The Becker Bathroom Break [with several clips]
I'm putting this under street legal because it certainly was public ,sanctioned material that changed every couple of years . I am speaking of course of the storied Becker Bathroom Break ( or Becker Beer Break to some.)
Lutz put up a fine, wide-ranging post over in "Everything Else" which included some opinions about a few of Walter's more frequent tunes , Walter tried a wide variety of them over the year,s, including tunes from Whack and even "Our Lawn". Thus the Becker Bathroom Break was born . The combo of a non-DF noise presenting something no one had ever heard before was just a bridge too far for many DanFans and so would commence a depressing exodus of concert-goers choking the aisles headed for the john or the bar.
But I digress.
Last night I thought of two songs in particular that I believe broke the pattern. One was so counterintuitive, so wrong for his voice, so unlikely to be a Becker tune, that it actually worked --although plenty of folks might disagree.
I'm speaking of course about Mother F-ing Gaucho ! Count me among those who thought this was an absolutely inspired pick and delightful performance (with a fulsome assist by the ladies).
Not that the tune suddenly revealed him to be an expert Pitch Perfect singer. No, it was still him...but like we've never quite seen -- or heard -- before. And it went over!
Hard to find a good quality version of this, but here's one that, echo aside, captures I believe the gusto with which he approached the sad Tale Of Love Gone extravagantly wrong, It's from 2000.
(another excellent take is at https://youtu.be/MPaB_MRTFwA)
Honestly, now -- what do you think?
I searched high and low for W’s version of this !…it’s amazing ..
I digress,
In 2007 I saw SD at Liverpool Pops Festival , Aintree , and got to hear Walter
sing Haitian Divorce..(🫶) , we travelled from Sheffield and were staying in the on-site
hotel just across the way from the venue , my husband went outside and heard parts of
the sound check ..he came back to the room and said , “well the good news is SD are here
but the bad news is DF isn’t singing”
He was ofcourse, but it had been Walter rehearsing HD !
That concert was just amazing …it took weeks for me to come down from the musical high.