Are there any songs on "Sea Change" by Beck?

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go.to/stevek

Ok How bout:
Bread?
Air Supply?
Pernice Bros.?
Starland Vocal Band?

I am just listening to Guess I'm Doing Fine (a download as I didn't buy the album and I am therefore only slowly progessing in tracking this down) and you know what? It is a Joni Mitchell song. It's a slow and sad version of Both Sides Now. From Clouds, 1969. And again it is a nice cover but why doesn't this motherfucker credit whom credit is due? It says
WRITTEN BY: Beck
here. What a fucking liar! Joni digested by Beck would be more fitting.

He even admits it in the lyrics, look at the first line:
It’s only lies that I’m living
It’s only tears that I’m crying
It’s only you that I’m losing
Guess I’m doing fine

And the last line is so true it hurts. Nick Drake who also was ripped off by Beck wasn't doing so fine. He killed himself as nobody bought his records. Beck won't sell his album to me, that's for sure. You remember the title of the album before? Midnite Vulture it was called and that is exactly what Mr. Hansen is.

Beck is an arranger of music, not more. And a sad parody of himself.

Beck is an arranger of music, not more.

He's a snazzy dancer, too.

Get a grip, bro. Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell were heavily inspired by Bob Dylan, are you complaining that they "ripped him off"?

;)

Get a grip, bro. Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell were heavily inspired by Bob Dylan, are you complaining that they "ripped him off"?
In which way do you mean? You don't want to say Dylan inspired them musically, do you?

Wait until the wave of covers of songs from Sea Change start hitting the airwaves.

What I notice is that I'm often called on things I didn't plagiarize (two critics told their readers that 'Finnegan The Folk Hero' had been ripped off note for note from two different songs, neither of which I'd heard) and yet things I've modelled very closely on other pieces of music ('Handheld' is modelled on a piece by Paul Hindemith, 'In The Sanatorium' is Serge Gainsbourg's 'Pull Marine' thrown into a minor key and rejigged slightly) have slipped through without remark.

What I object to in 'Sea Change' is that Beck is being a bad curator rather than a good one. He's reviving things (like the Melody Nelson string arrangements) at inappropriate moments. 1999 was a great year to revive prime Prince. 2002 is not a great year to delve back into 70s Gainsbourg. That's so 1995.

The transition from a philosophy of the timely (strategy, negotiation, a feel for generational vibes -- yeah, the man who wrote 'Loser' for the Slacker generation was timely) to a philosophy of the timeless (passing off your habits as 'taste', casting your canon in stone in a sort of personal Mt Rushmore, justifying being out of touch) is usually a lot to do with getting more conservative, passing 30, going out less, making the record your girlfriend would like rather than one your peers need, swinging rightwards, being less pop and more rock.

But I personally believe the 'timely' Beck is just resting (on laurels?) and will return, ghosts exorcised, with his next record.

Me me me! Yeah I can hear the Prince bits but considering the weird blooze-rock tinge of some of the songs like "Milk and Honey" and "Peaches and Cream" I'm also hearing Mick Jagger 1978.

Another funny thing about that album: "Get Real Paid". That was released, what, two years before anyone started hyping 'electroclash'?

I'm not quite hep and knowledgeable enough to defend Beck in this case, not really having heard some the songs he supposedly bites (though I know he's definitely not the first guy to appropriate Serge Gainsbourg [audio link] - but then again, David Holmes did give Serge writing credit). I will say that at some points this time around it sounds like he's trying to integrate these influences but winds up, mostly by accident, just sounding like them instead.

That's a nice quote, but you left out the best bit, the stuff about Frenzy:

'Toward a psychology of the artist. -- If there is to be art, if there is to be any aesthetic doing and seeing, one physiological condition is indispensable: frenzy. Frenzy must first have enhanced the excitability of the whole machine; else there is no art. All kinds of frenzy, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish this: above all, the frenzy of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original form of frenzy. Also the frenzy that follows all great cravings, all strong affects; the frenzy of feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the frenzy of cruelty; the frenzy in destruction, the frenzy under certain meteorological influences, as for example the frenzy of spring; or under the influence of narcotics; and finally the frenzy of will, the frenzy of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in such frenzy is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one lends to things, one forces them to accept from us, one violates them--this process is called idealizing. Let us get rid of a prejudice here: idealizing does not consist, as is commonly held, in subtracting or discounting the petty and inconsequential. What is decisive is rather a tremendous drive to bring out the main features so that the others disappear in the process.'

Frenzy is timely, then, and Digust is timeless? Hmm...

does this have anything to do w.beck and drake and "influence/inspiration"?: yes i think it probably does (borrowing is a species of diealisation, and it's done in a spirit of agressive resentment as much as reverence and enchantment) (also of courwe the word "untimely" destabilises "timely vs timeless" as a dichotomy heh)

Momus idea about timeliness and timelessness is interesting but I would put it differently. Before Sea Change Beck has been recycling old music for fun without too much of a personal implication. And this was ok. Mutations stands apart as I still think it is his most personal and best album. On the new one he sings about a love lost but he borrows other people's music to make a very personal statement. He absorbs Gainsbourg/Drake/Mitchell et al. (research please) to express his own very personal feelings and is not able to create the adequate music for this on his own. And that is what I'd reproach to him. That is dishonest and insincere. If you make a personal statement you should make it on your own and not using somebody elses music. That is why I find the new record so impersonal and tiresome.

Is Beck trying to find his roots? Which 1970 song/album did he recycle on Sea Change?

newly platinum Juliette Lewis, Jenna and Bodhi Elfman, Jeremy Northam, Kirstie Alley, Anne Archer, Nikka Costa, Marisa Ribisi, Catherine Bell, Marisol Nichols and Beck all rocked out to Kate Ceberano at LA's Viper Room show recently.

I'm surprised they weren't all using e-meters on each other.

I'm sad cos he's baring his soul in music, these days. I much prefer shallow, vacuous fun from Beck, to be honest. I seem to remember him talking about the making of Odelay, and saying that it was a bleak period, where several friends died. He started making very dark, world-weary music for his next rec, but then something instinctively told him to go the other way. The quirky, funny Odelay followed. This time he seems to have gone ahead with the drained, world-weary album. Pity.

Of course that's a mean-sounding overstatement but the album's problem is that the songs themselves don't have much flesh on their bones. The nifty production obscures their sleightness, but doesn't change the fact.

I actually like this album alot better now that the initial impact has gone away. Not nearly as much as One Foot in the Grave even, but still great. It makes an excellent accompaniment to cunnilingus, I might add. So she says.

Did we *ask*, Nick? ;-)

Me: "Rawk on, dude."

Beck during Sea Change: "Hey, I broke up with my girlfriend."

Me: "Bummer, dude.

Beck: "I don't really have anything interesting to say about that, by the way."

Me: "Oh."

Fake pony ding-dong.

Personally, I like "mutations" best, but "Odelay" is probably his best. That's such a killer album. "guero" is good too, but I really, really can't listen to "Sea change". It's just way too goddamn slow and sad.

- e

kilian murphy otm. it's really that simple; vacuous trash* is his forte, sober bummer-dude stuff, not.

*in the totally awesome sense

Lighten up, fucko.

very disturbing thread