Many Makers of Cringe

One of our goals here at WBM is to provide a peek into the processes of creating music which is, at every stage — from infant idea through shrink-wrapped adult — nourished by revision, refinement, and experimentation.

At the player level, arguably no Whack-era tune received more exploration, in feel and arrangement, than did Becker and Dean Parks' Cringemaker. A true survey of this vast terrain would require an aural version of a topo map….but we’ll sketch it out by planting just two ranging rods here [both to be compared, of course, to the shrink-wrapped version on 11TOW]

Photo: Amanda Parks

------------------------------

This first clip is a run-through from the crew at Hyperbolic Sound in Maui, with John Beasley on the venerable B3. I labeled this audio “Swamp Cringe” in my files, which you may or may not understand after listening. No man can control that, y'know.

Dean Parks - Guitar || Adam Rogers - Guitar || John Beasley - Keys || Fima Ephron - Bass || Ben Perowsky - Drums || Walter Becker - Vox

------------------------------

BONUS ALT-TAKE: This is an instrumental of the same keys-forward arrangement, but has several hallmarks of an actual “track take” (which are to be distinguished from the more casual or exploratory “run-throughs with vox” like the audio clip above). By Download Only

------------------------------

This second clip is a run-through from the truncated Signet Studio experiment. Although it’s not radically different from what you’ve heard before — except for an outro of crazy couplets — it may be of interest as we all continue to ponder the compelling (but often opaque) issue of a writer’s progression through the iterative process of choice — as in W's ultimate preference on Whack for either his “machine” versions, or tracks from the Maui band.

Interested to read your thoughts ...

(Provisional: some credits may be corrected) Dean Parks - Guitar || Bob Sheppard - Sax || John Beasley - Keys || Neil Stubenhaus - Bass || John Keane -Drums || WB -Vox