Top Man

Have recently been on a bit of a Steely Dan jag following the news of the death of the great Walter Becker. (Not that much of an excuse is needed for maxing out on the mighty Dan, of course.) Then it occurred to me I'd not given much airplay to WB's first solo album, 11 Tracks of Whack, for quite some time. I rectified the omission yesterday and suddenly realised that I actually preferred it to the various Donald Fagen solo albums. And since it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, that DF's solo stuff is surpassingly excellent all the way through to Sunken Condos, I can't think of higher praise.

It's the sheer variety it offers that marks out something very special for me about 11 Tracks. And any album starting with the double whammy of Down In the Bottom and Junkie Girl has just got to be up there among the very, very special albums that every self-respecting muso must own. Yet, astonishingly, it's no longer available on CD, a deeply sobering fact I discovered when some time ago now I tried to buy Mr Becker's second solo effort, Circus Money, from those good people at amazon.com only to discover that both albums have been deleted (if that's the right term.) That's the reason that, until today, I'd not heard anything off the later disk. I sort of falsely assumed that Circus Money couldn't be up to much if it were no longer available having been originally released relatively recently.

Incredibly foolish assumption! Today I downloaded it from iTunes and it's seriously brilliant. I've spun it twice now, so obviously this is a very early judgement, but, again, I'd put it ahead of Mr Fagen's solo output. This goes to make the loss of WB all the more melancholy, but let's be grateful for what he left behind. And for how he rose above his demons. And the places he took us to. What a legacy, eh? Down in the bottom where your demons fly / Down in the bottom of the eastern sky / Down in the bottom where your lifeline shows / Down in the bottom where nobody goes / Drowned at the bottom of your mystery / Down in the bottom of the wine dark sea.