Beck: Classic Or Dud

tbrr Sea Change is up there in my top ten most-disappointed-by-an-artist-I-was-into moments, surely we have a thread for that somewhere?

(xp kinda)

those early Sea Change-era shows though were amazing. i used to have several bootlegs from those shows - think it was him solo with smokey hormel occasionally.

I think I last saw him in 2003? in Portland OR, full band, the show was moved from the big venue to a smaller one b/c of low ticket sales

they opened with "Novocane" and I was ecstatic, there was a downer acoustic Sea Change set but the rest was great

I know a guy who did some engineering for Beck in the late 00's. He described every session as basically a different genre exercise. Mostly in the styles you would expect from Beck. He would record several ideas in whatever genre they set up for and then the next session they would set up for a completely different style of music. I don't think any of the stuff he worked on was released.

Hopefully they survive. Beck thought a lot of his unreleased stuff was likely destroyed in the Universal fire. His management walked that back with no real details.

those early Sea Change-era shows though were amazing. i used to have several bootlegs from those shows - think it was him solo with smokey hormel occasionally.

YES. That was my first time seeing him and it was amazing. The covers alone were stunning: it varied per show but they included "Sunday Morning" (VU), "Love" (John Lennon), some Hank Williams (senior of course), I think some Big Star ("Kanga Roo" and maybe Chris Bell's "I Am the Cosmos" which he still does), maybe even Nick Drake, definitely some folk covers...all of it weaved seamlessly with the Sea Change material which IIRC didn't have an official title yet.

that sounds amazing. anyone else heard his Philip Glass tribute/cover thing?

xp i just randomly checked one show from that tour and he performed the following covers one night:

prince - raspberry beret
digital underground - the humpty dance
rolling stones - no expectations
r. kelly - bump 'n grind
nelly - hot in here
velvet underground - sunday morning

37 song set to boot!

damn "No Expectations"!! I gotta look for some of those ROIOs

I <3 Smokey, got to talk to him at the 1996 Odelay show here in town that I have documented elsewhere on ILX, insane sellout blowout madness. My girlfriend lost her shoe, and it was the same weekend as the record show where Mr. Beck almost bought a copy of the Pink Panther OST from me, but it wasn't minty enough for him.

It's getting hot in here
Aphids ate up all my clothes

I listened to Guero for the first time a couple of months ago and it's actually a pretty fun and efficient record. There was a sweet BoC remix of Broken Drum at the time too.
The last great stuff he did was the run of singles he released on in the early 2010s - sad spacey synthetic jams. Internet tells me it was supposed to be part of an album called Roccoco, which he ultimately scrapped.

diff btw Mutations and Sea Change is too much Nigel Godrich all over the latter

Having immersed myself in early Beck as a teen-obsessive, owning Loser and Beercan CD singles, the effect of listening to Mutations at the moment of its release was a unique exercise. I recall feeling a strain to enjoy what I was listening to, a series of mid-tempo great-sounding songs that triggered no delight, no mystification. "Tropicalia" was the outlier on the album-- its tempo exceeded 100 bpm unlike the rest-- but even then it felt too pastel pastiche, no difficulty, no risk. It was only the bonus track ("Diamond Bollocks") that hinted at a possible exciting future, and I found myself looking forward to Midnite Vultures for that reason alone

Then Midnite Vultures came out and I was non-plussed. It's interesting to hear tracks from it pop up in playlists in present day, because it always sounds fun and great to my ears now, but at the time, idk. I'd heard Miss Kitten "Frank Sinatra" that year and was on the cusp of full-tilt electroclash enthusiasm. Midnite Vultures was so tidy-sounding in comparison, maybe that was it. It felt too safe, or something.

I think I bought Sea Change when it came out, but it seemed to me to be more of a "David Campbell showcase" than anything else. David's arrangements on it are career-high inventiveness, he went full Jean-Claude Vannier and hit all the targets. I don't think it's fair to saddle Nigel Godrich with the responsibility for how well those albums turned out. I said upthread that these three albums have "normal qualities" instead of "abnormal qualities" and that's kind of what they are. They're "good albums", they just don't touch the same synapses that earlier Beck albums touched

Modern Guilt might actually be my favourite Beck record: it's a compact ten songs, and sits directly in the middle of his depressive-acoustic to whimsical-rhythmic spectrum.

― Halfway there but for you

i actually love modern guilt a lot myself, i was big into my indie landfill phase in '08-'09 listening to shit like rubik, i still love that stuff but it's a million miles away from where i am now

he does have a shit-ton of weird shit, most of the albums focus on, like, songs and stuff, but he'll do these weird one-offs, like he had that record club project where he's doing a full cover of yanni's "life at the acropolis" with some sonic youth folks... i've never heard the original, i should probably listen to it sometimes. because beck's cover is this weird prog-noise thing. or, like... he made a 10 minute tribute to harry partch in response to an obscure twitter beef fiery furnaces had with radiohead. or "nyc 73-78", this 20 minute philip glass remix that's fucking excellent. or whatever the fuck "gimme (extended version)" is.

Yeah the harry partch thing is the one off that I like the most

YESS I was trying to remember if I imagined that Harry Partch thing, it was so good

I owned five guayaberas because of Beck.

― braaam.flac (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, March 11, 2024 12:14 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

How come there isn't a thread where ilxors disclose the most embarrassing shit their fandom of an artist or band has compelled them to purchase?

i purchased one foot in the grave (a great album!) on vinyl

Don’t go carvin’ no happy face on my tombstone

I looked good in those guayaberas. I lived in a small town it was the 90s all my friends were wearing Gap

because they loved the Swing Kings?

owning guayaberas because of Beck = not particularly embarrassing, of course. rather i was thinking i have done 100x worse

I mean, those swing commercials delighted us all at the time, khakis for every teen

nothing wrong with a guayaberas IMO

please mentally remove the plural that was a copypaste mistake

re: beck, I also liked his cover of Skip Spence's Oar.