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

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

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)