Mr Beck Hansen
I'd be the first to admit that I suffer from the common male affliction that makes it necessary for me to excessively research banal subjects in order to feel some form of superiority but ending deflated at the vacant looks when I flex my niche knowledge. Anyone who knew me up to about the age of 22 would also have a pretty good idea that I was a huge fan of Beck Hansen. To the extent that I have a great video of my entire Dad's-side-of-the-family one Christmas drunkenly singing along to "No Money No Honey". It didn't take long to teach them the lyrics, after all:

No money no honey.
(repeat x40odd, or until you get bored)

The same way as most were introduced to Beck, it all started with that infectious slide guitar riff that opened up Loser.

Dur dur ne nur ne DURRrrr (and repeat).

I was young, knew little about music, yet knew enough to be invigorated by this breath of fresh air through the endless posturing of the mainstream which was dry-humping the transition from 80s stadium rock to Grunge (whatever the fuck Grunge was supposed to be. Mudhoney or Screaming Trees or just mopey with distorted guitars?).

My brother, with his advanced years and advanced pocket money bought Mellow Gold on the medium of compact disc. We played that CD so many times on our recently acquired family CD player (back when statements like "This was only recorded in AAD!?" supposedly meant something), that even my mother knew about getting crazy with the cheese whiz yet was not enamoured with the dirty distortion or lyrics of “Motherfucker”.

When Odelay took the world by storm two years later, sealing Beck’s place as a career artist and not a one hit wonder, my astonishment, fascination and love for that album was like nothing I'd felt before (most likely hormone related). If Mellow Gold was a breath of fresh air, this was a tornado. Bar by bar the album was a chop suey of styles that revelled in their stylistic clashes. For a great example to this, have a listen to how Hotwax leads into Lord Only Knows.

Thank you Dust Brothers. Thustbrothers.

I still remember buying the single Where It's At, pressing play on the CD player and hearing that wonderful organ riff for the first time. It was this album that turned my love from Mellow Gold to Beck Hansen himself.

A family holiday to Florida that year was a great opportunity for me to explore the music shops at these monolithic malls in order to fill the spaces I had in his discography. This was before the widespread usage of the internet, so my only source of information was either from magazines or asking at music stores.

I found a place selling an album called One Foot In The Grave and without thinking twice parted with my cash. We'd hired a car whilst in the US and as they take so much more pride of their vehicles over there, we were treated to an in-car CD player, much like The Queen probably had, or so I might have thought at the time. Of course, an in car CD was heaven for the children but a nightmare for the parents. I can't even think about how many times we played that album on that holiday.

It was much less polished than the other releases, some fully formed songs, some half-ideas that would probably have been spoiled with any more production. The charm was in the rough edges around the music. The delicate sounds of Hollow Log and He's A Mighty Good leader also showed me another side to Beck's song writing. Something much more tender, straightforward, yet still unmistakably Beck. I was once again captivated by his ability to eat genres and deficate them as his own.

I won't bore you by describing my journey through his entire back catalogue, but Stereopathetic Soul Manure was messier than any other release I’d heard from the white noise of “Rock Me Amadeus” to the surreal Birmingham accent of “Ozzy”. The take on funk and soul on Midnite Vultures had opened my mind to artists I'd previously written off as too feminine before, and the discovery of MP3s and Napster saw me collecting countless bootlegs, b-sides, live tracks (One Foot In The Grave on harmonica? Just wow), demos etc. right back to where it all began, The Banjo Story. Oh, and not forgetting Mutations, nobody should forget Mutations. Oh Mutations. Oh so good.

The first time I got to see Beck live was possibly one of the greatest concerts I've ever been to. It was at Wembley Arena, and unfortunately our seats were pretty far back, but nothing could spoil what we had coming up. I made the journey from South Wales with my friend to stay at my brother’s place and then go watch the gig. It was pretty exciting to go to my first gig in London. I don't know if I expected it to be different or somehow more special, but I think the idea of it being that way made it happen.

I don't know if anyone caught Beck on the Midnite Vultures tour but... Wow. It was incredible. A band of countless musicians all alternating between excessive costume changes, occasionally synchronised dance routines and a sonic journey through the many facets of Beck's musical career. The show was so over the top, yet also so engaging, it felt as though it lasted five minutes but I knew it did not. I wondered how he’d deal with his genre hopping in a live environment, but by breaking his set into various sections, it gave a fantastic tour around Beck’s back catalogue.

Still, Beck could do no wrong.

It was a few years until Sea Change came out and by that time the idea of Beck’s unpredictable directions from album to album made his forthcoming releases exciting in some way to everyone, even casual observers. University had begun since Midnite Vultures and I was in an accelerated culture of learning about myself, others and whatever subject it was I was studying at the time. It took an anchor like an upcoming Beck release to make me realise that I’d changed as a person since the last time I felt this way.

When I eventually heard Sea Change, it was yet another shock. I sort of enjoyed the album but I realised something was wrong when it took for less time than the previous releases to get tired of. It's not that it was bad, it was just that there was a certain blandness to it that I'd not noticed in Beck's music before. The strings weighed too heavily in the songwriting, the vocals were sung as though he were trying to hard to hit the note perfectly and the songs themselves were simpler and far more morose.

However to call Sea Change a disappointment would be wrong. I still applauded the journey into yet another style of music and although it wasn't one that clicked with me as Beck had before, it still had its moments and left me excited to think of where he would go next.

It was the follow up where the disappointment hit hard.

Guero.

The hype beforehand was immense. Beck and The Dust Brothers. Once again working together. It was Odelay for the '00s. Two unpredictable acts, working together once again and each having achieved so much in between now and then. So why did they settle with Guero? Gone was the playful nature of Odelay, or the blink-and-you'll-miss-it production of The Dust Brothers. Instead, it sounded like a watered down approximation of one of my favourite albums in a musical climate that had moved on.

Perhaps the album was a disappointment because of the ridiculously high standards both artists had set for themselves in times past. Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh on the album, I mean after all it wasn't a complete disaster, but to me, Beck was more than just a musician. He was an inspiration. He was one of the few consistently creative acts that I'd grown up with (I'd given up on Pearl Jam long beforehand). The last thing I wanted to hear was an older Beck trying and failing to relive past glories. To hear someone like Beck taking comfort in a sound was deflating.

It wasn’t long after that The Information was released and in my opinion, it was far too soon after Guero and with virtually nothing more to add than the album before it. I tend to think of those two as a double album rather than classing them separately. Where was the progression? Where were the risks?

Everyone grows old, and you can never rely on your heroes, after all they're just people too. It sounds stupid relating a coming of age life lesson from a musician, but I associate his albums with milestones or phases of my life. It's something which taught me to be more tolerable and more open minded about what I listened to, and didn't take me long to realise that this was a valuable lesson to apply elsewhere in life too. Sure, someone else may reply saying that Beck is / was shit, it's only an opinion. It doesn’t matter if you like the same music or different music to me. I just like talking to someone who’s passionate about something. It’s the same emotion, just expressing itself in a different way. Oh, but football’s the exception to the rule, if you want to talk about football, you can fuck right off.

I don't listen to Beck much any more, times have changed, I myself have changed and it tends to make me sad and reflective. If I do stick him on for a listen, I find myself trawling through the early demos more than the albums themselves. Playing through tracks recorded through a mic in a ghetto blaster with distortion making it almost unlistenable, yet somehow comforting.

If this post is popular, I'll have a search and upload the video of my family singing No Money No Honey, including wooden spoon against mixing bowl for drums. It's the enthusiasm from my Grandmother that makes it.
( ma0sm, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 14:56, 3 replies)

"...and all the toilets are overflowing."
I can understand your reticence about The Information, as were it a colour, it would be beige. Guero kicks ass, and Black Jamboree is responsible for one of the best scenes in Inland Empire. Don't write him off just yet. (As I write this, I'm not entirely sure why I'm so vehemently defending Beck. Suffering from boredom at work, I fear).
(Nimrod's Son Boredom provokes some interesting habits..., Fri 27 Jun 2008, 17:21, closed)

Have a click
I didn't really know what you were talking about most of the time, not being too familiar with Beck, but I enjoyed reading about him.
(littlenipple hate's bad grammar, Fri 27 Jun 2008, 17:40, closed)

As it happens...
I am going to see Beck in Manchester on Wednesday. Have never heard any of his stuff, but my Aspie best friend wanted someone to keep her company so I had no qualms in saying I would go with her :)
(Lord of Balrogs, Mon 30 Jun 2008, 23:49, closed)