So earlier this year, Radiohead released a song called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” It was only sold online, and was about the last surviving British veteran of World War I. Then earlier this month, the dude from the Fiery Furnaces went on an anti-Radiohead rant, which included some nonsense about how stupid it was they wrote a song about Harry Partch. Partch is an experimental composer and musician. He concluded his rant by saying “I’d make fun of Beck too, but I’m afraid of Scientologists.” All for press right? But since nobody gives a shit about the Fiery Furnaces and their lame novelty albums, everyone promptly ignored it. Except Beck, who is showing them who rules around here. He apparently wrote a song about Harry Partch and it will be on beck.com later today. Cool!
Archive for November, 2009
Harry Partch
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009Stuff
Thursday, November 12th, 2009Evening! Sorry it’s been 2 months since an update. As I say regularly, this isn’t necessarily a news blog, but I do like to keep you up-to-date. Beck’s been up to a few things lately that I thought I’d mention.
Record Club: The second Record Club (Songs Of Leonard Cohen) ended last week. Devendra and MGMT and Beck had a good time going through the songs, even drastically changing some of them. Record Club #3 begins today as well! It’s Skip Spence’s Oar. Beck’s covered some of Oar in the past, releasing “Halo Of Gold” on a tribute to Skip album, and doing “Little Hands” live once. This Record Club involves Wilco, Feist, Jeff Tweedy’s son Spencer, James Gadson, Jamie Lidell, and Brian LeBarton. The first song is up on beck.com now, check for it every Thursday! (Also, still no word about what the fourth Record Club will be!)
Charlotte: Also the album Beck cowrote and produced with Charlotte Gainsbourg has started to hit the webs. It will be released in January, I think. The stuff I’ve heard sounds cool, it’s creative and promises to be interesting.
Devendra: Beck and Devendra Banhart recorded the title song for a movie called “Life During Wartime.” (It’s not the Talking Heads classic.) I’m not sure when the movie is coming out or what.
Jamie: In describing the new Record Club, Beck mentions that “Jamie Liddell was in the studio with me working on his new record.” This was last June. Are they collaborating? Beck producing? This is news, and should promise to be great. (Jamie opened some of the Information tours.)
Norah: Pitchfork reported that Beck did a remix of a song for Norah Jones. She also said she wanted Beck to produce her new album, but chickened out in asking. :(
Beck: I don’t know what, but recently on beck.com Beck mentioned that he’d been in the studio for the last month. (That’s why there was a break in Planned Obsolescence DJ mixes, and probably some of the other sections.) New album?