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

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"?

"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)