Beck: Classic Or Dud

Ludo

Question A: Place Lenny Kravitz and Beck in order of popularity.

A: Lenny Kravitz, Beck

Question B: Why, then, is Lenny Kravitz more popular than Beck, considering that both are derivative of a particular time of music that can be placed, and both have a style that can be traced to two artists/genres (Kravitz::Beatles and Hendrix as Beck::James Brown and Stax)

A: Kravitz manages to attain broad cross-generational popularity, as those who like his influences tend to like him as well. On the other hand, those who like Beck's influences tend not to like Beck. Critical appreciation of Brown and Stax is driven more by the notion of "authenticity". Kravitz' sound was driven out by Punk, whereas James Brown and Stax never went away. The death of rock is always hailed, the death of soul never. Additionally, imagine a girl requesting a Beck video on TRL. What does she say? "I want Beck's devil's haircut, cuz' its so weird and funny." Beck traffics (for the general, not critical audience) in weirdness, and his ability to merge weirdness (not surrealism, just weirdness) with 60s Stax grooves. Kravitz, when he is requested, is "hot" and "rocks! Whooo!".

Conclusion: Popularity of Kravitz comes from the need of the older generation to have something to cling to in the new. Popularity of Beck is repackaging of what has been done before.

A (part 2): Kravitz is infinitely more stylish than Beck, who has become a slave to the form -- wears suits, dances with feet and not rest of body. Kravitz carries self as rock-star, with guitar slung low, mirrored sunglasses, etc. Beck, despite all pretensions is still too self-conscious.

Question C: Consider Beck by himself, and why is he more popular than Jon Spencer, whose style can be traced to two artist/genres (rockabilly/roots rock)?

A: Spencer is less eclectic than Beck, and more self conscious. Go figure.

Anyhow, Beck is neither classic nor dud. Can't you think of more vile, love'em hate'em artists these days, mon cheri? Beck just exists. Some of his songs are good. "Loser" is good, though sometimes not necessarily in the sense that, say, Dusty Springfield is good if you get my drift. "Jackass" is good. "Devil's Haircut" is adequate. Some of his songs are bad. He's really sort of in the middle, isn't he?

He's not an offensive personality, at least.

peace, Ludo

I figure I'd enjoy his stage show, a nice dose of showmanship methinks and he's got a cool looking bassist and Roger Manning on keys.

Some good tracks but on the whole not classic and so not comparable to Prince.

Well both are midgets, so you can compare them. ;)

I think he's kinda cute'n'cuddly.

I don't think Beck is very good at interviews. When ever I see him on the tv being interviewed, it looks like the most awkward experience for interviewer & him. They aren't much fun to read, either.

Beck & Bjork seem to get the most awful descriptions in their writing. "Man(or woman)-child-fetus-space-pixie-cowboy-enigma" This sort of characterization has actually sort of petered off circa Mutations, for Beck. Bjork's still sadly stuck.

He used to be my favorite artist, now I'm not so sure. He hasn't put out an album in far too long. I want to know what he'll try to do. I get the feeling he's just given up. In the meantime, news about him makes me feel weird. Dating Wynona Ryder and becoming a Scientologist.

That said, I didn't listen to his stuff for about a year. I picked it up again about a week ago. The only album that left me with the feeling it used to was "Odelay".

As for Adam and Ben Williams, they need to get their heads on straight. How can judge Beck's character? You haven't even met him. Do you read Q magazine and say, "Hmm, his personality looks one diemensional. And as for Ben Williams, Beck is not even a Scientologist. If your going to make a lame judgement at least get your story straight.

It pisses me off to no end when people associate Beck with irony. Why is it so hard to believe that a young white male might have genuine fondness for James Brown/Henry Mancini/Hank Williams? Why do ppl assume that Beck's bizarre lyrics and, err, interesting wardrobe represent a will to mock the genres he's using, and not just a will to bring his own personality to the fore in the music he loves? Why do ppl assume that just because *they're* cynical and jaded, everyone else must be, too?

I saw Beck on the Midnite Vultures tour. It was wild. It was funky. It was fun. It had every characteristic that a good Funk concert should have, and of course it's miles away from James Brown, but so what? Beck isn't JB, but he can emphasise with Brown's music and bring his own party to it. And yeah, he has a sense of humor, but so do Outkast. So did Sly Stone and Afrika Bambaata and Prince. Were they being "ironic", too?

So, yeah, I find Beck to be a classic. In a biography of his that I've read he says something to the effect that he considers his music to be a big house, and every genre is a different room that's invariably warm and inviting- that's what I love about the man, his enormous capability to embrace every genre you could care to think of and adapt it to his own personality.

Who has Beck influenced?

Most Quirk Pop in general reminds me of Beck- someone's already mentioned The Beta Band. I'd add Cake and The Eels to that list.

I don't think Beck is very good at interviews. When ever I see him on the tv being interviewed, it looks like the most awkward experience for interviewer & him

Taking sides: Beck being interviewed by Thurston Moore vs. Beck being interviewed by Space Ghost. I love both to bits.

And as for Ben Williams, Beck is not even a Scientologist. If your going to make a lame judgement at least get your story straight.

Actually, Beck has expressed an interest in scientology lately. But Prince's a Jehova's Witness, so whadyagonnado...

Generally speaking I'd call that evidence for the prosecution.

so there...

Nardwaur: Beck why should people care about you and not your haircut?
Beck: Fuck off (hangs up)
One of the reasons I heart E more then Beck.

Funny you should say that...

Well, you lost me right there.

Actually, Beck has expressed an interest in scientology lately.<<

Actually, no he hasn't. And he's been more honest about his relationship to Scientology than any one of the 95,000 asinine gossip threads I've read about this.

Wasn't that bit on Odelay?

I don't believe a thing that comes out of his mouth. His music seems to originate in his pinky finger and his big toe. Then he has the nerve to make an ernest, dark album. And we're supposed to dig it?

Cotton candy with hipster flavoring. Irony to the point of nothingness.

Sorry, wrong. That is Beck. You can say the same thing about the first three Beatles albums, although the comparison ends there.

Who has Beck influenced?

Well, me for one. And Radiohead and everyone who has heard his stuff and realizes that there are no boundries to music and that adding a good melody to the sound of breaking glass is a good 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.

Saw him last night with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He mostly did songs from Sea Change, which I really like (yeah, I know a lot of you don't). He opened with "Golden Age", which sounded particularly fantastic. But the highlights for me were Scott Walker's "Montague Terrace" and "It's Raining Today". Not b/c he fully pulled it off but because you never hear those songs in the wild and it was glorious when the orchestra kicked in during "Montague Terrace". He said the orchestra was a $100,000 excuse to do Scott Walker karaoke.

Hell, I love Sea Change, and one of my very first shows was seeing Beck preview those songs and their influences...IN EVANSTON.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/beck/2002/pick-staiger-concert-hall-evanston-il-6bdaf27a.html

not a bad seat in that room. must've been great!

i was also at the pick-staiger show in '02, felt totally random because there was never anything booked there outside the NU academic year

good concert, just guitar and occasional drum machine if i remember correctly

introduced his drum machine as his bandmate roland

Hah, that's right! IIRC later on, he said "take a solo, Roland!" and the drum machine did indeed take a solo.

Also a couple of other things: the girl that shouted "it's my birthday!" I remember her name because when Beck sang the song, he crooned every word EXCEPT her name when he drastically changed up the voice. Many years later, out of sheer luck, I found out we had mutual friends and professional acquaintances. (I didn't know her at the time, I don't think I even met her until six years later.)

And at some point, some dude yelled out "I have a question" and Beck was like "um, sure..." "What's the difference between a cover and a sample?" to which the crowd heartily BOOED. Beck goes "I'm trying to think of a good answer to that question," to which someone immediately suggests "ASSHOLE!"

introduced his drum machine as his bandmate roland

From Chicago, iirc. Used to play in Big Black.

My 40-ish buddies go to a bunch of reunion shows like the Offspring or Blink 182. Beck is somebody I don’t really keep up with anymore who I would actually absolutely go see if he played my town.

That must be the tour I caught when he came through Atlanta. He cover VU’s Sunday morning on a xylophone

I was at that ‘02 show in Evanston as well!

He mostly did songs from Sea Change, which I really like (yeah, I know a lot of you don't).

sea change rules, always did

everyone i know irl loves it, if they fuck with beck

not to say you can’t not like it, or not fuck with beck but don’t like sea change, it’s fine. just saying, i also had this idea of “people don’t like sea change” but it’s actually just from ilx

The thing I remember, though I may be confusing it with Neil Young's solo setup, was that he had a semi-circle of instruments, so there was suspense as far as which instrument he'd pick for the next song.

That's what I remember too. Smokey was also there (not at the very start, he joined him a little later).

A friend just saw him with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I asked about "Loser," but evidently he played that without the orchestra.

Checking in as also at the Evanston concert in '02! What a great memory, left my body at a few points...

Wish I still had my bootleg of it. The audio quality wasn't great so I deleted it thinking a better one would surface, but it never happened and I haven't been able to find the same recording.

Another thing I remember - it was a sold out show but there was an empty seat in the very front row, right in the center in front of Beck. Beck pointed this out and made a running gag out of it, about how it bothered him and how he wondered what happened to that person. Near the end of the show when he let Smokey take an extended solo, he went down and sat in that seat, even borrowing a pair of sunglasses from the girl next to him because she wore them the whole time and he wanted to see what her POV was like. He was like "this is nice!" and just sat there and smiled while nodding his head as Smokey kept playing.

Poked my head into this thread and unfamiliar with anything post-Odelay so I looked for some 2002 footage and this odd SXSW gig popped up where he's solo acoustic for the first 30mins and then the Flaming Lips join in and are his capable backing band for the remaining 90 mins?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsNNZ5tYNFM

I mean, I first have to admit none of this is appeals to me, but I have to remark how strange to see the FLIPs ca. Yoshimi, some 20 years into their career, playing straight backing band for someone else. Was this their only gig together?

Sorry ACL not SXSW

No, they did a tour like that. Apparently it put Wayne off of Beck and he did some shit talking afterwards. I saw them in Oakland and it was really good, I just wish it had been for a different album. The Lips and Beck sounded great together but that particular set of songs doesn't really take full advantage of the potential mayhem. "Loser" was good.

Ariel Pink opened up and they/he suuuuuuuuuucked.

I did the best parallel parking job of my life before that show. I didn't think there was anyway I'd fit in there and bingo-bango, first try. I will never park better than that.

yeah, i them on that tour - thought it was good.

The Lips put out a lovely live version of "Golden Age" as a B-side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvYxNBx4Sg0

That must be the tour I caught when he came through Atlanta. He cover VU’s Sunday morning on a xylophone

― Heez, Friday, 25 July 2025 02:20 (yesterday)

Goddamn I was at that show and I have no memory of this. I remember some little kid asked him to play Satan Gave Me a Taco

In Oakland someone asked for that and he said something to the effect of “we don’t play that” or something.

I also saw Beck in Oakland but it wasn't with the Flaming Lips. It must have been around '97 or so, great show. He was on top of his game.

Yeah, I saw that xpost Acl (Austin City Limits) ep: first half was good solo, then I was thinking, "Well, that's enough of that," and then he said,"Well, that's enough of that," and brought out the Lips for second half (think it was a whole hour with Beck; it's usually two different headliners). Also enjoyed his seaside set (with his regular touring band, I think at Newport Folk several years late, audio-video streamed on NPR. Rambling Jack Elliot popped up, and Beck greeted him a little shyly; Jack looked like a genial cowboy parrot, digging the music.
I haven't followed Beck, though really liked Mellow Gold, which led me to the Forest For The Trees s/t and a little more subsequent, but seems like Carl's problems caught up with him again.

several years later, not late atall.

My favorite was (and still probably is) One Foot in the Grave, so I was hoping for some of that seeing him solo in '02, but that was the only distraction for me.