11 Tracks of Whack turns 30
Walter's first solo album 11 Tracks of Whack, was released on September 27, 1994.
Reflecting on the 30th anniversary of 11 Tracks of Whack feels both like reminiscing about an old friend and discovering something new each time I revisit it. It takes me back to the summer of 1994, when my dad gifted me a pre-release copy, earned as a thank-you for his pledge to WUTC, our local NPR station. For a kid raised on Steely Dan, this album was something else—rawer, edgier, more primal. My girlfriend at the time, who had no interest in Steely Dan or Donald Fagen’s polished solo work, loved 11 Tracks of Whack. This became a pattern with future girlfriends, each more drawn to Becker’s raw authenticity than the slick, cerebral veneer of Steely Dan. Walter was always the id to Steely Dan's superego.
Meeting Walter in 2000 on the Two Against Nature tour and recounting…
Finally back to add my “where were you…” testimony.
Hi. I’m D-Mod. And I’m a Whackdict.
(But first thanks again to Matt for penning another hunk of ‘Becker oral history’. You know that everything on WBM will reverberate beyond our humble readership in this present moment, joining other preserved Beckernalia to form a voice that will speak through time -- about a singular, category-resistant artist and those who vibed with him most deeply.)
All-righty then. For my first whack, I was:
in a remote New Hampshire hamlet; humping a new tenure-chasing Ivy-league gig; anxiously prepping for a brutal winter by studying catalogues from LL Bean, Patagonia, and REI— (trying to learn about this strange new category of clothing and accoutrements known as ‘technical cold-weather gear‘); living off the Co-Op pasta bar, an aging record collection, and the irresistible antics of songbird, raven, and red squirrel societies that decorated the pine groves all around ...
… and utterly cut off from whatever meager pipelines may have carried news of Fagen, Becker, and the Dan. No publication reaching me would have wasted ink on an obscure project from some “second-fiddler” uninterested in auto-iconography. I’d not found the babydan byways on the budding Interwebs. And I’d never even heard of Metal Leg.
But one autumn evening a college radio DJ mentioned in passing that Becker’s solo debut was “on the way”. It fact, it had already dropped… but I guess The Wells Fargo Wagon was still making its way up the rutted pony road to us.
So I placed my order with Ye Olde Village Music Shoppe, vaguely expecting something Kama-like but with a novel voice (which could have been…a bit of a let-down, frankly… but that’s another tale).
And when the order arrived and I got whacked? Notably, I felt none of the first-listen disorientation many others report. For one, I immediately absorbed Becker’s voice not as comparison or contrast but simply a given: This is what that guy sounds like. This is how that guy expresses what he chooses to express with wot pipes god gave’im. And I was drawn to that voice without any intervening dissonance….perhaps because it fit comfortably within a bluesy, idiosyncratic style I’d long been attracted to anyway?
Similarly with the stripped-down demo aesthetic, which I immediately understood as set of choices. Intriguing choices to be sure… but only adding to my sense of there being an intentional artist behind the art.
In fact that was my overarching reaction to all aspects of 11TOW [I’m excising several paragraphs of needless analytic first-draft bloat here]: yeah, I pretty much loved the work right away — and was simultaneously, acutely aware of a he-who-generated-and-molded it.
At its core, in other words, this work had presence.
So. As a piece of music and from first listen (and moreso over time), 11TOW entertained, satisfied, and impressed me.
And from my first introduction to its presence,
I was intrigued.
I was delighted.
I was captured.
[POSTSCRIPT: No discussion of 11TOW should fail to include the intrepid Dave ‘Da Kine’ Russell — Walter’s engineer, mixer, gear-wrangler, Hyperbolic manager and maintaner, and all ‘round long-time booster and helpmeet in so many aspects of work and life. If there’s been a truer, more dedicated Sancho Panza to any questing fool, I’ve yet to hear of him. ❤️🙏. And of course he was deply invested and involved with 11TOW in particular. Perhaps he’ll take me up on my suggestion to add his thoughts to this thread.…?
[PPS: more generally, we’ll soon be reviewing/editing our media pages to ensure they include Dave’s engineering and/or mixing credits where appropriate. ’Cause folks, WBM would be but a small pile of hissing midnight MIDI cassettes without Da Kine Dave Russell 🙏.]]