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

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.