This is a little rant about Beck.
I've seen Beck catching a lot of slack from people
whose taste in music I highly respect. The common
argument is that Beck is no longer doing anything
innovative, that he is simply assimilating the popular
sounds of the moment and trying to remain in the
spotlight for as long as possible. Well, I disagree,
and this is why:
Beck started out with an acoustic guitar and some tape
recorder that would make Fisher Price look like Harmon
Kardon. He would commit some of the most
categorically demented sounds to tape and circulate
them as music. It's difficult for me to describe just
how warped albums like Golden Feelings and A Western
Harvest Field by Moonlight truly are, not to mention
the early collection of Fresh Meat and Old Slabs. One
example would be "Special People," an acapella song
featuring Beck's voice in about four different
registers, not singing notes so much as speaking them.
But on the same tape lies, "Let's Go Moon Some Cars,"
with a folky strum and a tuneful melody, as well as
"The Ballad of Mexico" in which he details trying to
rob his boss at a fast food joint with an earnest
sincerity that could not possibly be feigned (and a
better radio recording surfaced on KCRW Rare On Air
Vol. 1). All through this early period, Beck was
tearing apart and reassembling the genres that he was
exposed to in his youth, whether it was folk, country,
rock, or some experimental combination thereof, never
once repeating himself. He generated these songs
organically, whether hunched over a tape deck or out
on the streets of LA playing for passers-by. And the
sproadic nature of the recordings points to those
musically diverse influences as being equally weighted
in his mind, one never more vital than another.
But Beck pushed the envelope further with his first
proper studio recording, Stereopathetic Soul Manure.
Comprised of material that spanned six years of
recordings, there is no single word to describe the
cross-section of music on this album. The opening
track, "Pink Noise (Rock Me Amadeus)," ends in a
flurry of feedback that abruptly gives way to the
quiet country twang of "Rowboat," complete with pedal
steel guitar. The story-telling of "Satan Gave Me a
Taco" is followed shortly thereafter by the rock of
"Tasergun." And the whole collection concludes with
15-minutes of pure analog bliss, noise over noise,
droning on without ever seeming repetitious. Love.
And then came "Loser." My first exposure to Beck, and
probably the majority of the world's. I still
remember the first time I saw that video, at least two
months before I could locate any kind of single for
it. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard, a huge
beat pulling an acoustic slide guitar with a rusty
chain of white-boy funk. I loved it, but what killed
me about this song was how much people (i.e. critics,
people in the music press) read into it, taking the
chorus completely out of the utterly-nonsensical
context of the rest of the song to raise it in the air
as some standard for the so-called 'slacker'
generation. "In the time of chimpanzees I was a
monkey/butane in my veins and I'm out to get the
junkie/with the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the
vegtetables..." come on, read those fucking lyrics!!
How could anyone possibly attribute some
socio-cultural message to so much rhythmic drivel? It
was great! Beck was and continues to be the first to
admit that his lyrics come last, usually chosen
strictly for the way they flow, the way they sound,
instead of what they mean. And people latched onto
this song with overzealous abandon, completely unaware
that Beck had to be sitting somewhere going, "well, if
they think it means something grandiose, who am I to
argue?" And so it was, Mellow Gold goes gold.
So what would the next logical step be in the
evolution of an artist? Beck took a few steps back
from the table and returned to his roots in some ways
with One Foot in the Grave, a huge departure from the
visionary direction that Mellow Gold had taken.
Again, songs recorded over the course of time, not
necessarily dated to its time of release, Beck can
still be heard singing campfire songs around the gas
fireplace, getting the trees to stomp along to songs
that ache to be remembered. "She's just the girl of
my dreams but it seems my dreams never come true." Or
take into consideration one of my all-time favorites:
"She dangles carrots/makes you feel embarrassed/to be
the fool you know you are/she'll do anything/to make
you feel like an asshole." Could all of those
extranneous moments of lyrical frivolity give way to
genuine emotion, a lonesome voice in the distance?
I'd like to think so. For all of the skronks and
squeals of his other work, Beck was not afraid to step
out from behind that dissonance and deliver the goods.
The critics then bruised and battered themselves as
they stumbled over various and sundry accolades with
which to reward the effort of Odelay. I don't
understand how
