Cause when our POLL did meet, Girl you know I was packin' heat! - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK (Voting is open until Saturday, June 1, 2019)

ok, i'm far from a beck know-it-all but some stuff i recommend - mostly late-period stuff because that's the era i got into him:

vampire voltage no. 6
deadweight
funky li'l song
gimme (extended version)
debra (kcrw '98 version)
santorini (record club: live at the acropolis)
nostalgia (record club: live at the acropolis)
nyc 73-78 (seconding)
green light
timebomb
scarecrow (el-p remix)
harry partch
banjo (the banjo story)

the commonplace is that somewhere in the 2000s he stopped making interesting music, but as far as i can tell that's not actually true, it's just that he stopped putting interesting music on his albums. nyc 73-78 is the outstanding example but not the only example.

Beck >>>> ambient. I'll have fun voting in this

I'm not as familiar with post-Sea Change stuff but there's some gems in the self-released flood that came in the 00's and later

have been trying to start putting together a ballot but it's been kinda hard since he's so all over the place and even at his best there's this sense of detachment that makes it hard for me to love his music - i certainly like a lot of his stuff but there's not much i feel really strongly about. i have enjoyed rediscovering Mutations though, a lot better than i remembered it being

I better see "Nitemare Hippy Girl" on ballots.

i think i might have arrived at my 'midnite vultures is the best beck album' phase

I better see "Nitemare Hippy Girl" on ballots.

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 19, 2019 1:53 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm. And 'Rowboat'. And 'Totally confused'.

This will be a fun poll and I am excited for this poll, Bee OK thank u for doing this poll. Agree w/rushomancy that a surprisingly large amount of his best stuff is non-album/unreleased/one-off tracks. Very curious to see what % of my ballot will end up being nonalbum stuff, my feeling is it may be high.

I was a massive fan up through Sea Change, fully stopped paying attention after Modern Guilt, pretty happy with that decision despite my love for just about everything up through 2008. At this point I'm pretty much just sitting back and waiting for him to do a massive Neil Young Archives-style vault-emptying project.

I never manage to get my shit together in time to vote in these polls but I'm gonna really try with this one. Right now my list would pretty much exclusively be Vultures and earlier so we'll see if further listening changes that equation. I have a pretty good recollection of Sea Change and Guero and maybe a few songs from the last two albums, but Information and Modern Guilt are total blanks for me off the top of my head.

I met you...at JC POLLney

Right now my list would pretty much exclusively be Vultures and earlier

cosign, I will really try to give the later stuff a chance but the 90's material is huge for me

Good poll for me: approximately 10 songs I love--no more, no less.

This has nothing to do with the poll; but Disney’s Zootopia was on TV this morning, and I’m always intrigued by the scene where a depressed Judy Hops scrolls the radio dial and keeps encountering songs that reflect her state of mind (“Everybody Hurts,” “All by Myself”...). The final song snippet is a generic guy singing, “I’m a looooserrr...”. It seems v clear that they wanted to license the Beck song, but it didn’t work out, so they commissioned a new song with the same lyric (taking care to make it completely different otherwise). Does he not license his stuff?

Can’t think of any examples but I’m p sure he generally does? Maybe he still has lingering discomfort about not wanting to be The Loser Song Guy

You know, I guess it’s also possible that the Beck song was deemed not suitable for a Disney movie, due to the second half of the chorus (even though they wouldn’t have included that part).

That’s a good theory

There are so many great Beck lines--please don't give in to a dumb pun for the title.

Not directed at anyone specific, on this or any other poll-thread. It's just something I don't understand. It's a tradition like when they stone the woman at the end of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": it's a tradition because it's a tradition, but if you asked anyone to explain why, I bet no one could.

She Can Talk to Squirrels: The Beck Poll
The Drugs Won't Kill Your Day Job: The Beck Poll
Kill the Headlights and Put It in Neutral: The Beck Poll
Where the Puzzles and Pagans Lay: The Beck Poll

Something. Anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhmnT4KpXGQ

i always forget how energetic a performer he used to be

Whiskey-Stained Buck-Toothed Backwoods Creep: The Beck Poll.

bad pun derived from artist lyric >>>>> random cool artist lyric. i don't know how this is even an argument. maybe this particular bad pun for Beck could have been improved (I do prefer "JC POLL-ney") but either is way preferable to even the best lyrical snippet.

i always forget how energetic a performer he used to be

― ufo, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 4:49 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i saw him live a few years ago and: he still is!

bad pun derived from artist lyric >>>>> random cool artist lyric. i don't know how this is even an argument. maybe this particular bad pun for Beck could have been improved (I do prefer "JC POLL-ney") but either is way preferable to even the best lyrical snippet.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Tuesday, May 21, 2019 7:57 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like a POLLL...that's ripe for the votin'

Soy Un POLL-dedor

lol

Beck's lyrical snippets are almost uniquely suited to make good thread titles, but yeah I'm on team bad pun all the way.

Seeing him in 1998 with the Odelay band was one of the most fun & energetic shows I've ever seen. But then I saw him a couple times when he did the tour with Flaming Lips a few years later and he seemed like he was about to fall asleep onstage both times, just completely checked out. I'm not really interested in the new album but I've heard that the shows have been super fun, which is good to hear.

both shows I saw were killers where he just tore it up. Odelay tour in '96 was total insanity with a packed house, first time I heard "Debra" and it stuck in my head for years. then I saw some gig post-Sea Change/Lips tour and it was great again, they opened with "Novacane" and did a buncha Midnite Vultures tunes before he did his sleepy acoustic interlude, then back to more full band action.

My ideas have been polly rejected.

Everybody's Out to POLL YOU Motherfucker

ILX Makes me wanna smoke crack

I'm a loser babe so why don't you poll me?

Don't...Let...The Sun...Catch Ya...POLLIN'

^^ "Deadweight" (where that lyric is from) is a great non-LP single

People roll their eyes when aging artists enter their "great American songbook", but Beck is one artist where I would be way into it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcmmw5HNGOY

Objections stated, but if you've gotta go that way, I like WmC's title.

So meta
Let’s poll a title too

Clementa, I will take it under consideration but I think you're being outnumbered on this one.

Add stupid auto check, I corrected the name three times and it still reverted back

I have been listening to just random songs and there does seem to be some gems in his later work. Will see if it is enough to actually make my ballot.

Clementa's at peace--carry on.

Hope "Pay No Mind" finishes high. Love the video, love the non sequiturs, and most of all love the harmonica, as plaintive and indelible as Dylan in '64 or Toots Thielemans' Midnight Cowboy theme. (I've often thought that Beck has a Midnight Cowboy undercurrent running through some of his work--"Pay No Mind," the "Devil's Haircut" video [where he makes like Joe Buck walking around New York], the mood of "Jackass," maybe more.) Never tire of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d5ZAzrZ94Y

never heard this alt version of Jack-Ass before, really lovely and anticipates the sound of Sea Change except much better than he later did it

https://foxsports-wordpress-www-prsupports-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/2/2016/12/PHOTO-Buck-HS-727x727-480x480.jpg

i always forget how energetic a performer he used to be

I remember really enjoying him on Reverb around that time (back when that was my main frame of reference for live music).

speaking of alternate versions - I have distinct memories of a drastically different version of "Soul Suckin' Jerk" with different music and the verse order reversed. Anyone know what I'm taking about?

Satan gave you a taco?

Upon re-reading the lyrics this joke doesn't make sense. Sorry.

a little research has informed me that this is the "Reject" version from the Loser EP. worth a listen.

I had that Loser EP at the time and it kind of melded with Mellow Gold in my mind, I probably dubbed them onto the same tape. Always preferred that reject version of Soul Suckin Jerk, hard to go back to the album version when you know there's a version that ends with a 2-minute organ and trombone breakdown out there.

similarly, "Got No Mind" >>> "Pay No Mind"

i decided to grab a CD on my commute to work today, so i pick Mutations. i had totally forgot about the bonus track and it's actually pretty good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=HeohGiH6v9g

time is running out...please remember to VOTE!

Mine is sent. Hope it got through.

just sent out all confirmation emails (including yours wtev) if you have not received one from me then please resend.

just looking over what we have so far, without giving away anything all i can say is that we are in for a treat next week.

I should send a ballot soon.

Brad intimidated me.

it's time for people to open up a bottle of wine. open up YouTube, Spotify or other and make a ballot of Beck songs.

you have just about a day and a half left...get voting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE8aJwCp2Fc

Do we feel like tracks Beck wrote and produced for other artists qualify?

If so, I'd definitely include at least this track from Charlotte Gainsbourg's 'IRM':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erbb_SNP778

From description and production aesthetic, 'Mutations' seems like it'd be an album I'd love. But at the time it came out, it left me really flat; and maybe even moreso now, it just does nothing for me. Even 'Guerro' and 'The Information,' which I never heard at the time, do more for me on listening for the purposes of this poll.

The fact it seems so beloved here makes me feel like I need to give it more chances...

The thing that pulled me back into Beck and made me realize he's actually still as brilliant as ever but mostly just not via albums was his full-album cover of 'Oar'. James Gadson's drumming throughout is just so great. That he could put together intepretations and production so fully-formed in just a day was/is mind-boggling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJonU9233Do

xp nah I was unmoved on re-listening, which I had to do on Spotify cuz it turns out I didn't even bother to keep a digital rip of a record I used to own on both (now very rare) vinyl and (now dirt cheap) CD.

The title track of IRM is dope as hell!

some of Mutations is really great and i like the eclecticism of it as a whole - i wish more of his albums were like that rather than focusing so strongly on a single sound - but it's pretty inconsistent and there's a lot of tracks i don't care about at all on it

I submitted a weirdo ballot for this. I really wanted to vote for one of the live videos of Clap Hands with the band playing on a dinner table, but I found there wasn't a definitive version, so I just kinda gave up. Don't forget: I) the U.N.K.L.E. remix of Where It's At, which took up a whole side of the UK 12" single at 12 minutes; II) Diskobox, the excellent Jon Spencer produced Odelay bonus track; III) Ship In the Bottle, the surprisingly good Japanese bonus track from Sea Change.

Also I voted for Dead Wild Cat extremely high in my ballot because it was a pivotal track in my youth.

Diskobox is a great track, another one that just Barry missed my ballot- supposedly him & spencer recorded an album’s worth of tracks together... another entry in the apparently massive list of unreleased albums sitting in his vault

*barely missed my ballot that is

i def get how mutations is divisive but the way it grew on me just in the past week was amazing, songs i thought were nonentities suddenly became the center of attention

mutations haters should buy some fuckin ears imho

oh it SOUNDS great, there's just not a whole lot there once you listen past the (admirable) production

finally got my ballot in

Voted. Enjoyed listening to Beck again :)

I'll be getting one in later, before midnight EST!

Midnite Gold > Mellow Vultures
That’s my philosophy, Marty

imago and all other last minute people, the deadline will be extended overnight but i will close this poll when i wake up tomorrow.

it SOUNDS great, there's just not a whole lot there once you listen past the (admirable) production

Ballot sent! (Unranked, but I never would have gotten it submitted otherwise.)

OK now I'm mad I didn't submit an all-Mutations ballot
― Simon H., Saturday, June 1, 2019 3:47 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same y’all sleepin

“bottle of blues” ffs

"Tropicalia"!! "Sing it Again"!!! gah

Sent!

I keep trying with 'Mutations'. It's not hate at all--it's just. . . nothing? I listened to the album yesterday and the day before in full, along with tons of other Beck, and I literally can't remember anything besides "Nobody's Fault," which I like fine but it seems like a lesser version of the "Blackhole" or "Ramshackle" mode. I'll keep trying. . . but no tracks made my ballot.

"cold brains" is one of his very best, at least

I guess what's sort of striking me is it's the one album where his homage to various styles just makes me want to listen to the originals? Like, what is he really adding? "Sing It Again" just makes me want to listen to Willie. "Tropicalia" makes me want to listen to Brazilian musics. "Bottle of Blues" makes me want to listen to Skip Spence or Syd Barrett. "We Live Again" and "Dead Melodies" makes me want to listen to Arthur. "O Maria" makes me want to listen to early Tom Waits or Harry Nillson. "Canceled Check" makes me want to listen to "Rowboat," "Nobody's Fault" makes me want to listen to "Blackhole" or "Ramshackle".

I wish when I was 19 when it came out, it had been a gateway album to more of its source music, which other albums of his had been, but it just didn't click enough to get me searching.

None of it is bad at all, it's all perfectly lovely (though "Static" is a bit of a snoozer to end with--the hidden track is the best thing on the album). The album just seems to lack the energy and unique perspective of most other Beck (including the low-key 'One Foot in the Grave'). Like, "Paper Tigers" is pure homage, obviously, and yet it's so perfectly executed and has tons of verve and swagger and so doesn't make me just want to run to Gainsbourg/Vannier.

Not trying to tussle, just working through thoughts here : )

all confirmations emails have been sent.

btw, rollout is now going to start on Tuesday.

Roll Out ... Safely to the shore...

I met you...at JC POLLney - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK - the Results Thread