Cause when our POLL did meet, Girl you know I was packin' heat! - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK (Voting is open until Saturday, June 1, 2019)

https://i.imgur.com/ZB3yX4w.jpg

I’m actually seeing Beck (with Spoon) in July of this year, I wanted to do this poll before that show. I have a very tight window where I can do this poll so there will not be an extension, please plan accordingly.

Ballot Part Number One (Mandatory) - Your Top 25 Beck tracks (or less: min. 5). Please order your list with #1 at the top and #25 at the bottom, no need to number them. I will take unranked lists, just clearly state that yours is unranked.

Ballot Part Two (Optional) – Your Top 7 Albums (or less min. 2).

Ballot Part Three (Optional) = Your Top 5 Videos (or less min. 2).

Send ballots to: thebeckpoll AT gmail dot com. Please include your username.

Voting is open until Saturday, June 1, 2019 Midnight Los Angeles time zone (Pacific Time).

lets have some fun!

oh cool, it should be fun to dig through beck's discography, a lot of stuff there i haven't listened to in a long time

want to start off by repping for his philip glass remix thing which i remember being really lovely

https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78

aw yeah

my goodness

I wanted to have a third part but didn't quite know what to do. I saw that Beck has 40 music videos and decided to go with that.

That will be a wild category.

I really like the song "Colors," not sure if I like it enough to break into my personal Top 25 Beck songs though. Can't vouch for the full album however, as I have only heard it once. It was very electronic from what I remember.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRCA_Fo0rWA

Vote Beercan.

i need some confidence ILM. are we excited about a Beck poll?

I don't know Beck well, but am interested in the results.

Is it just me or is it slightly odd that a massive genre-based poll has suddenly commenced too?

Truly Lawless Times, These.

I'll vote

Here is another later song by Beck that I might end up voting for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIrG6xBW5Wk

went through my first big breakup shortly after Sea Change came out so going to be a lot from that. also, Odelay still sounds very cool imo

ok, i'm far from a beck know-it-all but some stuff i recommend - mostly late-period stuff because that's the era i got into him:

vampire voltage no. 6
deadweight
funky li'l song
gimme (extended version)
debra (kcrw '98 version)
santorini (record club: live at the acropolis)
nostalgia (record club: live at the acropolis)
nyc 73-78 (seconding)
green light
timebomb
scarecrow (el-p remix)
harry partch
banjo (the banjo story)

the commonplace is that somewhere in the 2000s he stopped making interesting music, but as far as i can tell that's not actually true, it's just that he stopped putting interesting music on his albums. nyc 73-78 is the outstanding example but not the only example.

Beck >>>> ambient. I'll have fun voting in this

I'm not as familiar with post-Sea Change stuff but there's some gems in the self-released flood that came in the 00's and later

have been trying to start putting together a ballot but it's been kinda hard since he's so all over the place and even at his best there's this sense of detachment that makes it hard for me to love his music - i certainly like a lot of his stuff but there's not much i feel really strongly about. i have enjoyed rediscovering Mutations though, a lot better than i remembered it being

I better see "Nitemare Hippy Girl" on ballots.

i think i might have arrived at my 'midnite vultures is the best beck album' phase

I better see "Nitemare Hippy Girl" on ballots.

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 19, 2019 1:53 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm. And 'Rowboat'. And 'Totally confused'.

This will be a fun poll and I am excited for this poll, Bee OK thank u for doing this poll. Agree w/rushomancy that a surprisingly large amount of his best stuff is non-album/unreleased/one-off tracks. Very curious to see what % of my ballot will end up being nonalbum stuff, my feeling is it may be high.

I was a massive fan up through Sea Change, fully stopped paying attention after Modern Guilt, pretty happy with that decision despite my love for just about everything up through 2008. At this point I'm pretty much just sitting back and waiting for him to do a massive Neil Young Archives-style vault-emptying project.

I never manage to get my shit together in time to vote in these polls but I'm gonna really try with this one. Right now my list would pretty much exclusively be Vultures and earlier so we'll see if further listening changes that equation. I have a pretty good recollection of Sea Change and Guero and maybe a few songs from the last two albums, but Information and Modern Guilt are total blanks for me off the top of my head.

I met you...at JC POLLney

Right now my list would pretty much exclusively be Vultures and earlier

cosign, I will really try to give the later stuff a chance but the 90's material is huge for me

Good poll for me: approximately 10 songs I love--no more, no less.

This has nothing to do with the poll; but Disney’s Zootopia was on TV this morning, and I’m always intrigued by the scene where a depressed Judy Hops scrolls the radio dial and keeps encountering songs that reflect her state of mind (“Everybody Hurts,” “All by Myself”...). The final song snippet is a generic guy singing, “I’m a looooserrr...”. It seems v clear that they wanted to license the Beck song, but it didn’t work out, so they commissioned a new song with the same lyric (taking care to make it completely different otherwise). Does he not license his stuff?

Can’t think of any examples but I’m p sure he generally does? Maybe he still has lingering discomfort about not wanting to be The Loser Song Guy

You know, I guess it’s also possible that the Beck song was deemed not suitable for a Disney movie, due to the second half of the chorus (even though they wouldn’t have included that part).

That’s a good theory

There are so many great Beck lines--please don't give in to a dumb pun for the title.

Not directed at anyone specific, on this or any other poll-thread. It's just something I don't understand. It's a tradition like when they stone the woman at the end of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery": it's a tradition because it's a tradition, but if you asked anyone to explain why, I bet no one could.

She Can Talk to Squirrels: The Beck Poll
The Drugs Won't Kill Your Day Job: The Beck Poll
Kill the Headlights and Put It in Neutral: The Beck Poll
Where the Puzzles and Pagans Lay: The Beck Poll

Something. Anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhmnT4KpXGQ

i always forget how energetic a performer he used to be

Whiskey-Stained Buck-Toothed Backwoods Creep: The Beck Poll.

bad pun derived from artist lyric >>>>> random cool artist lyric. i don't know how this is even an argument. maybe this particular bad pun for Beck could have been improved (I do prefer "JC POLL-ney") but either is way preferable to even the best lyrical snippet.

i always forget how energetic a performer he used to be

― ufo, Tuesday, May 21, 2019 4:49 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i saw him live a few years ago and: he still is!

bad pun derived from artist lyric >>>>> random cool artist lyric. i don't know how this is even an argument. maybe this particular bad pun for Beck could have been improved (I do prefer "JC POLL-ney") but either is way preferable to even the best lyrical snippet.

― Evans on Hammond (evol j), Tuesday, May 21, 2019 7:57 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like a POLLL...that's ripe for the votin'

Soy Un POLL-dedor

lol

Beck's lyrical snippets are almost uniquely suited to make good thread titles, but yeah I'm on team bad pun all the way.

Seeing him in 1998 with the Odelay band was one of the most fun & energetic shows I've ever seen. But then I saw him a couple times when he did the tour with Flaming Lips a few years later and he seemed like he was about to fall asleep onstage both times, just completely checked out. I'm not really interested in the new album but I've heard that the shows have been super fun, which is good to hear.

both shows I saw were killers where he just tore it up. Odelay tour in '96 was total insanity with a packed house, first time I heard "Debra" and it stuck in my head for years. then I saw some gig post-Sea Change/Lips tour and it was great again, they opened with "Novacane" and did a buncha Midnite Vultures tunes before he did his sleepy acoustic interlude, then back to more full band action.

My ideas have been polly rejected.

Everybody's Out to POLL YOU Motherfucker

ILX Makes me wanna smoke crack

I'm a loser babe so why don't you poll me?

Don't...Let...The Sun...Catch Ya...POLLIN'

^^ "Deadweight" (where that lyric is from) is a great non-LP single

People roll their eyes when aging artists enter their "great American songbook", but Beck is one artist where I would be way into it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcmmw5HNGOY

Objections stated, but if you've gotta go that way, I like WmC's title.

So meta
Let’s poll a title too

Clementa, I will take it under consideration but I think you're being outnumbered on this one.

i may try and throw together a ballot on this, havent had the time to dive into the catalog like i wanted so it may be pretty basic.

go crazy with or without cheez whiz, spottie

that run of non-album singles from 2013 rules yeah and is easily his best material this decade. iirc they were from an abandoned follow-up to Modern Guilt

"Satan gave Me A Taco" just baaarely missed my ballot

yay, we are into double digit ballots now. keep voting!

i will send out another round of confirmation emails in the morning.

going through them again i'm pretty sure "I Won't Be Long" is my favourite of the 2013 singles, especially the extended version

^^^^ yes!!!!

Voted! Took a while to decide on a ballot - I had one ready about a week ago but ended up re-doing the whole thing after re-listening to various things. I do think Beck is quite hit-and-miss as an albums artist so in the end I only voted for five of those rather than the full seven.

upon winning best album in 2015, somebody interviewed him in the press room immediately afterward, and asked him about Kanye pass/ag walking up to the podium in protest. memory serves, he handled it exactly right, saying something like "well he and what he does is what I aspire to." In the next 24 hours, there was a tidal wave of "how dare kanye do that" from the likes of David Crosby, Paul Stanley…and also many people who would have been delighted if, say, Axl Rose rushed the grammy stage and did a punk-as-fuck move on a past his prime guy like Lionel Richie.

I'm in like a phaser pedal

i'm totally confused...

...by you

i have received a few more ballots, another round of confirmation emails will be coming out soon. i will let you know when finished.

time is running out...please remember to VOTE!

Mine is sent. Hope it got through.

just sent out all confirmation emails (including yours wtev) if you have not received one from me then please resend.

just looking over what we have so far, without giving away anything all i can say is that we are in for a treat next week.

I should send a ballot soon.

Brad intimidated me.

it's time for people to open up a bottle of wine. open up YouTube, Spotify or other and make a ballot of Beck songs.

you have just about a day and a half left...get voting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE8aJwCp2Fc

Do we feel like tracks Beck wrote and produced for other artists qualify?

If so, I'd definitely include at least this track from Charlotte Gainsbourg's 'IRM':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erbb_SNP778

From description and production aesthetic, 'Mutations' seems like it'd be an album I'd love. But at the time it came out, it left me really flat; and maybe even moreso now, it just does nothing for me. Even 'Guerro' and 'The Information,' which I never heard at the time, do more for me on listening for the purposes of this poll.

The fact it seems so beloved here makes me feel like I need to give it more chances...

The thing that pulled me back into Beck and made me realize he's actually still as brilliant as ever but mostly just not via albums was his full-album cover of 'Oar'. James Gadson's drumming throughout is just so great. That he could put together intepretations and production so fully-formed in just a day was/is mind-boggling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJonU9233Do

xp nah I was unmoved on re-listening, which I had to do on Spotify cuz it turns out I didn't even bother to keep a digital rip of a record I used to own on both (now very rare) vinyl and (now dirt cheap) CD.

The title track of IRM is dope as hell!

some of Mutations is really great and i like the eclecticism of it as a whole - i wish more of his albums were like that rather than focusing so strongly on a single sound - but it's pretty inconsistent and there's a lot of tracks i don't care about at all on it

I submitted a weirdo ballot for this. I really wanted to vote for one of the live videos of Clap Hands with the band playing on a dinner table, but I found there wasn't a definitive version, so I just kinda gave up. Don't forget: I) the U.N.K.L.E. remix of Where It's At, which took up a whole side of the UK 12" single at 12 minutes; II) Diskobox, the excellent Jon Spencer produced Odelay bonus track; III) Ship In the Bottle, the surprisingly good Japanese bonus track from Sea Change.

Also I voted for Dead Wild Cat extremely high in my ballot because it was a pivotal track in my youth.

Diskobox is a great track, another one that just Barry missed my ballot- supposedly him & spencer recorded an album’s worth of tracks together... another entry in the apparently massive list of unreleased albums sitting in his vault

*barely missed my ballot that is

i def get how mutations is divisive but the way it grew on me just in the past week was amazing, songs i thought were nonentities suddenly became the center of attention

mutations haters should buy some fuckin ears imho

oh it SOUNDS great, there's just not a whole lot there once you listen past the (admirable) production

finally got my ballot in

Voted. Enjoyed listening to Beck again :)

I'll be getting one in later, before midnight EST!

Midnite Gold > Mellow Vultures
That’s my philosophy, Marty

imago and all other last minute people, the deadline will be extended overnight but i will close this poll when i wake up tomorrow.

it SOUNDS great, there's just not a whole lot there once you listen past the (admirable) production

Ballot sent! (Unranked, but I never would have gotten it submitted otherwise.)

OK now I'm mad I didn't submit an all-Mutations ballot
― Simon H., Saturday, June 1, 2019 3:47 PM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same y’all sleepin

“bottle of blues” ffs

"Tropicalia"!! "Sing it Again"!!! gah

Sent!

I keep trying with 'Mutations'. It's not hate at all--it's just. . . nothing? I listened to the album yesterday and the day before in full, along with tons of other Beck, and I literally can't remember anything besides "Nobody's Fault," which I like fine but it seems like a lesser version of the "Blackhole" or "Ramshackle" mode. I'll keep trying. . . but no tracks made my ballot.

"cold brains" is one of his very best, at least

I guess what's sort of striking me is it's the one album where his homage to various styles just makes me want to listen to the originals? Like, what is he really adding? "Sing It Again" just makes me want to listen to Willie. "Tropicalia" makes me want to listen to Brazilian musics. "Bottle of Blues" makes me want to listen to Skip Spence or Syd Barrett. "We Live Again" and "Dead Melodies" makes me want to listen to Arthur. "O Maria" makes me want to listen to early Tom Waits or Harry Nillson. "Canceled Check" makes me want to listen to "Rowboat," "Nobody's Fault" makes me want to listen to "Blackhole" or "Ramshackle".

I wish when I was 19 when it came out, it had been a gateway album to more of its source music, which other albums of his had been, but it just didn't click enough to get me searching.

None of it is bad at all, it's all perfectly lovely (though "Static" is a bit of a snoozer to end with--the hidden track is the best thing on the album). The album just seems to lack the energy and unique perspective of most other Beck (including the low-key 'One Foot in the Grave'). Like, "Paper Tigers" is pure homage, obviously, and yet it's so perfectly executed and has tons of verve and swagger and so doesn't make me just want to run to Gainsbourg/Vannier.

Not trying to tussle, just working through thoughts here : )

all confirmations emails have been sent.

btw, rollout is now going to start on Tuesday.

Roll Out ... Safely to the shore...

I met you...at JC POLLney - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK - the Results Thread