Ten years of Beck
Nov. 22nd, 2004 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThere's a big celebration going on! Well, at least there is over at www.beck.com, where a three part documentary entitled Ten Years of Mellow Gold has been posted. And very interesting it is too.
The documentary is a bit weird, because all the talking heads speak about Beck in the past tense, as if he were dead. And, watching it, I have a similar feeling. I haven't bought anything by Beck since 'Midnite Vultures'.
I remember the first time I heard 'Loser'. I was in a tour van with my 'band', Neill Martin (keyboards) and James Harrison (bongos, video), driving down a very long, straight road in Finland. There were pine trees and snow. It was rather boring. We were listening to student radio, possibly from the University of Tampere. Suddenly, on came this crunky, freaky rap track with a Spanish chorus and lyrics about spraypainting vegetables and getting parking violations. I instantly knew it was something special. It did ironic breakdancing all over the van. 'That's Beck,' said James.
'Loser' took me to the same place that Richard Linklater's movie 'Slacker' had done when I'd seen it a couple of years before at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It had some sense of the 'art school primal' about it, some echo of Captain Beefheart. When I got back to London I went out and bought the EP, and then 'Mellow Gold' when it came out. These records influenced my work immediately. Tracks like 'Yokohama Chinatown' on my 1995 album 'The Philosophy of Momus' or 'The Hippy Analog Portapak Video Revolution' ('Was It Him Or His Music' compilation) are me coming to terms with Beck. And Beck's unabashedly ironic, postmodern take on folk music undoubtedly influenced my 'Folktronic' direction.
In 1995 I saw Beck at a crazy, intimate show at the Arapaho in Paris. Me and Shazna paid the scalps $50 each for tickets. Inside it was a tiny sweatbox. People were writhing about, stagediving. Beck had a hardcore band and held modified Casios above his head. It was fantastic. My watch got ripped off my wrist, and at the end of the evening there were several people like me all hunting around, and on the floor a harvest of lost watches! The next time I saw Beck live, also in Paris, I was with Kahimi Karie. It was at a much bigger venue, an elegant baroque theatre in Pigalle. Beck's show had become more theatrical but less exciting. It climaxed with an encore in which Beck wore a white suit and a white horse's head. Kahimi told me Beck was a fan of the work she and I had done together, so we went backstage and Beck, although tired, suggested we come back with him to the whiskey bar of the Hotel du Nord, where he was staying. I ended up sitting alone with him for about half an hour, just talking. We talked about Nirvana, about the Eels, about how he'd changed my work, about the meaning of pastiching black music, about Genet's play 'The Blacks', about his grandfather, and about folk music. I quoted the line from 'Pay No Mind' about giving the finger to the rock singer who's dancing on your paycheck. 'Oh, that feels like a long time ago now,' Beck said.
Next time I saw Beck was at the Kentish Town Ballroom. Things were even bigger and more theatrical. London rockistocracy was there, Primal Scream and all the usual suspects were 'big fans'. By this time I'd sampled a bit of harmonica playing off a Beck bootleg and stuck it in Kahimi Karie's 'Lolitapop Dollhouse', and Beck's management had told us to say that Beck himself had played on the record, because they'd rather Beck be seen endorsing Shibuya-kei than have attention drawn to bootlegs. I toured the US a lot in the late 90s, and each time we played LA there were rumours that Beck was coming to the shows. His management even reserved six places for a show we played at House of Blues, but Beck never showed. Every time I'd play Spaceland in Silverlake I'd meet his brother, though, and hear rumours about the new 'more aggressive', more rock Beck record that's supposed to be coming out (and has been for about four years).
Personally, I never followed Beck's 'sea change'. I don't like the production of Nigel Godrich. I don't like it when artists are rumoured to have 'got religion' (Nick Cave was outed as a Christian in a recent Salon interview, and Beck is supposedly a Scientologist). I also haven't bought any David Bowie albums since 'Earthling' because he's embraced the same rather self-sorry 'straight songwriting' and mainstream rock production values that Nick Cave and Beck have in his 'late period'. What the 'Ten Years of Mellow Gold' documentary reveals is that young Beck had something amazing about him. He was crazy way beyond the call of duty. He was tied into a network of creative people (the makers of his sleeves and videos are interviewed extensively) and they were all making do with very minimal means, cameraderie, and sheer Fluxus fuck-you attitude. Beck would walk out of the club where he was performing and keep singing the vocals through a loudhailer in the forecourt of the gas station across the road. The later Beck who sings about the woes of dating Winona Ryder is no more sympathetic than the later David Bowie moaning about life with Iman.
Irony is real and rooted and sincerity is rich and fake. Surrealism is more real than realism. Get unreal, my dear artists! Once you were so crazy and so great!
Then again, maybe I shouldn't wait for people like Beck, Bowie and Cave to 'return to form'. Maybe I should just go out and buy the new record by Ariel Pink.
'Recording at home with a guitar, bass, keyboard, and 8-track (the drum sounds are all unbelievably created with his mouth), Ariel Pink blends Lite FM and warped lo-fi pop into something beautiful and confusing, yet highly addictive. After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink (the first non-Animal Collective member on the Paw Tracks roster) makes his official Paw Tracks debut with “The Doldrums”. Originally a handmade CD-R release a couple years back, “The Doldrums” by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti was discovered by the Animal Collective during one of their west coast tours and became an immediate favorite...'
That glitzy thrifty arty rootsy hobo spirit is still out there, still a-roaming...
The documentary is a bit weird, because all the talking heads speak about Beck in the past tense, as if he were dead. And, watching it, I have a similar feeling. I haven't bought anything by Beck since 'Midnite Vultures'.
I remember the first time I heard 'Loser'. I was in a tour van with my 'band', Neill Martin (keyboards) and James Harrison (bongos, video), driving down a very long, straight road in Finland. There were pine trees and snow. It was rather boring. We were listening to student radio, possibly from the University of Tampere. Suddenly, on came this crunky, freaky rap track with a Spanish chorus and lyrics about spraypainting vegetables and getting parking violations. I instantly knew it was something special. It did ironic breakdancing all over the van. 'That's Beck,' said James.
'Loser' took me to the same place that Richard Linklater's movie 'Slacker' had done when I'd seen it a couple of years before at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It had some sense of the 'art school primal' about it, some echo of Captain Beefheart. When I got back to London I went out and bought the EP, and then 'Mellow Gold' when it came out. These records influenced my work immediately. Tracks like 'Yokohama Chinatown' on my 1995 album 'The Philosophy of Momus' or 'The Hippy Analog Portapak Video Revolution' ('Was It Him Or His Music' compilation) are me coming to terms with Beck. And Beck's unabashedly ironic, postmodern take on folk music undoubtedly influenced my 'Folktronic' direction.
In 1995 I saw Beck at a crazy, intimate show at the Arapaho in Paris. Me and Shazna paid the scalps $50 each for tickets. Inside it was a tiny sweatbox. People were writhing about, stagediving. Beck had a hardcore band and held modified Casios above his head. It was fantastic. My watch got ripped off my wrist, and at the end of the evening there were several people like me all hunting around, and on the floor a harvest of lost watches! The next time I saw Beck live, also in Paris, I was with Kahimi Karie. It was at a much bigger venue, an elegant baroque theatre in Pigalle. Beck's show had become more theatrical but less exciting. It climaxed with an encore in which Beck wore a white suit and a white horse's head. Kahimi told me Beck was a fan of the work she and I had done together, so we went backstage and Beck, although tired, suggested we come back with him to the whiskey bar of the Hotel du Nord, where he was staying. I ended up sitting alone with him for about half an hour, just talking. We talked about Nirvana, about the Eels, about how he'd changed my work, about the meaning of pastiching black music, about Genet's play 'The Blacks', about his grandfather, and about folk music. I quoted the line from 'Pay No Mind' about giving the finger to the rock singer who's dancing on your paycheck. 'Oh, that feels like a long time ago now,' Beck said.
Next time I saw Beck was at the Kentish Town Ballroom. Things were even bigger and more theatrical. London rockistocracy was there, Primal Scream and all the usual suspects were 'big fans'. By this time I'd sampled a bit of harmonica playing off a Beck bootleg and stuck it in Kahimi Karie's 'Lolitapop Dollhouse', and Beck's management had told us to say that Beck himself had played on the record, because they'd rather Beck be seen endorsing Shibuya-kei than have attention drawn to bootlegs. I toured the US a lot in the late 90s, and each time we played LA there were rumours that Beck was coming to the shows. His management even reserved six places for a show we played at House of Blues, but Beck never showed. Every time I'd play Spaceland in Silverlake I'd meet his brother, though, and hear rumours about the new 'more aggressive', more rock Beck record that's supposed to be coming out (and has been for about four years).
Personally, I never followed Beck's 'sea change'. I don't like the production of Nigel Godrich. I don't like it when artists are rumoured to have 'got religion' (Nick Cave was outed as a Christian in a recent Salon interview, and Beck is supposedly a Scientologist). I also haven't bought any David Bowie albums since 'Earthling' because he's embraced the same rather self-sorry 'straight songwriting' and mainstream rock production values that Nick Cave and Beck have in his 'late period'. What the 'Ten Years of Mellow Gold' documentary reveals is that young Beck had something amazing about him. He was crazy way beyond the call of duty. He was tied into a network of creative people (the makers of his sleeves and videos are interviewed extensively) and they were all making do with very minimal means, cameraderie, and sheer Fluxus fuck-you attitude. Beck would walk out of the club where he was performing and keep singing the vocals through a loudhailer in the forecourt of the gas station across the road. The later Beck who sings about the woes of dating Winona Ryder is no more sympathetic than the later David Bowie moaning about life with Iman.
Irony is real and rooted and sincerity is rich and fake. Surrealism is more real than realism. Get unreal, my dear artists! Once you were so crazy and so great!
Then again, maybe I shouldn't wait for people like Beck, Bowie and Cave to 'return to form'. Maybe I should just go out and buy the new record by Ariel Pink.
'Recording at home with a guitar, bass, keyboard, and 8-track (the drum sounds are all unbelievably created with his mouth), Ariel Pink blends Lite FM and warped lo-fi pop into something beautiful and confusing, yet highly addictive. After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink (the first non-Animal Collective member on the Paw Tracks roster) makes his official Paw Tracks debut with “The Doldrums”. Originally a handmade CD-R release a couple years back, “The Doldrums” by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti was discovered by the Animal Collective during one of their west coast tours and became an immediate favorite...'
That glitzy thrifty arty rootsy hobo spirit is still out there, still a-roaming...