Word: becking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Amoeba music is a warehouse-size record store on Sunset Boulevard that is filled with lonely, unshaven guys in vintage T shirts and about half a million CDs. It is High Church for music geeks, and strolling through Amoeba with Beck--the wispy singer who has made a career out of fusing rap, rock, folk, funk, irony and earnestness--is like cruising the Vatican with the Pope. As Beck moves from the back-room blues section to the used vinyl, everyone sneaks a quick, reverent glance and returns to flipping through the racks, or at least pretending to flip through...
...really getting into James Taylor," says Beck, 32, cradling a beat-up copy of Taylor's 1975 easy-listening opus, Gorilla, its cover featuring amustachioed Taylor in white leisure suit and sandals. "When I was younger, I used to think he was awful. But people don't understand that as much as punk was rebelling against guys like this, he was rebelling against punk--just singing from the heart." Beck, who once fronted an L.A. punk band, is not kidding. He grabs eight used Taylor LPs and presents them to a goth kid behind the register. The kid smiles...
Some people are talented enough to do whatever they want with their careers. Few of them actually do it. Beck is among the few. After 1999's Midnite Vultures, essentially a postmodern rap comedy album, what Beck wants to do is be direct. Sea Change, his seventh and best album (out this week), is a simple affair. It's a breakup record--almost all the songs are ballads--with a slight country-blues feel. There's little of Beck's trademark musical schizophrenia and none of his arch humor. "I just wanted the record to be simple and clean...
...Change was born after Beck split with his longtime girlfriend, stylist Leigh Limon, in 2000. He wrote most of the album's 12 songs in one prodigious week, then put them in cold storage. "Songs sit in my head for a while," he says. "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." In early 2002, Beck drifted back to the breakup tunes and called his frequent producer, Nigel Godrich. A few weeks later, Sea Change was finished. "Everything with...
While the album’s touching closer “Side of the Road” is evidence of a healthy, newfound perspective on life, it remains to be seen whether Beck has found a musical groove with which he can finally live. With his ingenuity and boyish looks, certainly more sounds and more lovers are on the way. But for now he sounds pretty comfortable with only his guitar at his side. And you can bet those two will never break...