Lucy D is the type of tune he was spooling out
pretty much right along. For songs like these, he
often composed the melody and lyrics on the fly, as he
free-sang along with his looping "track" (you can tell
from a "flub" that he was lamenting about
Chelsea D for a while). A song like this could
fall together with head-spinning speed.
We spent a fair amount of time trying to soften
the unfortunate snare sound he used; this was
as far as we got. Given the limitations of a one-track
recording, you can’t always heavily manipulate one
sound without introducing distortions elsewhere —
in this case, the vocal.
He never went any further with this tune, leaving
Lucy D to wait in the low-hope holding room along with
a little crowd of other spontaneous one-take characters:
spurned lovers, careless hearts, treacherous party-girls,
post-apocalyptic wanderers ….and the occasional
earnest poet.
Lucy D
Walter Becker
© 2018 Zeon Music LLC
Scoping out the street for my heart’s desire
Bust out burning like a house on fire
Baby oh baby, come and go with me
Breaking out the whack for my beatnik queen
Urchin in the back of a limousine
Trouble, sweet trouble coming down on me
I got trouble, big trouble with my Lucy D
Hears about a party but you never know
Where’s it gonna go tonight
Painted ladies in a pony shack
Kamikaze with a hemlocked back
Buddy, somebody come and rescue me
I got trouble, big trouble with my Lucy D
Fellow at the bar says do you win
It’s deja vu baby all over again
Buddy, yo bubba it’s a travesty
Every little tale that you told before
You and what army, what world, what war
Fraternizing with the enemy
I got trouble, big trouble with my Chelsea {sic} Lucy D
Broken hearts stretching in a bloody line
All the way from hell and gone
Such a pity you can not relate
One true story in its natural state
Buddy, oh buddy, can you cover me
I got trouble, big trouble with my Lucy D
Replying to Simon's post led me to revisit Lucy and... personally ❤️ W's singing here...sounding so much as he did just singing around the house
The snare sound could probably be fixed with a dynamic EQ. If you still have the unedited track, I'd be happy to try and fix it
"A song like this could fall together with head-spinning speed."
And just like that WB spins up a finished Keb Mo song! Only with deeper lyrics, Love it!
Love it! Thanks so much for this. One quick question: why is there is a "sic" after Chelsea? Isn't that the proper spelling of the NYC neighborhood?