher still, run some of Got To Get You Into My Life (Beatles); the lyric rhythm of verse, pre-chorus and chorus shout all dazzle. In this rare air we find for example Black Cow (Steely Dan).  Run any of this in your mind, verse or chorus, and you can't without knitting it onto those rhythmic bones, climaxing in Big Black Cow!  To the reference, Jack of Speed...   the first half of a verse sits on but one harmonic center, but oh boy that phrasing... now there's a Case In Point!


    (I'm probably not tracking the discussion very well here, but wanted anyway to express this idea to a sympathetic crowd)

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Aug 26, 2019  ·  Edited: Aug 26, 2019

    @rob hewett I think I scan up to the jump to JOS; you seem to be pointing out how the complexity of a melody within a single chord or chordal phrase ranges from simplistic to complex and that further, within that is the rhythmic complexity ... and that all other things being equal, SD and WB when compared to other artists can be counted on to land in the complex territory ...have I got that about right? I would certainly agree with that.


    And I've long thought that the most envelope-stretching, mind-blowing possibilities of that variety will be found in just about any Joni Mitchell song; she applies completely novel meters and rhythms (and indeed, complexities) on the A sections, B sections etc of her songs to where there's really no scheme at all; whatever words she wants to use in the lyrics of this particular verse, every other variable -- how many notes and therefore the melody; the rhythm, the emphases -- will be subservient to them. Sometimes the B section will be three long notes, the next B section will be as crowded as a verse of "'Reelin'". I've always been amazed at how we manage to come away from listening to her songs feeling that we've heard a song at all -- in other words, amazed that a unified sense of a song still manages to emerge from such an otherwise ad lib sounding collection of phrases.

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    Gracie
    Aug 23, 2019

    Interesting comment, thank you, and part of it clarified something for me - it's not really a contradiction when "you" are the object of love or hate by the other in a (admittedly dysfunctional) relationship, because either way "you" and "he" are circling like binary stars....it's a win to some!

    rgb
    Jan 5

    The accompanying video of the Steel Stacks (in Bethlehem PA) brought back great memories of seeing SD there in 2014. When I first got there and saw basically some bleachers and folding chairs set up open air in front of the stage (with the blast furnaces behind) I thought the show was going to suck. Turned out to be, in my opinion, the best SD show I'd seen. The sound was, for once, perfect, and the band was super tight. Based on WB's Hey 19 rap that night, he seemed to really enjoy it too.

    Moderator: D-Mod
    Jan 5

    rob: I spent a rapturous afternoon wandering around that wreck taking pictures -- I was amazed it wasn't blocked off -- it was incredibly dangerous in there!! But so interesting and compelling I had to round that next turn or scale that scary ramp. I wish we could all go to Matt's Hey 19 database of WB raps to find the one you mentioned...but of course it was taken down upon penalty of invasion by a clown car of legal bozos. If you don't know the story, click on the "WB's Hey 19 rap of the week' link at the top of every page. Got to run now, more later about that concert..

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