WALTER BECKER MEDIA

  • Home

  • Forum

    • Rarities & Unreleased
    • WBU
    • Street Legal
    • Brill Bldg. Becker
    • Fake Book
    • Everything Else
  • FAQ

  • Downloads

  • walterbecker.com

  • More...

    Use tab to navigate through the menu items.

    1 9 5 0 - 2 0 1 7 

    e s t.  2 0 1 8

    WB's 'Hey 19 Rap' of the Week

    To see this working, head to your live site.
    • Categories
    • All Posts
    • My Posts
    Walter Becker Media
    May 22, 2018
      ·  Edited: May 22, 2018

    Paging Audrey (Demo)

    in Rarities & Unreleased


    If you’re anything like us, you enjoy demos in part because they provide a glimpse of a now-familiar song “in the wild”: hair mussed, buttons missing, mismatched socks. Just the bones the creature will need. The hair, the socks don’t count at all; presentational concerns are still miles away.


    So what’s a song minus the presentational concerns? Typically, they’ll be called demos. If the writer has written a successful demo for a particular song — knows what must be included, and knows what must be cut, some writers — Walter among them — believe that they’ve acquired both a map to ad guardian for the soul of their song,


    Walter spoke many times in interviews about both the found and the lost of life with your song. You find your song when you decide that *this* demo, as you've crafted it, has the essentials you need to always recognize if you are to remember its soul, and what of yours you gave it. Walter once described good demo like a fire pot. It will carry what’s alive and crucial in your song wherever you may need to go.


    Unfortunately, he also said, it’s all to easy — frighteningly easy — to leave the fire pot behind, or let it’s heat go out; to cover up the essence of your song with things — instruments; arrangements; obsessions over bob essentials, infatuations with process and tools, too much self-consciousness about your own performances — until soon you can’t remember why you even wrote this song in the first place. And unless you scrape all the obscuring stuff off, toss it out and go back to I, finishing this song will become nothing but a soulless slog.

    ::::


    The 4 note refrain of “Paging Audrey…” had been around for at least 10 years. During that time, several women, most pets, one car, and even pasta, for a while, were paged. Ha ha, then, woah! one day, there was a song….with a tale more personal and absorbent of sorrow than i’ve ever seen him tell.


    I find Walter’s singing here to be frankly devastating; so open, no ego, utterly unconcerned with public presentation, but palpably attuned to the emotion —the demo’s and his own —as it moved and rolled in every moment, I almost feel I’m eavesdropping into a very private moment; the first communion, at last, between a soulful singer and the essential soul of his partner, the song.



    PAGING AUDREY

    Walter Becker / Larry Klein

    © Zeon Music

    © Strange Cargo/Downtown Music 2008

    In the littlest hours ‘tween the dusk and dawn

    While the nightlight glows with the music on

    You could climb so high in the dreamtime sky

    And go anywhere


    In that sometime place ever lost somehow

    In the here and gone or the there and now

    Did it all go bust — crumble down in dust

    Or just slip away


    Paging Audrey

    Any random star

    Lost and lonely

    Somewhere very far

    Paging Audrey

    Come in from the cold


    In that far-off room drenched in desert sun

    Evil words were spoke — dirty deeds were done

    Could we sail back there snatch them from the air

    I dare anyone


    Can we stand right here, call them back and say

    Those were never meant to be heard that way

    Let the heavens crack — let the day go black

    I’d give anything


    Paging Audrey

    Somewhere very near

    Safe and silent

    There you are my dear

    Paging Audrey

    Anybody home


    In a distant room certain things were said

    As the loved one lies on the love-torn bed

    And the night rolls on and by light of dawn

    You’re not anywhere


    Paging Audrey

    This is who we are

    Do remember

    On any random star

    Paging Audrey

    Come in strong and pure

    19 comments
    Denise
    May 22, 2018

    It's like a glimpse behind the curtain...love this.

    Tony Favia
    May 22, 2018

    Fantastic. Emotionally crushing. Nuff said

    ShaunMac
    May 22, 2018

    Thank you. So beautiful and raw.

    Dan Belcher
    May 22, 2018

    Beautiful.

    hourstuff
    May 22, 2018

    Love it! Thank you

    Chris Lonn
    May 22, 2018

    Sublime. Heartfelt. Pure Becker. Miss you.

    jgmurtha
    May 22, 2018

    Fantastic! Thanks so much for this...

    Tony Favia
    May 22, 2018

    I bet a demo of Upside Looking Down would have a similar effect on me!

    Walter Becker Media
    May 22, 2018

    24-bit FLAC and 320 MP3 versions available for download at: https://www.walterbeckermedia.com/downloads

    TBD
    May 24, 2018

    I was recently thinking about which CM song I could even say is my favorite, if I absolutely HAD to, I settled on Paging Audrey! Bout a week ago! Ugh, killing it here!!

    hourstuff
    May 24, 2018

    TBD, I totally agree...followed by 'Upside Looking Down'.

    hourstuff
    May 24, 2018

    'This Moody Bastard' is my fav from 11TOW.

    TBD
    May 24, 2018

    @hourstuff, see now you're tumbling down a list that I find nearly impossible to put in a column :-). I guess they go across in a row!

    Leigh Anne Hutton
    May 24, 2018

    I love this so much. Thanks for sharing it with the world of WB!

    Matthew Kerns
    Feb 15, 2019

    I sat at my piano last night playing this song, and it's just...indescribably good.


    Upside Looking Down into Paging Audrey might be the best back to back songs combo in SD/DF/WB catalog. Just so amazing. But this song. The way that the bass part mirrors the vocal...just so much. And I think this song is the best argument for a Circus Money, or even a Walter Becker, Songbook. Who wouldn't want to play this?

    Tony Favia
    Feb 16, 2019

    Matt: if not the overall best back-to-back, at least the most emotionally wrenching or heartbreaking. Bring on the Upside Looking Down demo!

    Matthew Kerns
    Feb 16, 2019

    @Tony Favia If this back to back is rivaled, it is only by Aja -> Deacon Blues. But I'm giving this set the edge because Circus Money is so much more generous in it's total number of songs, and it seems therefore less likely that two back-to-back should be so damn fine.

    0
    Tony Favia
    Feb 16, 2019

    @Matthew Kerns I'd also go with Bodhisattva/Razor Boy, Black Cow/Aja and New Frontier/Nightfly. I'd put all of those right up there in the same category with ULD/PA

    0
    oleander1
    Feb 16, 2019

    This is my very, very, very favorite song on the album....

    19 comments

    Walter Becker Media Forum