BECK AND BOWIE
Just as Beck seems to be getting sick of being Beck, Bowie returns from his New Berlin(domestic bliss or post-illness depression, who knows?). Their parallel lines are all chicanery and diversion.
Mr Beck, who changes hipster cap more frequently and drastically than Mr Bowie changes fedora, is trying on new hats, in the manner of the council estate aesthetes who tried on androgyny and glamour way back whenever. Whatever the hat, though, no-one finds Beck weird. Hmmmm.
Exhibit one; Sound and Vision. Beck is the Hip-hop Mozart. Even in his 40's he looks like a sprightly teenager. So he accepts the patronage of the Lincoln Motor Company, they bask in his cutting-edge bricolage, he gives them 10 minutes of Bowie's Sound and Vision re-imagined. Intellectually I like it, other bits of me, not so sure. It starts as a real time imitation of a cut-up remix, like a John Zorn contracted cut and paste or a cartoon soundtrack, before the song emerges, to some relief, from this fug, becoming some reverie about the gift of sound and vision. Not sure about the gospel choir though - a bit Jools Holland. Beck has produced a lot of music over the years, and like an old junkie it takes a lot of raw stuff to give you that buzz again. Also better if someone else pays the tab.
I wonder whose portrait Beck will sit below in his comeback video, like Bowie in Where Are We Now, with it's picture of William Burroughs and the Dame, referencing the Old Writer in exile in Lawrence, Kansas with his lover/agent and his cats. The scientologist from Silverlake has got his Dad in to arrange Sound and Vision, his grandad was in the Fluxus movement alongside Yoko Ono. Maybe a picture of John lennon baking bread in the Dakota Building?
Exhibit two:Partch; Beck let this audio-collage out some time ago. Like a lot of great music, it's virtually unlistenable. I read somewhere Beck denies it's connection to the Heath Robinson of the american avant-garde. Pure diamond bollocks.
Exhibit three; Beck the producer. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore, Stephen Malkmus - all decent enough records, but give me Modern Guilt anyday. For all Dangermouse's trademark tags and squiggles it's the best Beck record in years.
Exhibit four; Beck's Record Club. You could access this on his website, then it's all over the net. The Velvet's and Leonard Cohen album's are fine, but Yanni and INXS?! The boy had been supping too much Contrary Hipster Juice. The idea is fair enough- young marrieds can't get out what with the cost of babysitters, so they go down the home studio with their mates and knock up impromptu versions of their favourite records. We've all done it, if only in our minds. The results are out there, floating round like tin-cans, downloaded with less and less frequency.
Exhibit five; Beck remixes Phillip Glass. This is the one I've listened to the most. It's got that ineffable quality, it hints at something without saying it. (It also links up my intellectual conceit in this piece, nodding to The Low Symphony that Phillip Glass did some years ago.) Whereas the Glass piece of orchestrating electronic mood pieces ended up as airless as a white painted loft, Beck's electronic reimagining of an orchestral piece has some of the barrio brio of his best stuff.
Exhibit six; The Beck Hansen Reader The one where he is most present yet totally absent. Only muso's will actually buy the sheet music, but this great idea works. I've listened to the version I downloaded by The Portland Cello Project, and there's good songs and great lines in there. The best lines are when he amplifies the mid 60's Dylan beat poetry, the worst is when he goes all show-tune. Nonetheless, Beck should, like, go totally punkrock, destroy his concept and show all the youtube nohopers what an real pro can do with such great songs as Don't Act Like Your Heart Isn't Hard and America, Here's My Boy, or even We Wear Cloaks, and put his own versions out now. We get it. Don't be so precious. Milk it a bit. Better still, follow up Modern Guilt the traditional way. Now there's an original concept.
