Motorcade
By: Beck Hansen, Nigel Godrich
Written by: Beck Hansen, Nigel Godrich

Versions:
  1. Motorcade
    Available on The Information.
    Credits
    Nigel Godrich: Mix, Producer, Whistle
    Beck Hansen: Vocals
  2.  
 
Lyrics:
Motorcade [Version (a)]:

These toys are all lifeless, the armor's worn off
The shadow of a shadow is the ghost of a bomb
Skyscraper standing in a desert alone
A helicopter searchlight is searching for no-one

We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
The smokestack clouds with glory attached
We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
The smokestack clouds with glory attached

The sky dancers dance in a parking lot wind
That blows from a tundra where the jungle begins
If there's hope in a roadblock, guns in a church
The lord will take his motorcade and drive us into the dirt

We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
The smokestack clouds with glory attached
We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
The smokestack clouds with glory attached

There's a skyscraper on the moon
And a man standing on a window
Forty-second floor
There's a light beaming through the galaxy
Telling me everything's gonna be OK

We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
We're all pushing up the tin can mountaintop
 
The Song:

"Motorcade" can be found on Beck's album, The Information. It is a sublime mix of acoustic guitar, a catchy sing-along melody, and electro beats. There is a restraint to the recording too, it never quite explodes, riding the same groove longer. (Live, it does explode a little.)

This was one of the later songs recorded for the album, as Beck and Nigel Godrich were sort of messing around. The recording amazes Beck: "This was the most exciting track to record because we were doing something we hadn't done before. There's an African element and some Spanish guitar." He adds, "I wouldn't mind doing a whole album like this." That would be amazing!

There are a lot of images in this song, and I find some of them to be hugely symbolic of the main themes on The Information (like a skyscraper in the desert/on the moon). One strange one is when the wind blows from Arctic tundra, which somehow borders a jungle. The earth is a mess.

But within that wasteland, technology and modernization survive -- tin can mountains, skyscrapers, helicopters, smokestacks. These things all reach to the sky, and Beck correlates that with a human's search for meaning. The song ends with that made more literal, a man on the 42nd floor waiting for an answer.
 
Live:

Played live 29 times:
Earliest known live version: August 11, 2006
Latest known live version: April 16, 2007

"Motorcade" did not last long in Beck's sets, but for a few months only of 2006 and then in 2007, it was a bit of a regular.

In the summer of 2006, before The Information came out, Beck toured and introduced a number of the songs on the album to the stage. In August, Beck took to playing "Motorcade," doing it 10 times. It started out fairly tame, but started to get sharper and sharper.

Then in October through December, when they began touring the album proper, "Motorcade" was again a regular (And in April 2007 when they went to Australia and Japan.) I was at the first of these shows (a warm-up tour kick-off show in Hollywood on September 26), and I absolutely still remember the "Motorcade" FLOORING me. It remains one of my favorite Beck show highlights of the over 40 times I have seen him. The band, that night, and through the rest of the year, attacked the song with a viciousness that was undeniably impressive.

But since The Information tours ended, the song has been dropped entirely.