'if Odelay sucked...' How Alt-Rock Dealt With Beck In The '90s

From: top 50 "lost" US hits of the early '00s

XPS The Smash Mouth one basically a downcast rewrite of "Walking On The Sun".

I always thought it sounded like "if Odelay sucked."

― billstevejim, Wednesday, January 18, 2023 11:48 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Like I can imagine Beck singing "When the Morning Comes" pretty easily.

― billstevejim, Wednesday, January 18, 2023 11:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Probably why "Walking..." became so successful in the first place was that it was 'Odelay As Bubblegum'.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, January 19, 2023 12:42 AM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

One of those weird '90s interzones nobody talks much about anymore is Beck (and specifically Odelay)'s immediate influence on mid/late '90s Alt-Rock. Here we discuss and share examples of artists trying to make it with retro instrumentation, kitschy samples, non sequitur lyrics, and rapping it all up with some lite Hip Hop style.

Is the place to discuss the “Odelay” —> Eels —> Shawn Mullins ‘Lullabye’ pipeline?

Odelay's immediate influence was huge but I think a lot of what you attribute to that is crediting the album for the environment it was part of to an extent and that contributed to its popularity. Ironized retro-kitsch was everywhere, from Freshjive t-shirts to Spümcø cartoons. You could maybe say Odelay popularized the collage thing of mixing sounds from wildly different sources, mismatched reverbs etc, and like Sugar Ray were copying Beck. That's kind of frustrating for me to think about. The influence I see is what the Dust Brothers described in a Sound On Sound interview

"Beck really understood the benefits of sampling from the beginning, and he understood all along what our goal was. It's a different mindset for a musician, and Beck really got that. He's totally uninhibited, and not necessarily trying to play it right. He's just trying to play it with attitude and flavour. That makes it easy for us, and it's why we have had such great success in working with him. He really understands the medium and what we do, and hand-delivers us these great out-of-control performances that leave us with tracks that we can draw all these great loops from."

I've watched live Beck stuff from that year and thought he was trying to copy Jon Spencer but the key thing is how they harnessed those out of control performances and incorporated them as collage elements.

question is does anyone like any of this stuff that wasn't by beck

the vibe ends up completely different when you replace beck's detached cool/occasional weird intensity with the frat-boyisms that made up most of this stuff

Are we sort of talking about The Sunny Delightification of pop?

Drinking In L.A. * Steal My Sunshine * In The Meantime * Get What You Give * Novocaine For The Soul

The saddest case for me in terms of tumbling from great heights to scour the gutter for nickels was the Butthole Surfers’ “Pepper,” which was such a blatant Beck imitation I remember kinda hoping they were parodying him.

This period of music and Beck's anointment as the new Dylan by critics is one of the first things I think of when I see one of those "what is something someone younger than you has no idea about" prompts on social media.

I think the Beastie Boys post Check Your Head (and Paul's Boutique really) created the musical/cultural environment we're talking about way more than Beck did

Beck was definitely channeling something that was in the air already, but he was distinct enough to make it his own. I still hear hints of Beck coming through in things now. Alex G owes him a beer or two.

I think the Beastie Boys post Check Your Head (and Paul's Boutique really) created the musical/cultural environment we're talking about way more than Beck did

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

Good point.

xxp there was a strain of artists I feel were more specifically influenced by Beck though, like Cornershop's "When I Was Born for the Seventh Time" album.

Maybe the Beastie Boys created the atmosphere but most of the white artists who actually tried to emulate them came off as rap-rock clowns. Beck showed them how to alter the formula so they at least didn't turn themselves into the Fun-Lovin' Criminals.

Well, this thread isn't just about who did it successfully, no?

No, my point was just that Beck opened the door to more imitators.

what's funny is I dug Odelay back in the day but it sounds so unfresh and dumb* to me now, not like those Beastie Boys records.

*not ragging on anyone who still digs this stuff, that's cool

I did a jukebox jury with the Buttholes in 96, right as "pepper" was impacting and in about as informal and relaxed context as you could want for something like that: not so informal and relaxed that they were getting fucked up, but they were listening to what I was playing fairly intently and responding in the moment…and so when Gibby when exposed to some Portastatic recording said things like "it's not enough like Beck," only for a moment did I think he was goofing around, he was absolutely under Becks' spell… and while I don't blame anyone for thinking that "pepper" sucks shit, one thing you cannot say about that song is that the lyrics are non sequitorial: it was also clear to me from his demeanor that he was in recovery and those words in the song are deadly serious and could not mean more to him at the time and most likely in the time since…

They didn't like "You're making me high" by Toni Braxton…and they didn't like the alt country music Amy Allison, daughter of Mose, was doing at the time…

Side note but I still recall watching Gibby Haynes as a guest on Politically Incorrect (because I watched too much cable as a teen) glibly laughing about the death of Tupac.

Bowie said a couple of bitchy things in '97 when his mentioning the Legendary Stardust Cowboy inspired the interlocutor to compare him to Beck. "Well, Beck's just quirky, he's not particularly original."

There were 2 years when lots of lead singers wore sideburns and a button down with an oversized collar. Sometimes bowling shirts.

My thing I said about Smash Mouth primarily considered their Beck influenced vocal melodies. But yea the production of all their hits and their aesthetic also descend from Beck. They also had that ska cover of "Why Can't We Be Friends" that does not sound at all like anything Beck ever did.

Drinking in LA came straight to mind and I think it's better than any Beck song.

Pepper came straight to mind too and I think there's quite a lot of better Beck songs (but few of them were radio hits).

I tend to associate that Smash Mouth song a lot more with the sound of Edwyn Collins' a Girl Like You, than anything by Beck.

Odelay being the runaway critics' hit for album of the year 1996 is one of those gulfs between then and now I can never quite mentally reconcile.

i still love the first soul coughing record if thats part of all of this, i know its from before odelay though

I also assume that Odelay's success with the critics also led to things like MMMBop being hailed as the best song of 1997 on the Pazz and Jop poll.

Anyways this is where I post my Spirit of 96 Playlist again that has a lot of overlap with what we're talking about, which I had also posted in the 'Drinking In L.A. * Steal My Sunshine * In The Meantime * Get What You Give * Novocaine For The Soul' thread:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/29OSMeThq1N86C0P7cBSxi?si=f03b88d6d06f4d07

I also assume that Odelay's success with the critics also led to things like MMMBop being hailed as the best song of 1997 on the Pazz and Jop poll.

― MarkoP,

I would not assume so.

Also this piece of CanCon came to mind, but it's more like "What if Midnite Vultures sucked":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr4ROmCH9tY

Something good was in the critical air in 1998 that I regret has also gone now. The Rockafeller Skank topping Pazz & Jop, Hello Nasty in everyone's top 10 albums etc.

i still love the first soul coughing record if thats part of all of this, i know its from before odelay though

is the Tchad Blake influence on alt-rock something else to separately consider?

I also assume that Odelay's success with the critics also led to things like MMMBop being hailed as the best song of 1997 on the Pazz and Jop poll.

― MarkoP,

I would not assume so.

Side note but I still recall watching Gibby Haynes as a guest on Politically Incorrect (because I watched too much cable as a teen) glibly laughing about the death of Tupac.

― Chris L, Thursday, January 19, 2023 8:29 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

gibby is a total piece of shit

Odelay being the runaway critics' hit for album of the year 1996 is one of those gulfs between then and now I can never quite mentally reconcile.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Thursday, January 19, 2023 9:56 AM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was a good drum break, indeed

xxp there was a strain of artists I feel were more specifically influenced by Beck though, like Cornershop's "When I Was Born for the Seventh Time" album.

― Chris L, Thursday, January 19, 2023 8:03 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Cornershop had been around since before Beck though, i think they are much more of an outgrowth of UK post baggy stuff

pre-odelay, post-mellow gold, so i think it fits in the "post-beck" mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYerwwTV5qc

xxp there was a strain of artists I feel were more specifically influenced by Beck though, like Cornershop's "When I Was Born for the Seventh Time" album.

― Chris L, Thursday, January 19, 2023 8:03 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Cornershop had been around since before Beck though, i think they are much more of an outgrowth of UK post baggy stuff

On a not dissimilar note I've seen Tequila (Mint Roayle Shot) referred to as Beck-ish before. Which I don't see at all - that party kitschy big beat pop was just more or less what Mint Royale did (at at least at the time).

Again, Space weren't Odelay-inspired at all but I'm curious if anyone in the US took to modest alt radio hit Female of the Species in that way?

From Eric Harvey's retrospective review of Stereolab's Dots and Loops:

Let’s call the most adventurous, sample-driven and style-copping music of this period “recombinant pop.” Around the world, musicians who came of age during the 1980s were digging through an ever-increasing archive and using digital software to redefine alternative music through the looped, sampled, and collaged productions of hip-hop and electronic music. Per an influential sociological study published in late 1996, “omnivorous inclusion,” had emerged as the defining characteristic for highbrow music nerds, a position, the researchers concluded, that was “better adapted to an increasingly global world managed by those who (show) respect for the cultural expressions of others.” Gone was rock’s romantic authenticity, drawn from the soul of the poet. “It was not so hard to accept the ersatz as ultimate authenticity,” cultural critic Geoffrey O’Brien argued in an examination of Burt Bacharach’s sudden return to fashion at this moment. “The point is not roots but connections, the more far-fetched the better.” ⁠A January 1998 SPIN feature on so-called “Sound Boys” argued similarly that “song-based rock music has ceded cutting-edge status to pure sonic exotica.” The rock and pop world had finally met Stereolab on its terms.

1996 and 1997 were a tipping point for recombinant pop. Penultimate Dots and Loops track “Ticker-Tape of the Unconscious” opens with a sample from Gal Costa’s Tropicalia gem “Divino, Maravilhoso,” and its brisk, undulating rhythm track sounds a bit like Timbaland or the Neptunes trying their hand at lounge jazz. Along with Emperor, those two years were heady: Beck’s Odelay, Cornershop’s When I Was Born for the 7th Time, Cibo Matto’s Viva! La Woman, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing....., Fat Boy Slim’s Better Living Through Chemistry and Daft Punk’s Homework each created era-defining beat music that sampled broadly from global sources. The Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal label released the throwback roller-rink funk of Luscious Jackson, while Matador was handling stateside releases of Tokyo lounge-pop weirdos Pizzicato Five and Cornelius’ Fantasma, the peak of Keigo Oyamada’s dense, sample-laden Cornelius project.

Agree with everyone saying that, as big as Odelay was, a lot of this stuff was also "in the air" generally at that point. On a nostalgia kick recently, I listened to every song that was on the Billboard alt-rock charts in 1996, and there's just a ton of alt-rockers playing with sampled drum loops on it.

Again, Space weren't Odelay-inspired at all but I'm curious if anyone in the US took to modest alt radio hit Female of the Species in that way?

I was actually just thinking of that one. I often have trouble remembering what it sounds like and instead "Deadweight" or "Readymade" will come to mind.

Odelay broke recombinant pop the way Nevermind broke punk

lol very witty

yeah, Female of the Species was a little blip in the US. It was obviously much bigger in the UK, and tied in with that whole Scott Walker revival that was never a thing in America. But it did get some airplay and MTV used it as ident music i think.

Agree with everyone saying that, as big as Odelay was, a lot of this stuff was also "in the air" generally at that point.

Relieved, tbh. The thread premise annoys me.

agree with everyone saying this strain of stuff was in the air at the time and def don’t want to give beck credit for popularizing it. i’d say he rode the wave, esp since he’d already gotten famous from “mellow gold” and this sort of retro-kitsch sampleadelia wasn’t a huge part of that (though i definitely recall my high school self thinking that “beercan” was kinda like b-52s BUT COOL)

question is does anyone like any of this stuff that wasn't by beck

― ufo, Thursday, January 19, 2023

since nobody’s said the word yet, i just think of odelay as a type of fun trip hop, like the other artists in jaymc’s post (well maybe not stereolab), and not particularly related to smash mouth etc (aside from chunk of fanbase)

waterface’s post resonates with me too. this is like his least cool album, in retrospect

But if the stuff was in the air and Beck earned a double platinum out of it, then he popularized it, therefore he deserves credit. I'm not following you?

*double platinum album

this was also Prince Paul/Paul's Boutique influence seeping into Alt-Rock

Odelay as Bubblegum, from the original post, resonates

like if Odelay were somehow dumber and less trip hoppy

xxp there was a strain of artists I feel were more specifically influenced by Beck though, like Cornershop's "When I Was Born for the Seventh Time" album.

― Chris L, Thursday, January 19, 2023 8:03 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Cornershop had been around since before Beck though, i think they are much more of an outgrowth of UK post baggy stuff

I had owned their previous album and thought they really leaned into Beck-like sampling and songwriting on this one, but this is fair. I think critics definitely picked up on this album trying to find the next Odelay though.

I think critics definitely picked up on this album trying to find the next Odelay though.

Feel like the Beta Band were the most blatant post-Beck Brit band, but also stirred in enough to make it their own.

Dan the Automator worked on that Cornershop album though, so it does seem weird to me give Beck the credit, rather than sample-heavy hip hop in general (or "Prince Paul/Paul's Boutique influence" as President Keyes said)

xp I avoided mentioning my beloved Beta Band because no proper hits but them, the All Seeing I, Position Normal, Space and even Gomez all fit the post-Beck thing in different ways.

I'm loosely speaking 'recombinant pop' rather than specifically pointing to Beck as a direct inspiration obv

Feel like the Beta Band were the most blatant post-Beck Brit band, but also stirred in enough to make it their own.

― Position Position, Thursday, January 19, 2023 10:18 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's a strain of UK rock music that i have to confess that i don't fully understand how it fit in culturally/musically, but specifically one band is Ozric Tentancles, kind of this post punk post hippie post dance music jam band thing? again this is more of a vibe i get but did that figure into the Beta Band?

Ozric Tentacles are quite an anomaly but IMO make a bit more sense when you factor in these things I would say

1) the rise of crusty - never cool but a subcultural point of entry that had grown genuinely huge in the 90s and received lots of media coverage for a time, particularly as a live draw (and this was in the aftermath of the fraggle/student/T-shirt band thing so I suspect there would have been strong crossover or deviation). It's mad just how big the Levellers were.

2) sister-band Eat Static riding on post-Orb ambient fervor. If Orby dance music was prog then Ozric/Eat Static sealaed the connection.

3) both of the above trajectories leading to e.g. Dreadzone being reasonably big and having a huge Peel following and world-y Transglobal underground stuff.

Maybe?

as for "something that was in the air," I submit the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion remix CD from 1995 with "six remixes by UNKLE, Mike D, Beck, Moby, Dub Narcotic Sound System, GZA and Killah Priest."

I’d suggest that a lot of this probably trickled down from dummy and Maxinquaye a bit too, those were two huge albums. Also Odelay to me sort of seemed like the Dust Bros were using the same bag of tricks they used on Paul’s Boutique half a dozen years prior, it didn’t necessarily advance their technique much as much as it found a more willing audience and maybe for the era a more marketable messenger (beasties definitely were on the commercial outs in ‘89, hence the check your head comeback.)

But if the stuff was in the air and Beck earned a double platinum out of it, then he popularized it, therefore he deserves credit. I'm not following you?

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

you can give him credit for “bringing it to the masses” or whatever, sure. though you could say the same for whatever strain of cinema produced pulp fiction, and also he’s not the only artist at the time to go platinum doing that shtick (beastie boys, dee lite maybe, idk who else because i don’t watch the charts)

i would not give beck much credit for inventing or advancing this style, is all i’m saying

'if Odelay sucked...' How Blues Dealt With Beck In The '90s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_On_In_(album%29

crtl-f "sublime" not found

Nowell died before Odelay was even released...or are you saying Sublime was a big influence on other bands?

There's plenty lot of contemporaenous mid-90s alt-bands using hip hop aesthetics in this thread, but I have to ask....did Odelay actually end up having "an immediate influence on mid/late '90s Alt-Rock"?

Obviously I can think of a handful of knock-off one-hit wonders (BranVan, Citizen King, Len etc.), but I don't know how much further it goes than that. Struggling to think of much that with the aesthetic signifiers of the orignal post.

you can give him credit for “bringing it to the masses” or whatever, sure. though you could say the same for whatever strain of cinema produced pulp fiction, and also he’s not the only artist at the time to go platinum doing that shtick (beastie boys, dee lite maybe, idk who else because i don’t watch the charts)

i would not give beck much credit for inventing or advancing this style, is all i’m saying

― the late great

I understood you. "Beck did better commercially than the other bands and probably acted as gateway for a lot of kids to these other acts" is all I meant. I don't give Bowie credit for inventing or advancing R&B in 1975 either.

re sublime i was way upthread where someone was talking about smash mouth and "why can't we be friends"

There's plenty lot of contemporaenous mid-90s alt-bands using hip hop aesthetics in this thread, but I have to ask....did Odelay actually end up having "an immediate influence on mid/late '90s Alt-Rock"?

― intheblanks, Thursday, January 19, 2023 11:07 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Faith No More fits in here esp with the skatepunk bongwater Vans California diaspora

also RHCP

i like "rode the wave" and Beck may have buoyed the popularity of the style as much as he extended it.

xps

also RHCP

― Motion to adjourn to enjoy a footling (President Keyes), Thursday, January 19, 2023 11:25 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

definitely, RHCP is getting towards that U2 zone where they were so ubiquitous for so long they got way overrated but now we may have overcorrected and their early influence might be underrated

Yeah, Odelay links back to the skatepunk stuff. The Beasties had more of a harcore element for sure and a more aggressive musical style but Odelay still has teeth. The irony, the detachment- there's a toughness about it that's totally missing in the Beta Band or whoever

odelay and beck in general = unmistakably l.a. beastie boys - unmistakably new york.

Beasties had been living in LA since paul's boutique though and did Check Your Head and G-Son studios their rehearsal space/skate ramp place in LA

How so? I always detected some LA-ness about the Beastie Boys xp

Apart from 'why is Curly yelling at me'

I associate the B-movie wah wah funk stuff on CYH and Ill Communication as LA-ish (not that I've ever been, mind).

Fastball’s “The Way” was the first thing that came to mind.

Yeah, that's a good connection. The quasi-John Barry guitar line feels like it's treading on the same ground as the smash mouth tracks mentioned earlier

Paul’s boutique also was recorded in Los Angeles even tho for me it’s the ultimate New York City album. Check your head always felt kind of NYC as well, for whatever reason.

Smashmouth do seem very Californian to me but the Beasties put out a comp of instrumentals with the same title and artwork as this, I think pre-Odelay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJQPP6AEnnw

ok fair enough i just mean like.. you hear the beasties and their voices are new york ones. you hear beck and he sounds like a rich l.a. boy. guys i don't really know what i'm talking about at all, just enjoying hate-remembering beck.

Imani Coppola "Legend of a Cowgirl" feels like it was an attempt to recreate "New Pollution"

No mention of the (oft shitty) Fun Lovin' Criminals but don't they fit somewhere as well? Not Beck-ish but in that alt-rock/hip hop/cult sampling/pop culture-referencing tent.

you hear the beasties and their voices are new york ones.

yeah def

you hear beck and he sounds like a rich l.a. boy.

i wouldn't know

Add Chuck Prophet to this?

And did we mention

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb6Nl_BB6sU

Can't tell if check your head/ill communication have an "l.a. sound" or if i've simply been fed the beasties' "we bought a studio in LA and broke out our instruments for the first time in years" mythology for so long that it stuck

xp the American "Your Woman"

Are you Jimmy Ray?

oh shit you know what song i heard in a grocery store in grand junction, colorado last weekend that i haven't heard in literally over twenty years? mmm mmm mmm mmm by crash test dummies. what a weird and surprisingly good song. connected to a strain of mostly bad 90s radio rock though. the low voiced acoustic thing.

"the way" is a good song

Apart from 'why is Curly yelling at me'

real life lol

oh shit you know what song i heard in a grocery store in grand junction, colorado last weekend that i haven't heard in literally over twenty years? mmm mmm mmm mmm by crash test dummies. what a weird and surprisingly good song. connected to a strain of mostly bad 90s radio rock though. the low voiced acoustic thing.

'if Automatic for the People sucked...' How Alt-Rock Dealt...

Not sure if this is relevant to the subject at hand, but I did recently come to the realization that The Offspring's Pretty Fly for a White Guy is basically just Rick Rubin era Run DMC/ Beastie Boys, but with a 90s Californian spin to it.

Also there's even a remix of it by the Dust Brothers, which was among one of the earliest MP3s that I recall downloading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njRZDwR_ST8

Superman never made any money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poMw4oko7RI

Basehead was basically Beck a few years before Beck, though not as good.

Yeah, growing up in Canada I feel like Superman Song was a bigger hit than Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm was, but maybe 6 year old me just took greater notice to a song that was literally about Superman.

Also, two albums after Mmmm Mmmm Mmmmm, Crash Test Dummies would go the route of adding drum loops, rapping, and vague "electronics influences", on their album "Give Yourself a Hand".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKoub_8Y48

Play with Toys is so good :(

One of the best fluke products of that "something in the air" - How Bizarre

The last time I heard a Crash Test Dummies song it reminded me of middle period Swans — the quieter stuff on Children of God and The Burning World and albums like that.

Basehead was basically Beck a few years before Beck, though not as good.

Sorry, I think you misspelled "rather better."

XP now that would be some double bill

later than Odelay but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVWWl3mcr_w

So I really think the Beta Band are just an example of a rock band that listened to some rap and hip hop and their dynamic is more about channeling elements of anthemic Jock Jams into something more introspective. And maybe the stuff the singer did with less group involvement (like the s/t) is more interesting and holds up better, the debut at its best sounds like DIY Euro hip hop. But there are also beats that sound like Cypress Hill, they copied the Japanese rap from Buhloone Mindstate pretty much verbatim on one of their songs, their funk is the Madchester variety, and the energy on their tracks builds in a more linear way- I get why someone would call them "post-Odelay" because they're combining a bunch of disparate things in a way that calls attention to the disparity. But if there's a traceable lineage to the Grand Royal magazine kind of style it might be an obsession with appearing cool.

Is Luna's Pup Tent post-Odelay?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a8G_cqZMHM

This is probably one of the quintessential releases from that time:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Home_with_the_Groovebox

I was listening to a recent episode of Time Crisis (Ezra Koenig's radio show), and while discussing early Ween there was a pretty good discussion of 'funny white guy' music of the '90s, on a spectrum from nerdy/dorky/not concerned with appearing cool (eg They Might Be Giants, Phish) ---- to being concerned with cool, or possibly just being cool (Beck, Ween, etc). Maybe Cake is the exact middle?

Only learned recently than TMBG's 'Window' was apparently a goof on Crash Test Dummies and their ilk and suddenly it all makes sense
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_VYHsWzqZI

Feel like Mark's Keyboard Repair had a big influence on acts such as Cornershop, Badly Drawn Boy...goofing around with different genres, fragments of songs etc.

Cake's "The Distance" fits the bill for sure, and though I don't love it, it's honestly aged better than a lot of the class of '96 buzz bin hip-hop dabblers

Can we clarify the typology a bit?

Like, is sampling essential? I don't think there are samples in Cake, OK Go, Luna, Smashmouth, Sugar Ray.

And can we usefully distinguish between hip-hop / rap and a general category of speak-singing (Sprechgesang) like the way 1950s ballads would sometimes have a spoken verse.

Good Work Everybody!

Here's some relevant recent discussion: 50 Memorable Songs Of The Late 1990s That Apparently Only You Remember, Even Though They Were Totally On The Radio And Stuff

Cake doesn't have sampling but it does have deadpan white-guy rapping (or "quasi-rapping) and the whistling synths imported from g-funk in a clearly "alternative rock" setting, feels like it fits

there's a lot of record scratching even on songs without samples

The Distance for sure fits. This thread makes me want to see a graph indicating the presence of vibraslap on charting singles from '89 - '99

And like a lot of stuff on here, it's more contemporaneous with Odelay than part of its immediate influence--The Distance came out like 6 weeks after the Beck record

cake is like the rick and morty of alt rock bands (this is a bad thing imo)

Can we clarify the typology a bit?

Like, is sampling essential? I don't think there are samples in Cake, OK Go, Luna, Smashmouth, Sugar Ray

No, sampling is not an essential criteria, I think if anything the point is more that record production techniques are employed which emulate something of the sound of a sample collage. One I mentioned upthread is mismatching the reverbs on different instruments so that instead of creating an illusion of depth or space, the reverb is there to make everything sound like it came from a different source, to flatten it or to make the production sound more cut up.

At this point even the Smashing Pumpkins had done a couple of things where they're constructing tracks horizontally by looping an extracted bar, rather than doing takes. One difference is they were looking for the tightest bar to loop, not some x-factor.

I wouldn't swear, but my instinct is Sugar Ray used some samples.

walkin’ on the sun has a sampled “big beat” (a la fatboy slim or any number of wall of sound artists)

oh sorry wrong shitty band

Hehe

Iirc, Sugar Ray sampled or at least interpolated* "Sauvecito" by Malo on "Every Morning".

*A key practice of this era

How many of the bands/artists mentioned so far had that tinny transistor radio effect as the intro of a track that opens up on the downbeat?

Fastball definitely. Maybe Sugar ray.

Sugar Ray had a full-time DJ member of the group. First, there was DJ Lethal, who later joined Limp Bizkit in the same capacity. Then he was replaced by the similarly named DJ Homicide, who is credited with scratches and samples, among other things, on their records.

that tinny transistor radio effect

See Luna IHOP above

xpost - DJ Lethal was in House of Pain before that, that dude had an interesting career

This is also the heyday of Songs With Fake Scratches, Vinyl Noise etc

LMAO at the fact the DJ in Sugar Ray was called "DJ Homicide"

songs with fake scratches have seen better days

Did you have music videos directed by "McG" seems to be a secondary identifier for these groups

Showroom of Compassion

Released: January 11, 2011

Genre: Experimental rock, alternative rock, classical, avant-garde

US Billboard 200: #1

(never heard it but what the hell's going on here)

mismatching the reverbs on different instruments so that instead of creating an illusion of depth or space, the reverb is there to make everything sound like it came from a different source, to flatten it or to make the production sound more cut up.

I think I know what this sounds like but what are some examples of this?

There must have been nothing else released on Jan 11, 2011.

I'm trying and failing to find a list of the biggest falls from no. 1 on the Billboard 200 but wiki says its in there.

On the Billboard 200, the album moved 44,000 copies, making it the lowest-selling number-one album since Billboard began using Nielsen SoundScan to track unit sales, until Amos Lee's Mission Bell set the record two weeks later

that list is here, the Cake album is no longer in the top 10:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_200#Biggest_drops_from_number-one

I think I know what this sounds like but what are some examples of this?

I cannot speak to the mismatched reverbs thing but I definitely remember some odd studio choices that seem intended to reinforce a kind of campy pastiche.

Listen to the Decemberists' "July, July!" for a song that was deliberately mixed weird, with the drums panned hard left and the vocals hard right (instead of centering both as I conventional).

Also I am given to understand that Smash Mouth's "All Star" incorporates the James Bond theme, in such a subtle way (lurking in the rhythm guitar track) that you can only hear it if you listen for it (Cf. a Switched on Pop podcast).

xp I KNEW Madame X would be in there.

Sorry, end of this divergence now.

I think of this as an era of songs that have "sexy" sounds but are utterly sex-less while referring to 1960s/70s sexy aesthetic tropes -- and we end up with Lovefool and Your Woman and, ultimately, Midnite Vultures.

Also, Pulp Fiction specifically ushered in a lot of what made Odelay of the moment.

Listen to the Decemberists' "July, July!" for a song that was deliberately mixed weird, with the drums panned hard left and the vocals hard right (instead of centering both as I conventional).

i wonder if this was a retro 60s pop thing, like some of those old Dylan or Beatles stereo mixes where it was just panning stuff hard left and hard right?

Also, Pulp Fiction specifically ushered in a lot of what made Odelay of the moment.

FLC again

I think I know what this sounds like but what are some examples of this?

― intheblanks

Well I think Odelay itself is a very very good & clear example, in terms of the way the "live" instruments and vocals are treated.

That Cornershop record is another, as is 'Fantasma'. 'Every Morning'. But I think all those records incorporate samples. Maybe a better way to say this... A lot of hip-hop productions use reverb to glue different samples together into a mix, to make them cohere, so this is kind of doing the opposite, taking sounds that were recorded in the same space and breaking them apart. In general, Toyoaki Mishima's work on Cornelius records I feel like approaches recording and mixing with a view to splitting things apart & I would name 'Point' as a good example of this that doesn't sample other records.

There's a little known band I have in mind i'll maybe post about later who are maybe the clearest example of like "impact of Odelay on 90's alt rock", including mismatched reverbs.

The connection between Odelay and Smash Mouth doesn't really exist to me

The mid-to-late 90s had a nearly simultaneous ska-fusion moment and a neo-swing moment, coupled with the enormous popularity of Pulp Fiction/Reservoir Dogs OSTs, and like... that movie The Mask, there was this generalised kinda kitsch blip that felt independent of a few of the progenitors suggested in this thread. Smash Mouth, to me, were most influenced by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones etc.

Yeah, I feel like the thread premise is kinda like saying Austin Powers was the bubblegum Pulp Fiction.

One of the worst trends ever and part 352564 why late 90s alt-rock sucked

Some critics really loved to use the word “eclectic” though. “Melting pot” another.

As I recall Beck was "critics and hipsters only" through the 90s; he was seen as a one-hit wonder for "Loser". I doubt that Odelay had much (if any) influence on chart music, beyond Hanson working with Dust Brothers on their debut, and I doubt that decision was "inspired by Odelay" so much as it was just "an inspired decision"

oh man that is not otm, sorry - odelay sold over 3 mil & everyone i knew in suburbia had that cd along with their foo fighters and pearl jam and alanis morissette.

i think the sex crimes or whatever follow-up was the one that lost the radio rock crowd?

midnite vultures

Yeah, the "Where It's At" video was omnipresent on MTV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfmNxKLDG4

our clearchannel alternative station played the shit out of the odelay singles iirc, can't imagine it being that different on all the other alt format stations at the time. midnight vultures though got crickets and i think beck definitely became disconnected from rock radio after 1995.

i think the sex crimes or whatever follow-up was the one that lost the radio rock crowd?

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, January 19, 2023 5:35 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

midnite vultures

― ꙮ (map), Thursday, January 19, 2023 5:35 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Mutations came out in between, but it has kind of a weird story (Indie project skyjacked by Geffen when they realized a direct follow-up to Odelay wasn't forthcoming...a lawsuit followed).

Midnight Vultures did okay out of the gate, didn't have strong legs as Alternative Radio and MTV in particular were moving on.

major flaw in this thread title is the 'if'

XP...and then moved back a little? He had two Alternative Rock Top 10s in 2005 (including a #1 w/"E-Pro").

2005 was the last time I remember him earning airplay on the college radio station I advise for two singles ("Girl" especially), though "Think I'm in Love" a year later was omnipresent for years on the IR.

Guero was his "commercial comeback" record, right? Reuniting with Dust Brothers, making music that sounds like Odelay, making goofy music videos, etc.

Guero's part of that long tradition of an artist reuniting for another go-round with the people who got him hits and acclaim -- and how much you like it depends on your investment in Beck (It's fine, listen to "Scarecrow" and "Go It Alone," forget the rest).

Scanning the thread, I'm surprised no one's mentioned DJ Shadow except in a quote. Endtroducing... is part of this conversation, no?

Heard Guero for the first time ever three days ago. Missing and Broken Drum are strong.

This was one of my favorite tracks of the 90's contemporaneously. What's happening here is a unique take on a Jon Specncer Blues Explosion style musical collusion born of a trio jamming in a room. And the performances are so antic and over the top- which you could say about JSBX, sure, but here are excerpts of outlandish anti-jams that aren't necessarily very musical. Most of the voices are from dictaphone recordings which are *not at all* candid or ambient, they're very much giving uninhibited, private performances into a tape recorder, goofing around with it, really hamming it up. I think this is a direct influence from Odelay.

Almost every element is manic and cartoonish, but the most striking thing about it is the way these excerpts are edited together in such a novel way and presented as a sequence of fragments with some startlingly musical 'disruptions'. There are precedents in the 60's, like SMiLE or Defecting Grey, which I don't think these guys were listening to at all anyhow. But this is a whole other thing.

I will warn that this contains a snippet of what sounds to me like a mocking impersonation of an Asian accent. I could be wrong, and I wasn't so offended by it in 1998, but it certainly jumps out at me now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d_pQT025fA

Anyway, it was just a b-side that got some press in Melody Maker, but they eventually signed to Roadrunner and did a full album apparently aimed at a mainstream-ish US market. The album was really disappointing in that it felt anonymized and and lacked the fun idiosyncracies and character of the earlier b-side. But it was also stuffed with Odelay-isms and felt very of the moment, which makes it good fodder for this thread. I think this was the college radio single and it's a Jock Jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5mA8VuKzH4

It does the reverb thing I was talking about, and it's assembled from loops that sometimes seem to have been chosen for the x-factor. It even features a "call out hook" on the chorus similar to Where It's At (Beck performed all the voices on the latter himself in character as different people). Everything about the mix seems designed to emphasize contrast, with big, bold colors that tend towards extremes of bright and dark and little subtlety.

I've got two soup ladles and a wide pine cone

Scanning the thread, I'm surprised no one's mentioned DJ Shadow except in a quote. Endtroducing... is part of this conversation, no?

I don't think so, no. Endtroducing... was instrumental hip-hop as album-length art project. College radio and the music press picked up on it, but it wasn't in conversation with pop, really.

I meant as part of this crate-digging ethos, to which it belongs.

I remember, in college, turning in a snide review (for a nat’l magazine) of an album produced by the Dust Brothers… saying something like: “A few years back, in the grunge era, everyone wanted to work with Butch Vig… now, after Odelay, they’re using the Butch Vig equivalent.” Very insightful!

ha we all have those, thankfully published before the internet

few years back, in the grunge era, everyone wanted to work with Butch Vig… now, after Odelay, they’re using the Butch Vig equivalent

Somewhere there's a (possibly apocryphal) quote about an actor's career having four stages.

1. Who's Jake Gyllenhaal?

2. Get me Jake Gyllenhaal.

3. Get me someone like Jake Gyllenhaal.

4. Who's Jake Gyllenhaal?

Alfred went directly to step two and AFAIK still hasn't left.

I believe in the actress version of that, stage 3 is "Get me a young [name]."

5. Is Jake Gyllenhaal in Alfred's room?

I did a jukebox jury with the Buttholes in 96, right as "pepper" was impacting and in about as informal and relaxed context as you could want for something like that: not so informal and relaxed that they were getting fucked up, but they were listening to what I was playing fairly intently and responding in the moment…and so when Gibby when exposed to some Portastatic recording said things like "it's not enough like Beck," only for a moment did I think he was goofing around, he was absolutely under Becks' spell… and while I don't blame anyone for thinking that "pepper" sucks shit, one thing you cannot say about that song is that the lyrics are non sequitorial: it was also clear to me from his demeanor that he was in recovery and those words in the song are deadly serious and could not mean more to him at the time and most likely in the time since…

booming post. I'm a Pepper-defender & run hot and cold with Beck but "they were all in love with dying, they were doing it in Texas" resonates at a very different frequency from Beck's stuff -- not that he can't also do melancholy melded with absurdism, the early "Heartland Feeling" is a great example of this, but when he does it he tends to hit the ballad reservoir, which Gibby pointedly does not & probably cannot do

he tends to hit the ballad reservoir

We need to protect our nation's strategic ballad reserves.

Some experts suggest that we may run out of ballads in late 2024 unless we dramatically increase ballad production.

I hear self-emoting ballad software is five years away

while I don't blame anyone for thinking that "pepper" sucks shit

i do! its great

Just gave "pepper" a listen on YT. First video in the if-you-like-this recommended bar on the right is "loser" by Beck.

Pepper, Loser, Flagpole Sitta = holy trinity of 90s quasinovelty hits whose titles almost rhyme

I checked Spotify and Odelay is not among Beck's "Popular Releases" nor are any Odelay tracks in his top 10.

On iTunes, it takes until his 23rd most popular track to get to Odelay ("Devil's Haircut"). And that's excluding songs where he's a featured artist.

"Loser" aside, people who listen to Beck don't seem to be going for any of his 90s output

That sounds utterly unhinged, but I'm sure the data doesn't lie

On YouTube Music, “Where It’s At” is his #2, and “Devils Haircut” is #5…

looking again it's possible i'm totally misinterpreting this itunes thing, please ignore

If Beck wants us to focus on something other than his 90s output, he is doing a shit job of it.

Like it or not, his legacy is a 90s legacy. He can try to pretend that he did significant things earlier. He cant point to what he did later. But it will be in vain. Like it or not, his legacy is a piece of wax choking on a turntable. Proclaming otherwise is... a lost cause.

I checked Spotify and Odelay is not among Beck's "Popular Releases" nor are any Odelay tracks in his top 10.

― George Santos' If I Could Only Remember My Name - C or D? (President Keyes), Friday, January 20, 2023 10:16 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't really understand how the top 10 on Spotify works, but it's not ranked by total plays. (I think it probably weights songs that have received a lot of plays recently?) I clicked through his catalog and came up with this. The Odelay hits do crack the top 10, but just barely.

1. Loser (Mellow Gold) 332M
2. Dreams (Colors) 68M
3. Up All Night (Colors) 47M
4. Wow (Colors) 44M
5. Morning (Morning Phase) 43M
6. Blue Moon (Morning Phase) 41M
7. E-Pro (Guero) 38M
8. Go It Alone (Guero) 32M
9. Where It's At (Odelay) 30M
10. Devil's Haircut (Odelay) 29M

for a contrast, "Pepper" is at 71M

I noticed this elsewhere, but newer music gets a LOT more streams for quite a few veteran artists. Probably lots of prosaic reasons for it.

BTW I love both Loser and Pepper and I am frequently asked to play both in open mic situations.

No one, to date, has requested Lost Cause or Devil's Haircut.

(I think it probably weights songs that have received a lot of plays recently?)

Yeah I think Spotify top 10 are listens from the last month. Might be wrong.

Scanning the thread, I'm surprised no one's mentioned DJ Shadow except in a quote. Endtroducing... is part of this conversation, no?

I don't think so, no. Endtroducing... was instrumental hip-hop as album-length art project. College radio and the music press picked up on it, but it wasn't in conversation with pop, really.

anecdotally I'd disagree, based mainly on what lots of my friends were playing at the time, DJ Shadow was much more of a piece with people who liked Beck than shit like Smashmouth was. Endtroducing, Paul's Boutique and later Beasties, other Hello Nasty stuff, Odelay...this stuff basically soundtracked 75% of every party I went to in my final years of college.

That tracks with my experience of 1996-1997.

The college newspaper editor who introduced me to Paul's Boutique in that era was introduced to Roxy Music thanks to yours truly. Roxy could not have been uncooler.

Add Chuck Prophet to this?

Big fan of Prophet, and thought The Hurting Business leaned heavily on Beck and 90s film noir, in its production especially. As JCLC says about "Pepper," Prophet's songs come from living through dark things in a way that keeps the sound from just being a Morricone joke-violence pastiche.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS9N6JzyxYk

people played dj shadow at parties? i was going to
object to the original comparison but mainly just because dj shadow is sooooooo serious (self-serious too, but that wasn’t really the point of the comparison so i didn’t bring it up)

i never listened to anything after private press though, maybe he lightened up

This thread has made me think a few things

- from the mid-to-late eighties there was an underground rock notion of "collage" that was kind of a backlash against 1982-83 hardcore punk "purity". Lots of demonstration of one's deep listening, not just dedication to New Wave newness. Songs like Butthole Surfers' "Moving to Florida" is a good early example - it actually mixes different reverb types, sounding like samples from the Birthday Party one minute, then Sabbath, then The Smiths. Also stuff like the early surf-revival band Lawndale mixing "Take Five" and "Whole Lotta Love". This keeps picking up speed and getting more high-concept. Bongwater, etc.
- a parallel thing happening in hip hop with the move from scratching to sampling - even before Paul's Boutique and 3 Feet High, I recall a lot of excitement picking out the mix of references in Public Enemy and Schooly D
- there was lots of tying this into postmodernist critical theory, after pomo had had its way with androgyny and Madonna a few years before
- 3 Feet High really opened the floodgates for overt, wacky juxtapositions both for hiphop and rock. Didn't even Dread Zeppelin get some critical respect? Mighty Mighty Bosstones' proposition of "how about ska with Van Halen guitar tone" seemed like an interesting idea, if not a good one.
- ten years later it didn't feel novel at all, just irritating. But then suburban boys singing over fuzzed-out delta blues riffs seemed fun and novel in '66 and spent by '76. That didn't hurt Nazareth/Smashmouth from carrying these notions onwards in the mainstream.
- was mashup was what channeled these instincts next? starting with Moby's Play but really fueled by mp3s.

yes! mashups for hipsters. when proles got into mashups, hipsters moved on to "balearic"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMAfKo65nng

Music trends flowed in and out of style so quickly for so long. My brain couldn't handle understanding it before '88 but from them until probably 2006 it felt like the landscape was entirely flipped on its head every 3 years. This slowed throughout the 2000s and now it's more like every 7 years if we're lucky. The large number of seemingly fresh styles that were considered hip by '94-97 was so expansive that an album like Odelay was bound to arrive and react to the absurdity of it all.

IMO Its influence on charting music and radio hits seems a bit exaggerated throughout this thread. A lot of the stuff listed was released around the same time -- "Pepper" was definitely inspired by Mellow Gold, "Natural One" was a year earlier and likely reacting to Grand Royal. Aside from the vocals, Primitive Radio Gods almost feels like it could have been track 1 on Pure Moods 2. Sonic Youth, Luscious Jackson, and yea definitely JSBX were a part of this era for sure, but this was all before Odelay was released.

Odelay-style hits had already been happening, and the album feels more like the "lock thread" of this era than a signal of what followed, where anything cool about this moment was entirely drained in favor of McG and bowling shirts. It's a cool album that might have inspired lots of very uncool hits and non-hits - the worst of them might have been Better Than Ezra's "Extraordinary" (2001).

So I think this is "How Alt-Rock dealt with Beck." And I stand by my assessment that Smash Mouth sounds like watered down Beck, especially the dude's vocal melodies. But overall I think these hits were more a reaction to this weird era and not so much one album or artist.

I love Pepper but will forever associate it with a solo 10 hour drive where that and Macarena were the only two songs on every single radio station.

Mellow gold > Odelay

Other eclectic albums you highly anticipated if you were a Beck/Beasties fan around this time:
UNKLE - Psyence Fiction
Handsome Boy Modeling School - So... How's Your Girl?
Deltron 3030

Eventually Gorillaz took over this niche.

Some really good posts here – though I think some of the stuff being cited above was influenced more by trip-hop and the general “electronica” trend than by Beck, Beasties, etc.

Eventually Gorillaz took over this niche.

Very otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwBjhBL9G6U

MC Paul Barman

Eventually Gorillaz took over this niche.

liked the first Gorillaz album fine at the time but I'm still super mystified by this.

Mainly in how the niche hasn't been hollowed out. The #229 biggest artist on Spotify. But seeing how "Feel Good Inc" (2005) is head and shoulders over everything else, I guess that tells you most of the listeners are pushing middle age. Or /r/vinyl dudes or... i dunno. zzz

I was thinking of Gorillaz yesterday when listing UK bands but stopped short of the 2000s.

Some really good posts here – though I think some of the stuff being cited above was influenced more by trip-hop and the general “electronica” trend than by Beck, Beasties, etc.

I tend to think the whole "stereolab-tortoise" axis feels bracketed off from this--different reference points, even if ultimately a lot of the methodology is the same

I deeply love that stuff, but I realize it's easy to tag it as the stilted, academic version of the beck-a-likes

There’s also the whole Dub Narcotic/K Records axis that intersects some of this on the indier side of things…

tonight I remembered the existence of Dub Narcotic Sound System

Lots of SPIN/MTV2 rotation was influenced by Tricky or Portishead or whatever, but not the VH1 landfill.

I'm guessing Sneaker Pimps earned more rotation than either.

Sure but again their most popular songs came out around the same time as Odelay.

so basically

Grand royal
Trip hop
acoustic guitars

add in Euro-sleaze and fake plastic grunge, and Whale nailed the blend in '95... ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ALHOT-Ubho
My sense of the timing of these things is a little off, but I always thought this Royal Trux song from '94 was a gnarled take on Beck, but apparently it was recorded months before Mellow Gold was released. Guess it was just their riff on hip-hop, though.

Yeah, recorded like six months earlier…

Here's a snippet of a 1998 interview (by Jay Ruttenberg!):

I have to ask them about my favorite Royal Trux song, 1994’s "Shockwave Rider." (...) It’s incredibly accessible: if Beck had recorded the number two years later and supported it with a Spike Jonze–directed video starring a white convertible and some Nevada desert, it would have gone triple-platinum. I mention this to the twosome and they snicker at me.

"That shit’s fuckin’ weak, man," says Hagerty. "Using samples is lame. It’s imperialism. We just did ‘Shockwave Rider’ to show that ‘Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we know the whole routine, this is how it’s done.’ Just to check in and punch the ticket—‘look, we know how to do this and we can do it really well—but we’re making these other kind of records.’

"Part of what we do is illustrate restraint," continues the proudly ascetic man who refuses to fly. "It’s like: we can clone human beings now, but we don’t. Until now, has man ever discovered something and said, ‘Wait a minute, we don’t want to go down that road’?"

ctrl-f "Are you Jimmy Ray?" found!

Odelay release date: June 18, 1996

Electriclarryland release date: May 6, 1996

Yeah "Pepper" is sarcastic Mellow Gold. The one-chord drone. Gibby said they purposely put the backwards singing in the same place as in "Loser."

I don't think I've ever noticed that bit is backwards.

Ohh ohh the Beasties have been mentioned plenty but as far as "post-Odelay" specifically goes that's Song for the Man all over imo

Am I wrong in seeing some Pop Will Eat Itself in some of this or are they off to the side?

PWEI did not have much of an impact on the US apart from a minor hit for “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”. But PWEI are a great precursor to all this.

"Can U Dig It" was played a lot on 120 Minutes

Yeah, but what reach into the the musical mainstream/cultural gestalt did 120 Minutes have? Genuinely asking.

It was pretty much where you heard alt-music if you didn't live in a big city.

I only ask cause that was me in a small exurb watching 120 minutes in 1989

there was definitely a while there where 120M was THE subcultural thing, like a US version of the John Peel show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTG7_YOFqQE

I lived in a small farm town and bought Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine because of 120 Minutes that has to count for something

Oh yeah and Urban Dance Squad probably figures in this

I liked "A Deeper Shade of Soul," but that was so early... other than just being another example of a '90s rock/hip-hop hybrid, I don't see it playing into the post–Odelay alt-rock era.

Urban Dance Squad or Big Audio Dynamite would be on a Billboard chart called like "World Groove."

BAD had multiple #1s on the Modern Rock chart

I thought about bring up BAD but feel like they are missing the weird ironic distance the beck et all stuff had.

there was definitely a while there where 120M was THE subcultural thing, like a US version of the John Peel show

― sleeve, Tuesday, January 24, 2023 12:46 PM (two hours ago)

my friends and i would tape it and watch over and over and over. it was a major source of musical discovery!
i had a PWEI tape and only have one memory of listening to it, not very good iirc
my friends were more into BAD than I was. that stuff was a little corny for me ?

to clarify though that was mostly early early 90s -- by the time Beck came around I wasn't watching/taping anymore so the post-Odelay landscape is something i only know from osmosis, not because I liked the music much or was looking to discover anything that sounded like that

I love both BAD and PWEI to bits. But their late 90s descendants are more Campag Velocet or Lo-Fidelity Allstars or Earl Brutus. With early Apollo 440 (Astral America era) or Senser as the bridge between them.

120 Minutes is where I saw this (speaking of hip hop influence)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAl-xzN8e-M

irrational otm, I don't hear a lot of Beckian ironic detachment in BAD

ok i went back and listened to the two BAD songs i remember -- they were fun. still a little corny but in a way i can enjoy now that i am decades beyond being a depressed teen.

I associate BAD more with Is there a name for that genre of turn-of-the-90s pop-rock with the positive vibes, huge guitar leads, and gated drums?

same

altho I think of them as late 80s?

there was definitely a while there where 120M was THE subcultural thing, like a US version of the John Peel show

For anyone feeling nostalgic, BTW, there's a fair number of 120 Minutes episodes at archive.org (albeit in VHS quality): https://archive.org/search?query=120+minutes

yes!!

I was in this weird lacuna where I pretty much didn't have cable until MTV had already stopped playing music videos. It's like, I saw music videos on network shows like "Friday Night Videos" circa 1984/5. Then a vast blank. The stuff that came after? I saw some of it at friends' houses, or on VHS or DVD or whatever.

Fast forward to 2002, I finally buy a teevee and plump for cable. MTV is already just wall-to-wall reality shows. At that point, one only saw videos on VH1 and its successors. I missed a huge portion of popular culture - not the first and probably not the last. Oh well.

Puffin, that's exactly my experience, every last comma.

Ditto, dudes

Check out Sledgehammer.

I think I've actually only had cable for about two years of my life. Finally got it in around 2010 and it wasn't long after that it became clear that streaming was the way to go. I too have mostly seen the videos that were on Friday Night Videos and am always surprised when I learn that lots of people's experience of a song from the 90s includes the video in a meaningful way -- I don't even know what they look like.

Right now, someone is realizing they didn't see the video of Van Halen's song "Right Now" until way later than it's release.

It's okay because Everybody Hurts, sometimes. Take comfort in VH1 Classic.

*its, gah

My video knowledge ends around 1995, so to me all those electronica videos that did well in the ilm video poll are fake

really fun thread!

i think the key is that "Odelay" as a concept covers several different bases. like first and foremost i think of the general sample- or pseudo-sample-heavy quick-cutting Dust Brothers thing, which leads to the somewhat distinct preoccupation with "collage" and "eclecticism." but then there's a grab-bag of other specific audio and visual signifiers - cowboy shirts, sideburns, late 60s lounge/exotica sonics, general late 60s/early 70s California looks and sounds, old-school hip-hop, continued 90s SoCal slacker chill skater irony, etc. etc.

that is --- each person could hear "Odelay" in connection to 90s alt-rock, focus in on one or more of the particular elements that the album is collaging together, and come to different conclusions, because all those things WERE trends that preceded and exceeded the album. then and now, the album ruled not so much because this combination was such a perfect one, but because it meshes so well with the songs, which were catchy as hell and packed with all these lines that were fun to sing along to.

i remember this feeling that odelay was something that you really needed to like if you wanted to get with the times? like it was the future. a future that lasted for what 3 years? lol.

I keep thinking of Fatboy Slim's singles continuing something similar to the Odelay mix Doctor Casino describes above.

i remember this feeling that odelay was something that you really needed to like if you wanted to get with the times? like it was the future. a future that lasted for what 3 years? lol.

Yeah my impression of Odelay as someone who wasn't there is that it was decided upon by the mainstream music media as a Happening Modern Classic, the sort of thing to be namechecked by ageing artists who wanted to feel they were in the know (this way lies Mick Jagger trying to get the Dust Brothers to produce some of Bridges to Babylon, say).

I am sure you will all be thrilled to hear the theme of Chuck Klosterman's essay about Loser is "so this is what we're doing now."

altho I think of them as late 80s?

BAD had a few minor hits off the first album in 1985, two not-so-noted albums in 86 and 88, a GREAT album in 1989, and then some much bigger international hits off the second album of the second line-up, in 1992.

megatop phoenix best album EVER. the crush collision foxbase alpha.

i remember this feeling that odelay was something that you really needed to like if you wanted to get with the times? like it was the future. a future that lasted for what 3 years? lol.

Core of the thread right here.

i seem to be one of the few who really likes this stuff and was sad that it went away. it kinda reflected the city back at me, the density of it, the business, the textural colors and the cultural diversity, the feeling of being bombarded with ads all the time. i couldn't listen to straight up white bread indie rock.

it's hard to imagine odelay existing without the mtv of that era. i think of bevis and butthead, like, mtv admitting that it sucked. which maybe was something that it had to do to stay fashionable, to not really cop to liking anything. beck's distance and detachment felt like part of that.

i think it works well today. all these inconsequential things pop up and invade your space and grab your attention *FLASH* and then disappear just as suddenly without conveying any meaning.

it's one of the best albs ever made about being seduced by bullshit.

fwiw i never gave a shit about unkle, gorillaz etc i think if you were into this stuff you started virtual crate digging eventually

BAD were for sure a band that while recording for years peaked commercially in America during the Poppy Bush Interzone.

two not-so-noted albums in 86 and 88

ftr, there is some fantastic stuff on No. 10, Upping St.

It's their second best

BAD had a few minor hits off the first album in 1985, two not-so-noted albums in 86 and 88, a GREAT album in 1989, and then some much bigger international hits off the second album of the second line-up, in 1992.

This feels like a hilarious age-related dividing line to me. BAD's debut was brilliant, the second album was almost as brilliant, the third album was very good, and Megatop Phoenix and everything after was watery garbage.

yeah that was my assumption of their career as well

Rush was number one in the UK (sort of), Australia and New Zealand, number one for four weeks and for year-end on Billboard's Modern Rock chart (in 1991, not 1992, apols) and number 1 on Billboard Alternative Airplay. That's a "bigger international hit" than anything off Upping St or Tighten Up, regardless of my age or which of those two albums I personally like a lot.

Oh, they definitely had bigger hits once they started to suck.

i think it works well today. all these inconsequential things pop up and invade your space and grab your attention *FLASH* and then disappear just as suddenly without conveying any meaning.

yeah I listened to Odelay for the first time in years a couple of weeks ago and was surprised by how well it held up (as do all the other 90s beck albums, which I subsequently listened to, then I made it a couple of songs into Sea Change before shutting that off).

It's such a weird and thin line, seems pretty hard to do without it ending up feeling too gimicky.

have checked the whole thread - surely Money Mark deserves to be mentioned ?
the whole junkshop aesthetic was totally MMs thing.
his album 'Push The Button' has a lot of chaotic/junkshop sounds to it a la Odelay.

oh, and dont think this has been dropped in the thread yet.

this is totally a beck rip off :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XJxFAoiWSY

^^Both mentioned upthread.

bugger - apologies.
clearly i didn't search properly.

I've been downhearted baby

better than any beck song

My wife tells me that the singer dude (Chris O'Connor) played a solo show at the University of Maryland in I guess 96 or 97, and he exuded arrogance and impatience with the dinkiness of the gig - like, "I'm a national superstar due to my one massive hit, why the fuck am I playing at this lame-ass college student center food court?"

Now he works at that same food court...

the plane takes off from Baltimore, and touches down at Burger King

I thought Primitive Radio Gods was just a one-man band until I checked Wikipedia. Why would they guy think people would automatically know who he is?

have to admit i have always thought PRG = one bloke as well.

I always assumed they were British until right now (lumped them together with The Stereo MCs).

supposedly the album sounds basically unfinished/awful. but americans had to buy it anyway because no retail single was issued for the one song anyone wanted to listen to

RE: one man band, you might be thinking of White Town.

nah, that track had already crossed my mind.

this has finally reminded me of Forest For The Trees, "Dream," which I think was a one-man-band, whose one man had actually co-created "Loser" with Beck, and then recorded this whole album which got shelved for a while. understandably it has more in common with Beck than most of our subjects here. at the least it's kind of like a sped-up "Loser" with some of the same abrupt shifts between sections and more new-agey trappings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHVMdGL0kno

another thought not specifically related to this: surely in a lot of cases of 'influence,' what we're tracking is not necessarily "this artist heard this record and that caused them to start making music of this kind," and more "because this other record was successful, the engineers, producers, and studio people were more willing to release and market the music that this artist was making anyway." or perhaps: "this artist or the producers had this wacky idea in the studio, and instead of dismissing it out of hand, they thought it seemed like a reasonable thing to try, because these other records had shifted the prevailing sense of acceptability in music."

put another way: as under-marketed and commercially doomed as this album was, i'm not sure it comes out at all if Odelay had been a complete flop and Beck deemed a one-hit wonder.

also: the almost completely forgotten POTUS proteges Bicycle, who i keep trying to force upon a totally disinterested ILM: The band: Bicycle. The album: Bicycle.

was surprised by how well it held up (as do all the other 90s beck albums, which I subsequently listened to, then I made it a couple of songs into Sea Change before shutting that off).

lol, otm

also worth mentioning that his tour for this record just absolutely slayed, one of the best/most chaotic & crazy/most joyful/most crowded shows I've ever attended. My girlfriend lost her fucking shoe! total insanity. Beck was using a set of opera glasses to check the audience out, swaggering all around. they did fucking "Debra" for the encore and it brought the house down, then didn't show up on a record for another THREE YEARS. the day after the show there was a record convention and he came to my booth and flipped through my stuff, but the copy of the Pink Panther soundtrack I had wasn't minty enough for him.

like sure they opened with Devil's Haircut and things were bumping, but like 4-5 mindblowing songs later when the crack band tore into the hidden gem "Thunder Peel" the whole place was freaking out

i love stories like that sleeve.
ta.
once again - ilm delivers.

the only beck story i have is that i saw him come out of heathrows departure gate with an insane amount of luggage and his entourage as he was due to appear at a festival that weekend.

reality contradicts my memory, "Thunder Peel" came much later in the set, the freakout moment I remember was probably "Loser"

and thanks mark e <3

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/beck/1997/emu-ballroom-eugene-or-43d12333.html

otm re: that tour, extremely fun & chaotic. i remember multiple band members wearing giant rubber horse masks & Beck doing some kind of move where he somehow slid up a ramp without moving his feet.

and regardless of what setlist.fm says, they definitely played "Debra" at the end

this has finally reminded me of Forest For The Trees, "Dream," which I think was a one-man-band

whoa didn't expect to be reminded of that!! I bought a music magazine when I was a teen and it had a sampler CD with it and one of the songs was "The Sound of Music" by this act. I really loved it but didn't buy the CD because apparently it didn't have that song

anyway I guess I missed this thread which is probably good for y'all cuz I'd be posting my dumb thoughts on it nonstop. basically I think what happened is you had all these kids who'd grown up in the 70s and 80s with parents who had good record collections who were therefore getting into a ton of different things at once. contrast to the artists of the 60s and 70s who'd grown up listening to like...two different genres and a lot of songs that all kinda sounded the same. maybe that made them more creative. like when I was growing up there was ELP and Devo and Living Colour playing in the house a lot and I always thought "if I made a band it would use elements of all of this". I know Ween never made a record like this but what they do kinda strikes me as the same thing.

Primitive Radio Gods's "Standing..." sounds little-to-nothing like Beck to me

But the mood/thesis of it does sound like a prototype for Moby's "Play" album

I must admit that I've always thought that the part of "Standing..." where the lead singer breaks his cool and starts singing along with the sample is a really great moment

If I had to guess at the creative inspiration of "Standing..." I'd say it was made after dude watched Silence Of The Lambs and heard Q Lazzarus. A quick scan of the wikipedia suggests too that "Standing..." predates "Mellow Gold" by some years

Since this thread started hopping recently, the neverending playlist in my stupid head has been replaying both "Dyin All Young" and "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand" nonstop. Both songs. In more or less constant rotation.

By comparison, Beck's "Loser" barely charts, because I only need to hear it once every few years. Except when I am playing it at an open mic, which happens more often than you might think.

I hope this discussion runs its course soon because I really want to get my head back onto other topics.

“Standing outside….” kinda gives me some Tom’s diner vibes tbh, just slightly.

The original Tom's Diner (circa 1984) has nothing to do with this trend.

The 1990 DNA remix, yeah ok sure.

But if that is admissible, why not the version of Beethoven's fifth from Saturday Night Fever, or Also Sprach Zarathustra from the Being There soundtrack?

I saw Beck a couple of months after sleeve but as part of some event put on by 89X the Detroit area alternative rock station - it was him, Sloan, Pavement, and Soul Coughing which is such an incredibly 1997 line up to me.

Joey Waronker was playing drums and I remember it being one of the first times I was really enthralled by the drummer at a show.

yup, and Smokey Hormel on guitar!

was Justin Meldal-Johnsen there? I don't have a strong opinion of his playing but he seems like an endearingly weird person.

I always think he is really good but that seems to have been mpstly based on a live video I can't seem to find anymore of him playing "La femme d'argent" which part was created by the other guy anyway. Still he sounded great iirc.

Unless it was Jason Falkner. Maybe it is him I like.

I may be basing my opinion of JMJ largely on a documentary about fuzz pedals that was on Amazon a while ago - he just seems like a goofball music nerd, and I have a soft spot in my heart for goofball music nerds

that "beck sound" is more the influence that downtempo, hip hop triphop and the like had in music circa mid 90's. a very interesting period for music in general.

I don't think Beck sounds much like Portishead or Tricky or Stereolab, tho

Those folks didn't have their tongues in their cheeks; they were after a more coherent sound rather than the snippy-snip Beckian vibe

I do recall there being an Esquivel resurgence at the time that was hitched to all of those though (stereolab, beck, cornelius, et al). how much irony was involved depended on the players but at it's core I think everyone was sincere in their interests in this sound.

xp Yeah, I don't recall drawing a trip-hop connection at the time... and I was way into that stuff, buying comps with names like DJ Smash: Bluntz On Wax Volume 1 & 2

In 94 I loved Dummy inordinately; hadn't heard much like it. Post-Millennium Tension was the same year as Odelay, wasn't it? They reached me at different times.

I feel like this sound reached a nadir in the late 90s--like I'd go into an Old Navy store and hear this breakbeat music with sunshine pop samples. Just kind of sampledelic wallpaper.

T/S: snippy v dippy v snippy-dippy

xxp Maxinquaye came out around 6 months after Dummy (summer '95)... Pre-Millennium Tension was later, '96.

listening to the Primitive Radio Gods hit yesterday, i was struck by the otm-ness of fgti's comparison to Moby's Play. that album's gotten a couple of name-checks in this thread, and it does seem like maybe a lot of the mid-90s "oh wow music can combine all kinds of things now!!" enthusiasm for Odelay found a new home there at decade's end.

i get the trip-hop connection with Beck. it's not the content, it's the tempo and the... chunkiness? of the sound. also maybe specifically the acceptance of dirty vinyl clicks and pops and crackle (or non-vinyl-based analogs to those things) as part of the soundscape.

Old Navy and sunshine-pop samples makes me think also of "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" which is another thing that, if you squint, might not have gotten recorded/released if not for Beck's success. but who knows? Like Primitive Radio Gods did at the time, it might have seemed to just exist on its own as a strange, spoken-word-adjacent novelty hit that doesn't come from or lead to anything else.

The original Tom's Diner (circa 1984) has nothing to do with this trend.

The 1990 DNA remix, yeah ok sure.

But if that is admissible, why not the version of Beethoven's fifth from Saturday Night Fever, or Also Sprach Zarathustra from the Being There soundtrack?

Broken phone booth man isn’t in line w this trend either is what I’m saying, feels strangely more a part of that weird poppy bush era 1990-91 sound in a way rather than the Odelay trend. It doesn’t come off like alt-rock hip-hop cut-up patchwork sounds. the sample is a red herring.

summer February '95
(...sorry, correcting myself above)

i was refering to an adoption of certain elements of trip hop, downtempo or (instrumental) hip hop in a rock and pop context. so that period was pretty interesting for music in general
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-GqTr8THJg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqu132vTl5Y

weird poppy bush era 1990-91 sound

I've everything to show
I've everything to hide
Look into my eyes
I turned up the radio, but I can't hear it

another interesting sonic thing about PRG: the moment fgti identifies upthread, where Broken Phone Booth Man sings the sample line himself --- to my ears, his choice of how to convey sincerity and being down-hearted owes a lot more to "alternative" and "college rock" than to "grunge" or to slacker irony, etc. it reminded me of Gin Blossoms or something.

i do however think the song bears comparison to both "Tom's Diner" and "Loser." makes sense - not every aspect of the Poppy Bush Interzone vanished at the start of 1992, and lots of people might have still been working over ideas developed in that time. over on the "positive vibes" thread we eventually cracked the code and determined that Collective Soul owed more than was ever acknowledged to the Life is a Highway/Three Strange Days axis.

PRG dude sounds like he owned the deep forest cd maybe too.

I was into a lot of this music at the time, a continuum from Portishead to Soul Coughing to Pizzicato 5, but somehow Odelay left me cold. I found the stream of consciousness rando lyrics too wacky.("Love machines on the sympathy crutches, discount orgies on the dropout buses...") I relistened the other day thanks to this thread and actually liked it better now than I did then.

also: i've been struggling to make a post out of it, but there's a significant shift in Soul Coughing's sound between their 1994/1996 albums and 1998's El Oso, which if anything suggests a receding of the maximalist multi-color sampledelic tide, but maybe more trip-hop coming in. it's leaner, meaner, grimier, and lacks those sunny midtempo summer festival type songs.

but they're an odd duck for many reasons... Mark degli Antoni was really the sampler player as much as the keyboardist, alongside what was really a jazz rhythm section, so the way they used and deployed their (sometimes wacky) sample stuff kinda worked differently. to my ears, anyway.

the moment fgti identifies upthread, where Broken Phone Booth Man sings the sample line himself --- to my ears, his choice of how to convey sincerity and being down-hearted owes a lot more to "alternative" and "college rock" than to "grunge" or to slacker irony

Compare with "Dyin all Young." While Prophet doesn't sing the whole sampled line, he does repeat the last three words in his own voice, and I don't think it's that different in affect from Phone Booth Man.

It's interesting, I'm re-reading this thread and aside from "Pepper" I still don't hear much/any influence-of-Odelay on much other chart music (if anything) aside from, maybe, Dan The Automator productions

I'm trying to think of why this might be? Production-wise "Odelay" is straight-up cribbing from crate-digging beat assemblage methods and it is that Odelay seems more of a facsimile than an original in this regard. What did I listen to subsequent to Beck? Blue Break Beats compilations, and those weren't covering famous samples from Beck songs but samples from classic rap

I guess Odelay influenced JSBX's "Acme"! But not to especially terrific effect (tho I have a soft spot for it)

sleeve's post makes me want to start a thread called:

"My Girlfriend Lost Her Fucking Shoe! Tales of concert experiences from when you were young that felt life-changing at the time (and maybe they were)"

There is nothing like being up front at a wild show when you're 14, 15, 16, 17 ... if I could go back in time right now, I would.

Adjacent to Beck and "Dyin' All Young" is "Block Rockin' Beats" with its Schooly D sample.

And to throw in (Odelay-style!) another angle: I remember reading an interview with Will Oldham around 1999 where he was asked about Beck, and was glad that he didn't have any songs that he had to play at shows the way Beck did. Lo-fi Beck and Oldham seem in a very similar early-90s place, branching off completely differently from there in ways beyond just the music.

Alpine static, you should...I have some pretty hilarious stories, love to hear some others, obviously this is not the thread for it.

This style of music...I liked Beck better a few albums in, but the rest of this style...it looks like my sister and her friends' CD collection, and she is 8 years younger. With that in mind, I'd call it a hip-hop sensibility for people who used to be into hip-hop and Manchester dance before it all got messed up.

I feel like those Ultra Lounge comps on Rhino with like Esquivel covering “light my fire” or whatever are tangentially related here (deadbeat, tropicalia)

deadweight

^^ fucking love that orphan tune

it really should have been on Mutations

Great Gondrey video too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vptfm9D6owo

Revisited Odelay.... it sounded pretty good to me! (I was never a big fan.) But yeah - it doesn't sound much like Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray, or much other late-'90s alt-rock that I can remember; different beats, vocals, vibe...

The Smash Mouth thing isn't that they as a band on the whole sounded like Beck, it's that their breakthrough hit (and a later, slightly less commercially successful rewrite of said hit) owed a bit to him and the success he had in the mid-'90s.

I have no memory of the track "Minus," but it's really cool!

The whole Esquivel!/Exotica revival was more of a Stereolab thing. The initial two Esquivel! comps on Bar/None were issued in '94-5, alongside Stereolab's early heyday and the Loungecore movement (Combustible Edison etc.), plus the archival research of Irwin Chusid (who produced those comps amongst other relevant genre reissues). Beck was certainly a fellow traveler to all this.

Glad to see the "Dead weight" appreciation. I bought a dollar yard sale copy of the Life Less Ordinary soundtrack for that, and put it on the very first mix CD I ever made, when we crossed the CD-burner threshold. Absolutely deserved to be on Mutations.

Adjacent to Beck and "Dyin' All Young" is "Block Rockin' Beats" with its Schooly D sample.

??

are we talking about "all star" re the song that's supposed to owe a debt to beck? i agree with the folks saying it doesn't sound remotely like beck. did beck actually do the bowling shirt / mutton chops thing explicitly on tour or in videos? i just feel like he was too smarty pants and his sound was coming from a different universe. i hear "all star" and it reminds me of like .. the mighty mighty bosstones, guy fieri, etc. i don't recall a lot of collage in it but maybe i'm misremembering (not going to watch the all star video on a relaxing friday evening). more generic grunge and socal peppiness with a bright pop sheen.

No, "Walking On The Sun", with its '60s organ, fuzz guitar, and looped beat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQj--Kjn0z8

I guess I do hear the similarities, hearing them back to back like that

(When I stopped the Smash Mouth video, someone across the street was blaring Cake’s “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” – it felt like the whole world had somehow collapsed into this thread)

Lol, this whole time I also thought we were talking about "All Star", which is the only Smashmouth song I've ever heard, as far as I know.

Now that I'm listening to this, I guess I have heard it and it does have a bit of a similarity to "Where It's At".

I was right there with the radio when "Walking..." broke, and can't be alone in the disappointment upon getting the album* that it was that track and 11 goofy Ska songs.

*Double-Platinum in the US!

Getting into the Odelay Deluxe bonus tracks – "Deadweight" actually does sound specifically like "Walkin' on the Sun." And the acoustic gtr parts of "Gold Chains" (unreleased tho it may have been) are not unlike Sugar Ray...

Does MC 900 Ft Jesus come into this?

smash-mouth-prove-singer-guy-fieri-not-same-person

heard this song in the supermarket today. assumed i was listening to a failed sugar ray carbon copy from 1999 but it turned out to be from 2015, it's freaking me out in a bad bad way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBeGAk-xfyI

That’s… really something. I looked up his bio, at least he’s not denying it:

Sonically the music is influenced by the bright melodies and laid-back grooves of the ’90s alterna-pop/rock acts he loves, like LEN, Sugar Ray, Uncle Kracker, No Doubt, and Sublime — artists who captured the effortless, carefree feeling of waking up each morning to a sunny day.

thread Q asks for effects and then everyone's all up in each other's faces about antecedents.
tom waits, capt beefheart, TMBG, while we're at it. de la soul, tribe, definitely.

It's interesting, I'm re-reading this thread and aside from "Pepper" I still don't hear much/any influence-of-Odelay on much other chart music (if anything) aside from, maybe, Dan The Automator productions

I still reckon Drinking in L.A. is a bang to rights Odelay descendant

The space age pop revival and it spreading to Beck, Stereolab etc is true but also there's the broader lounge revival that it was one wing of. The irony or at least sense that the fascination was revisionary was often part and parcel but it also meant stuff that could be straight up pastiches i.e. The Mike Flowers Pops on the bachelor pad end, and The Moog Cookbook on the muzak end.

And it meant lounge songs becoming UK/European hits thanks to high budget car adverts. It meant the Karminsky Experience Inc. and Tipys and Dimitri From Paris. It meant the Syd Dale Orchestra tracks being used as theme music to TV shows with a sense of cool. And comps like This Is Easy and The Sound Gallery. And spy themes being done up as dance remixes (cf. David Arnold and Propellerheads - together or apart). And names like New Adventures in Hi-Fi and the sound of "This Is Hardcore" or the sleeve of I've Been Expecting You (that eyebrow!) and...

Plus, in more sincere (but even more cool-conscious) waters, there's coffee table trip hop, Mo' Wax etc.

Obv you could probably suck most of the 90s into this void of you go really far but I find it interesting that this whole thing was very transatlantic, even if applied differently in the UK than in the US/CAN.

Tipsy*

BS2000 was a band with a Beastie Boy that sounded like they were influenced by Beck.

we did end up with the fantastic TOAH DYNAMIC in the uk but i guessvthey equal parts bonzo dog/ traffic & early happy mondays and they weren't exactly salient. not sure if evil superstars' ESOL word salad was at all beck inspired but it was there

Good posts ycsmfwhh and I 100% agree re: “Drinking In LA”

thread Q asks for effects and then everyone's all up in each other's faces about antecedents.

b/c part of the discussion is whether the later acts would’ve come along anyway without Odelay, and to what extent it was part of larger trends

Butterfly effect. Music is always in conversation with itself. Without a controlled experiment, using alternate universes, there is no way to know how things would have evolved in the absence of a specific artist or recording.

Perhaps, but it’s better than talking about politics

https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/bob-dylan-what-do-you-think-of-this-kid-called-beck-i-want-to-make-a-record-the-way-he-makes-records/

IN THE EARLY AUTUMN OF 1996, DANIEL LANOIS AND BOB DYLAN RENDEZVOUSED IN A NEW YOK HOTEL ROOM AT THE SOUTHERN EDGE OF CENTRAL PARK. Dylan read from a ream of lovelorn lyrics, reportedly written while snowbound on his Minnesota farm the previous winter. These were the words Lanois had wanted back at Teatro, when Dylan was feeling out the room and the relationship. Dylan asked if he had a record, and Lanois answered yes. “Off we went,” says Lanois.

Dylan had one more question, engineer Mark Howard remembers: “‘What do you think of this kid called Beck? I want to make a record the way he makes records.’”

That June, Beck had released Odelay, its loops and samples slipping ideas from hip-hop and electronica into the rock charts. It was a novel way to repurpose the past, to look back while moving forward. Lanois had some experience with the method, too, thanks to very recent work with Luscious Jackson, whose Fever In Fever Out LP he co-produced with New York native Tony Mangurian.

#onethread

"How Dad-Rock Dealt With Beck..."

Huh, I didn’t know Lanois co-produced that Luscious Jackson album.

Yeah along with Jagger, Dylan was exactly the kind of person I was thinking of when I said Odelay was the Happening Classic for the older gen.

Eventually Gorillaz took over this niche.

― Chris L, Friday, January 20, 2023 11:39 PM

yes and no.
two of the studio gurus who basically crafted the first gorillaz album were cass browne and morgan nicholls from senseless things.
before they were sucked into the gorillaz machine they made an album under the guise of delakota.
and their album, one love, was a total odelay spin off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwgbNKLSKMk

Another band I don't think anyone mentioned: Space Monkeys

xxxpost - dylan always seems to have some idea of what's going on, like working with arthur baker in the early 80s etc so it wasn't unprecedented

I don't think it's toooo much of a stretch to connect Cold Irons Bound's dubby bass and junkshop beat to all of this (and to the hip hop-pier end of trip hop), even if the similarities are only in my head (they are).

Space Monkeys yes! <3 Acid House Killed Rock N Roll!

There's a little discussion about Big Audio Dynamite upthread, and I just heard "Rush" for the first time in a long time on 1st Wave. I've never really listened that hard to the song before (or any BAD for that matter), so it's just occuring to me that the extended sampled organ breakdown (2:00-3:00 in the track)--while having precedent earlier in the BAD catalogue and some backpacker Hip Hop--seriously forecasts the approach Beck & the Dust Brothers took with such material on Odelay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h8zs898lr4

The way Hot Chip work in the Todd Rundgren Intro sample into Shake a Fist feels very modelled on that Sellers lift in Rush as well.

"Feel like the Beta Band were the most blatant post-Beck Brit band, but also stirred in enough to make it their own."

"where it's at" reminds me of beta band! or the other way around. its funny, i really like beta band but i've never heard the odelay album. i liked the were it's at video though. i thought all those big beat/spike jonze videos were pretty cool at the time.

Imo a big difference is something seemingly wholly absent from the Beta Band's language was cocktail lounge/bachelor pad jazz-funk muzak, which is the bedrock of something like Where It's At.

its funny that back then i considered a lot of people to just be funny video artists. i never would have bought one of their albums. a large part of their charm for me were the videos. for instance, every hair metal band. or even guns & roses. but so many goofy 90s bands. even if i really liked their songs it would have felt weird to just listen to the CD. beck was definitely one of those. i can only hum "where it's at" and "devil's haircut" because i saw the videos so much. (and i can't really hum "devil's haircut" i just tunelessly warble the words devil's haircut over and over...)

Odelay is great imo, but I have noooo idea how it would sound to someone coming to it fresh in 2023.

(nothing against beck or hair metal or guns & roses. they just seemed like they needed the visuals. i would listen to them more intently now if someone asked me to. though scanning this thread i don't know if i would want to listen to a lot of the Beck-adjacent records mentioned. they would probably sound pretty cornball. would listen to emperor tomato ketchup though! for the record the only two new albums in 1996 that i would die for and get a tattoo of would be brave murder day and second toughest in the infants. i have listened to both of them a million times and i hope to listen to them a million more before i die.) (i remember listening to ATliens a lot back then. was that the Odelay of rap? hahaha! kidding. we all know it was that kool keith record. which i bought back then and didn't play much. i did buy entroducing...and listened to it a total of once. i listened to a lot of new rap though. that was a good year. Ironman! on vinyl, natch. though now i listen to Ironman on CD.)
(and i love the dust brothers to death. still waiting for a deluxe instrumental paul's boutique cd. i might be the only person i know who still listens to tone loc and young mc on cd...)

that was just such an amazing year for rap and good beats and samples. i guess i didn't need beck. i was just listening to beats, rhymes, and life the other day. lemme tellya, still sounds awesome!

i've actually been going back and dusting off old Mo' Wax playlists on Youtube and enjoying them. after endtroducing came out i think they put out 20 singles a day. i don't own much of it but i will be buried with my major force boxed set.

and not long after Mo' Wax peaked Matador became an electonica label. #twoloneswordsmen #jega #redsnapper

kinda like when i went into the philly record exchange and all the no-neck blues band records on the wall had been replaced by Warp singles. it was in the air! the stench of something new...

(that was a good year for vinyl lovers. i could buy emperor tomato ketchup for $9.95 on vinyl - which i did - and the CD was, like, $17.99. even 2XLP Ironman would only be $12.99.)

Imo a big difference is something seemingly wholly absent from the Beta Band's language was cocktail lounge/bachelor pad jazz-funk muzak, which is the bedrock of something like Where It's At.

i remember kinda cringing at the james brown/soul thing he would do. think it was some awards show where i saw that. mtv awards or something. people thought that was great back then?

it was so cool how matador released those Pole records here in the US, seems very daring in retrospect

and burger/ink - las vegas

some guy just came in and spent $150 bucks on horton heat and supersuckers CDs! thank you 90s guy! other 90s stuff too. dinosaur. no beck though. its a wet snowy day here i wasn't expecting much store-wise.

I bought the bran van record that had "Drinking in LA" on it, and to the best of my recollection, it did not had anything that sounded like the single on it.

late but this post was otm, 'then the morning comes' smash mouth was def doing an exotica kitsch thing, its honestly the most charming thing about them I think

The connection between Odelay and Smash Mouth doesn't really exist to me

The mid-to-late 90s had a nearly simultaneous ska-fusion moment and a neo-swing moment, coupled with the enormous popularity of Pulp Fiction/Reservoir Dogs OSTs, and like... that movie The Mask, there was this generalised kinda kitsch blip that felt independent of a few of the progenitors suggested in this thread. Smash Mouth, to me, were most influenced by The Mighty Mighty Bosstones etc.

― french testicle (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, January 19, 2023 4:28 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

but maybe im missing the cocktail lounge thing in odelay? it didn't register to me that way at the time

Intro to "The new pollution"?

"Tropicalia" felt like the next step in that direction

I was going to say, maybe people mixing up Brazilian influence with Cocktail Nation influence?

I don't think that it was really one thing or the other, these things were very much grouped together as part of an overall hip retro revival at the time, and Beck was tapping into a variety of different elements of this.

there was definitely post-beck french stuff that i liked that had a lot of that in it. or even Fantasma speaking of matador. that kinda thing.

so much turn of the century bossa electronica exotica stuff forgotten to the sands of time. i come across them all the time.

I quoted upthread Eric Harvey's description of late 1990s "recombinant pop."

it’s part of the whole sickly 70s vibe soup, big lapels, leisure suits,

(Of odelay)

but maybe im missing the cocktail lounge thing in odelay? it didn't register to me that way at the time

― xheugy eddy (D-40), Wednesday, 1 November 2023 18:30 (five hours ago) link

Intro to "The new pollution"?

― /asarco (AcnalbasacNoom), Wednesday, 1 November 2023 18:36 (five hours ago) link

"Deadweight" also came out during the tail end of the album cycle. Felt like every 60 minutes MTV was spinning that "The New Pollution" or "Where It's At" in '97. Weird that I have no memory of the "Jack Ass" music video.

a big shame on us all for forgetting Everything's "Hooch"

XP "Jack-Ass" is the black & white one about miners with the cameo by Willie Nelson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8SKL4fniRM

...which led to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW4ymIkBUuE

"it’s part of the whole sickly 70s vibe soup, big lapels, leisure suits,"

heeey ladiesssss!! still the best dust brothers video outside of wild thing maybe.

maybe it all comes from that one video.

Beastie Boys were way ahead of their time with that stuff, people seemed to find it nearly incomprehensible.

I've mentioned this elsewhere but for me, growing up in the 80s, it was like the entire 70s had been actively memory holed by most people, like anything vaguely reminiscent of the 70s was bad and should be avoided. Paul's Boutique was probably the first time I heard current musicians really embrace a whole lot of 70s music and culture.

And of course the Dust Brothers were a b8g part of that move.

re: "Hooch," I would have sworn it came up here, but I was actually thinking of last summer's revive of 50 Memorable Songs Of The Late 1990s That Apparently Only You Remember, Even Though They Were Totally On The Radio And Stuff which covers the chill acoustic-strumming-over-sampled-beats-with-vinyl-crackle side of things. good MarkoP playlist on that also.

"I've mentioned this elsewhere but for me, growing up in the 80s, it was like the entire 70s had been actively memory holed by most people"

people wanted to feel "modern" in the 80s. even though most people still drove 70s cars and lived in houses from the 50s and 80s dance music was mostly based on 70s disco and synth music had been a pop thing since the 60s and rockers mostly still looked like it was 1972 and the freshest new sound of the 80s was literally made out of music from the 70s.

but yeah if paul's boutique had come out in 1996 it would have been number one in the land.

The Odelay singles >>>>>>>>>>> the rest

“Minus” is a gem, IMO

still the best dust brothers video outside of wild thing maybe.

a Matt Dike and Michael Ross The Genie joint fwiw - the Dust Bros only did three LP tracks

(they also only did the Know How single for Young MC, with Dike and Ross stepping back in after that)