mutations

Beck challenged his new audience with the organic acoustic expression of this musical metamorphosis.  The huge response to the single 'Loser' was followed up with the multi-platinum 'Odelay' and set up expectations for more of the same style of layered hip hop goofyness; but Beck had other ideas:     "This is the record I've been wanting to make for five years, and I finally got around to making it.  There are two sides to what I do. I'm just trying to let these two sides co-exist somehow...It's a little more serious, but there is some tongue-in-cheek [material] in there. I'm not hitting anyone over the head with it. It's maybe more of a deadpan [style from the] Leonard Cohen school. But the singing is probably the most different thing on the record. The singing has always been an afterthought in other records. It's always the least worked on. I think Nigel is somebody who really encouraged the emotional aspect of the performance to come out. He made it OK for me to be expressive...I wanted to approach the songs as just the songs--not coming at an angle, not coming at it from a '90s perspective or an '80s perspective. I wasn't interested in making it retro or contemporary. It doesn't really have a lot of the trappings of the production of the moment. But, at the same time it isn't so traditional that it sounds like I'm trying to redo some Kinks or Neil Young records...I'd always wanted to make a record that was just a mood piece.  When I get home or I'm at a hotel after a gig, I don't really want to rock out. I don't really want to put on this progressive, electronic Sturm und Drang. The records that I tend to listen to are records that don't hit you over the head. They're like old friends--you can just hang out with them. Like early Neil Young or Joni Mitchell's 'Blue'.  Those kinds of records are pacifying...I had all these songs that didn't fit into what I was doing on 'Odelay', and I had a few new ones, and I was just very anxious to get back in the studio and get my feet wet...We were initially just going to do some demos, see what kind of album I wanted to make. [Bong Load] wanted a more acoustic record anyway, because I was mostly doing acoustic stuff back in '91, '92, when I first hooked up with Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf of Bong Load. We projected at that time me doing some folk records for them, so that was the initial idea. So, we went in the studio, and the two weeks of demos kind of turned into an album."

'Mutations' was recorded live in the studio with his touring band.  The sessions featured Beck on guitar, harmonica, piano, glockenspiel, vocals, and production; Elliot Caine on trumpet; David Campbell on arrangements, conduction, and viola; Larry Corbett on cello; Warren Klein on sitar and tamboura; Bob Ludwig on mastering; David Ralicke on flute and trombone; Nigel Godrich on production and mixing; Smokey Hormel on guitar, percussion, background vocals, and cuica; Joey Waronker on percussion, drums, and synthesizer drums; Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass, percussion, and background vocals; Roger Manning on synthesizer, keyboards, harpsichord, and background vocals; and John Sorenson  as assistant engineer.  

'Mutations' reached number forty-nine in Germany; forty-six in Austria; twenty-four in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK; eighteen in Norway; fifteen in Japan; thirteen in the US; and number five in Canada.  







http://www.beck.com/








Tropicalia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJ4T0P2W-I














'Mutations' 
full album:



[00:00] 1. Cold Brains
[03:41] 2. Nobody's Fault but My Own
[08:44] 3. Lazy Flies
[12:28] 4. Canceled Check
[15:42] 5. We Live Again
[18:47] 6. Tropicalia
[22:07] 7. Dead Melodies
[24:43] 8. Bottle of Blues
[29:39] 9. O Maria
[33:39] 10. Sing It Again
[37:58] 11. Static
[42:18] 12. Diamond Bollocks

loser

Beck killed the headlights and put it in neutral to coast this bluesy hip hop slacker anthem from indie to the majors for the bozo nightmare of his biggest hit. Beck Hanson (Bek David Campbell) dropped out of high school and took a bus to New York City where he became involved in the anti-folk scene: "It was the whole cliche. Went on a fucking bus. I had, like, $8 in my pocket like a total idiot with a guitar and nothing else...That scene was the whole punk-rock thing, which was right on for me. Punk was always sort of my favorite. But all I had was an acoustic guitar, and no one wanted to play with me. Here was a whole scene with people with just acoustic guitars punking out really hard." After a year with no success, he returned to Los Angeles: "I was tired of being cold, tired of getting beat up. It was hard to be in New York with no money, no place, no honey, no thermostats, no spoons, no Cheerios. I kinda used up all the friends I had. Everyone on the scene got sick of me."


In L.A. he started playing small clubs and started improvising: "I'd be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking," Beck recalls. "So maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience's boredom, I'd make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening. `Loser' was an extension of that."

He caught the attention of Tom Rothrock, co-owner of independent record label Bong Load, who connected him with Carl Stephenson, a record producer for Rap-A-Lot Records. 'Loser' was written and recorded over six hours at Stephenson's home. Beck says: "I don't think I would have been able to go in and do 'Loser' in a six-hour shot without having been somewhat prepared. It was accidental, but it was something that I'd been working toward for a long time." Hanson had been trying to emulate Chuck D: "When he played it back, I thought, 'Man, I'm the worst rapper in the world, I'm just a loser.' So I started singing 'I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.'"

'Loser' was originally released on a pressing of five hundred copies on Bong Load Records. The single caught fire and spread around alternative and college radio stations up the west coast, eventually catching the attention of major labels. Beck would eventually sign with Geffen Records DGC imprint. Geffen re-released the single and it was a worldwide smash hit. 'Loser' would chart at twenty-eight in Ireland, twenty-one in the Netherlands, twenty in France, nineteen in Switzerland, eighteen in Germany, fifteen in the UK, ten in Austria and on the US hot 100, eight in Australia, seven in Canada, six in Sweden, five in New Zealand, and number on in Norway and on the US alternative chart.

Beck was surprised by the instant success: "It's just a jam. I've been playing it for five years. It feels like somebody keeps putting the tape on rewind and you don't even know who turned the power on ... A year ago I was living in a shed behind a house with a bunch of rats, next to an alley downtown. I had zero money and zero possibilities. I was working in a video store doing things like alphabetizing the pornography section for minimum wage...Believe me, all of this has fallen in my lap. I was never good at getting jobs or girls or anything. I never even made flyers for my shows. And until, like, six months ago, I didn't know that you could get paid for playing ... I don't come up with this easily digestible, what-you-see-is-what-you-get thing: 'This is my hairstyle, this is my outfit.' So people made up the slacker image for me. Being attached to a highly disposable segment of the popular culture--the one-hit wonders, the cartoon slackers, the video phantoms--it's a little troublesome ... It's never been a conscious effort to be weird; but there's no point in saying something you don't have any feeling for. If you do use cliches, it's good to batter them around, cover them with feathers, put sirens on them and make their presence felt.''









http://www.beck.com/











http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgSPaXgAdzE



In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I’m out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flamin’ with a loser and the cruise control
Baby’s in Reno with the vitamin d
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love-seat
Someone came sayin’ I’m insane to complain
About a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don’t believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Savin’ all your food stamps and burnin’ down the trailer park

Yo. cut it.

Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?

(double barrel buckshot)
Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?

Forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
’cuz one’s got a weasel and the other’s got a flag
One’s on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey-neck and it’s hangin’ from a pigeon wing
You can’t write if you can’t relate
Trade the cash for the beef for the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax fallin’ on a termite
who's chokin’ on the splinters

Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(get crazy with the cheese whiz)
Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(drive-by body-pierce)
(yo bring it on down)
Soooooyy....

?em llik uoy t'nod yhw os ,ybab resol a m'I rodedreP nu yos
[It's the Chorus backwards]

(I’m a driver, I’m a winner; things are gonna change I can feel it)

Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(I can’t believe you)
Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(Nlehh...)
Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(Sprechen Sie Deutsch hier, Baby!)
Soy un perdedor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(know what I’m sayin’? )





"Soul Suckin Jerk (Reject)" – 6:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH-MheZmvKE

sea change

Beck transformed heartbreak into mellow gold with the acoustic undercurrent of this cathartic confessional. Most of the songs on 'Sea Change' were written in a week after the end of his relationship with Leigh Limon in 2000. Beck says: "Songs sit in my head for a while. I have dozens in there, songs from eight years ago that I've written but never recorded. After a while, I just sort of decide to record them."

That happened two years later when he went into the studio with producer Nigel Godrich. Beck was ready to do something different:  "I respect musicians who put out the same record over and over again and develop some thing. I do. You know, my grandfather was an artist, and in the early '60s he started doing images of the Venus figure. He spent thirty-five years doing that figure over and over and over. He explored every aspect 0f what that figure could do and every material you could apply to it, and there's something beautiful about that. But I just decided to cast my net a bit wider. Maybe I won't catch as much...Art is important. It's just an integrity thing. Somebody else is satisfied by five Bentleys. I'm satisfied by a beautiful string arrangement...It's just a different part of myself. I don't believe that one thing tells you more about a person than the other thing. When somebody is crying, that's no better an indication of them than when they're laughing. They're all different pieces...The lyrics are in the tradition of songwriting that uses plain language."

'Sea Change' went to number fifty-three in the Netherlands, thirty-eight in Germany, thirty-four in Japan, thirty in Austria, twenty-six in New Zealand, twenty-three in Finland, twenty in the UK, fifteen in Australia, thirteen in France, eight in the US, six in Denmark, five in Canada, and number one in Norway. Beck considers:  "Looking back, there are maybe certain points where I went for something goofy or playful where maybe I originally intended to say something more thoughtful. But now I'm a little more willing or able to find the value in saying something simple, not having to put something clever in there all the time. And that was a real discipline with 'Sea Change'. It was really needed."










http://www.beck.com/











"The Golden Age"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6zAT15vaFk







 "Paper Tiger"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VoJMUpzAyI






"Guess I'm Doing Fine"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2Erm1KBfdU





"Lonesome Tears"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWe6bMVvTzk






"Lost Cause"

Sea Change "Lost Cause" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.








"Sunday Sun"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5BFjw7Bh48












'Sea Change' 
full album:




All tracks written by Beck Hansen. 

1. "The Golden Age"   4:35
2. "Paper Tiger"   4:36
3. "Guess I'm Doing Fine"   4:49
4. "Lonesome Tears"   5:38
5. "Lost Cause"   3:47
6. "End of the Day"   5:03
7. "It's All in Your Mind"   3:06
8. "Round the Bend"   5:15
9. "Already Dead"   2:59
10. "Sunday Sun"   4:44
11. "Little One"   4:27
12. "Side of the Road"   3:23





Beck - Live - Union Chapel, London, 2003 (Full Show)




00:48 - The Golden Age
05:01 - It's All In Your Mind
08:30 - Guess I'm Doing Fine
14:22 - Lonesome Tears
19:00 - Nicotine & Gravy
24:34 - Lost Cause
28:18 - Ship In A Bottle
33:04 - Fourteen Rivers, Fourteen Floods
36:49 - Loser
44:04 - Nobody's Fault But My Own
48:53 - Lord Only Knows / Hot In Here

odelay

There was a bit of a delay for Beck in the recording of this diverse, sampladelic, post modern tour de force. “I thought 'Odelay' might be the last time I got a chance to make a record. I was acutely aware that I was thought of as a one-hit wonder. And I had all kinds of people telling me that it was no good, not to put it out. Before it came out, nobody who heard it was saying ‘This is fucking great.’ I really thought it might be a last hurrah.”

Sessions began with Bong Load producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, with largely acoustic songs that were dark and downbeat; but Beck abandoned these and started working with the production team of the Dust Brothers (Mike Simpson and John King) at their house at Silver Lake. “It was tiny,” says Beck. “And one wall, floor to ceiling, was all records.”

They spent a lot of time listening to those records and coming up with impromptu jams. Simpson recalls, “We’d always been forced to sample from records. Whereas with Beck he’d say, ‘I’ve got some ideas’, and plug in his guitar and just start riffing. He’d play a bar or a measure and we’d take that and loop it up and he’d be like, ‘Oh, that’s incredible. Wow, I don’t even remember playing that!’ We were of like minds, had the same goals and were looking to make the same kind of music.”

It was a long and painstaking process. Beck says, “There was this old stuffed chair with the spring coming out of it. I remember sitting there for hours, just staring at that computer screen, waiting for something to back up. And the Pro Tools was so primitive, a lot of times the takes would be lost, so we would just be praying we wouldn’t have to start over.”

“It was great to make a record with nobody looking over our shoulders, nobody anticipating what we were going to do, so we were freed up,” says Simpson. “Even the record company was like, ‘Yeah, cool. Let us know when it’s done’. I don’t think they expected much either. It was nice there was no pressure at all. We were like kids in a candy shop just goofing around.”

The album was a major success, making Beck a spokesman for the slacker generation; but he admits that "Most of the vocals on the album were scratch vocals; we just grew attached to them." Still, the strange word-association poetry of these place-holder lyrics resonated with fans and still have meaning for him. “I’m definitely saying specific things; I articulate things, but in a way that’s encoded. I’m not always saying it in plain language because if I did it would come out trite. It’s a song, not an essay, so I include images and wordplay. Each song is about something specific to me, but I like to add random pieces so that the picture is more blurred—more like life. Life is full of extraneous parts so I like to have these things in my songs.”

'Odelay' peaked at number sixteen sold over two million copies in the United States. It was his first hit album in the UK, making it to number seventeen and going platinum. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.

http://www.beck.com/

"Devils Haircut"

"Something's wrong 'cause my mind is fading

Ghetto-blastin' disintegrating

Rock 'n' roll, know what I'm sayin'

And everywhere I look there's a devil waiting"

"Hotwax"

"Yo soy un disco quebrado

Yo tengo chicle en mi cerebro

Who are you?

I'm the enchanting wizard of rhythm

Why did you come here?

I came here to tell you about the rhythms of the universe"

"Lord Only Knows" gives the album its title.

"You only got one finger left

And it's pointing at the door

And you're taking for granted

What the Lord's laid on the floor

So I'm picking up the pieces

And I'm putting them up for sale

Throw your meal ticket out the window

Put your skeletons in jail"

"Jack-Ass"

"I been drifting along in the same stale shoes

Loose ends tying the noose in the back of my mind

If you thought that you were making your way

To where the puzzles and pagans lay

I'll put it together: its a strange invitation"

Odelay "Jackass" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

"Where It's At" uses spoken samples from a sex education film, 'Sex for Teens: (Where It's At)'

"There's a destination a little up the road

From the habitations and the towns we know

A place we saw the lights turn low

The jig-saw jazz and the get-fresh flow

Pulling out jives and jamboree handouts

Two turntables and a microphone

Bottles and cans just clap your hands just clap your hands"

"Sissyneck"

"I got a stolen wife

And a rhinestone life

And some good ol' boys

I'm writing my will

On a three dollar bill

In the evening time"

"Ramshackle" was one of the songs recorded in the original sessions with Rothrock and Schnapf.

"We will go

Nowhere we know

'Til we find our one and all

Hand me downs

Flypaper towns

Stuck together

One and all"

full album:




All songs written by Beck, John King and Michael Simpson, except where noted.  
Produced by Beck Hansen and The Dust Brothers, except where noted.

"Devils Haircut" – 3:14
"Hotwax" – 3:49
"Lord Only Knows" (Beck Hansen) – 4:14
"The New Pollution" – 3:39
"Derelict" – 4:12
"Novacane" – 4:37
"Jack-Ass" – 4:11
"Where It's At" – 5:30
"Minus" (Beck Hansen) – 2:32
Produced by Beck Hansen, Mario Caldato Jr. and Brian Paulson.
"Sissyneck" – 3:52
"Readymade" – 2:37
"High 5 (Rock the Catskills)" – 4:10
"Ramshackle" (Beck Hansen) – 7:29
Produced by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf.

Includes a hidden track called "Computer Rock"



bonus tracks:

"Diskobox" 


"Clock"