Author Archive

Song Reader Tumblr and Requests

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

So I am making a public request for musicians, famous and otherwise, to cover songs from Beck’s Song Reader project.

I have been collecting them at whiskeyclonenet.tumblr.com which is easily searchable by song titles, artists, instruments, tags. I am greedy and want to hear more!

1. How can I help?

You can help by creating something, anything, inspired by a song in Song Reader. If you do this, please let us know at computergirls (at) whiskeyclone.net–if you email it in I’ll post it as soon as possible.


2. Why should I do this?

I don’t know, it’s fun?

I have no idea what Beck’s expectations are for Song Reader. Maybe to have some people sing some songs or whatever. Or we, as a group, could blow his mind–have famous musicians, talented artists, creative souls, all build off of these songs.

If you’re a musician, I can assure you that Beck fans are loyal music lovers, and if we like you, we’ll remember–we’ll buy your album, go to your shows, watch your stuff.

3. What about songreader.net?

Well yea don’t forget that. Our tumblr here is easier to sort through, but the official site will get you more hits/views. And it’s only usable with YouTube or Soundcloud, while Tumblr can be just about anything.

4. I’m not sure what to do.

Email me or tweet me @almostaghost and I’ll help. If you make videos, but aren’t a musician, I’ll try to connect you to some musicians who want a video for their cover. If you want to take photographs inspired by a song, that’d be great–within limits of course, I won’t just put up a picture of your dog because you call it “Why Did You Make Me Care?” If you want to create a recipe or magic trick or whatever, go for it. I am not a musician, I can’t participate; but I can help to organize and make this awesome.

Go!

I may update this post if I think of more FAQ points I want to make.

I plan on reaching out to famous musicians, or friendly ones anyway, and see what they want to do. If anyone knows anyone who might be willing, let me know! Let’s talk this up and make stuff happen.

Beck news update

Friday, November 16th, 2012

Hi Beck fans!

So a lot has been happening, and as I like to every so often, thought I’d recap.

1. Song Reader: this comes out in a few weeks. I’ve seen a bit more of it than has been released so far, and I assure you, it’s very entertaining, even if you’re not a musician. You can start using songreader.net and get a preview copy of one of the songs, and start uploading your versions (if you use Youtube). If you don’t want to use Youtube, you can always send Soundcloud or mp3s or any other non-musical things to us computergirls@whiskeyclone.net and we’ll put it on our Song Reader tumblr: whiskeyclonenet.tumblr.com.

2. Beck’s final “mini-tour” of 2012 is almost over, he’s been doing a handful of shows in Australia this week. He mentioned in an Australian interview that he hoped to go back out some more in 2013, with his band (JMJ, Smokey, Roger, Joey). (PS. Beck, please give that band a name.)

3. Production work: Beck continues to be a music producer. He did a couple of songs with Dwight Yoakam for his new album, also assisted Bat For Lashes in getting her album straight (though he only ended up adding to one song on her final album). I’ve heard he’s working with Jenny Lewis and a couple of others.

4. His own work: In some Australian interviews, Beck indicated again he wants to finish the album he began in 2008, but never finished. (Think this was Rococo but maybe a different one.) He said he just has to find time between all his production duties. Otherwise, there’s no news here. I was hopeful that a new album would synergistically be released at around the same time as Song Reader, but seems not. More patience!

5. Whiskeyclone: Also, I’m adding all the song titles from Song Reader into our database, whether or not Beck actually wrote music/words for them. (There’s a lot of titles in the art. You’ll see.) Just wanted to play along, like they’re legit Beck songs, and I hope people create them! Watch the tumblr! But I do realize that this will make the giant list of songs on AlmostAGhost completely unwieldy (if it wasn’t already). I’ll get that re-organized soon into a more readable list! Sorry. Also hope to redesign the home page soon, have a cool Song Reader-inspired idea for it.

Anyway, enjoy Song Reader and be sure to share all your recordings/writings/art that are inspired by it!

Song Reader – sort of a new Beck album soon!

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

So, Beck.com and McSweeney’s just announced this morning Beck’s new album.

And while it is a new album: there’s no Beck on it. That is, the whole thing is being released as sheet music, so that the “listener” can create their own songs. 20 brand new Beck songs given to us, without any music/recordings by Beck. I’m still getting my head around this idea, and I’m sure more will become clear as we go. (Though it is probably a good bet that Beck will drop some of his versions at some point somewhere.)

But for me, as a Beck fan, who lacks in music ability, I may be slightly out of luck here. But I do look forward to hearing different people attempt to do their versions of these songs. To that end, I created a tumblr here:

Whiskeyclonenet.tumblr.com

For which I can host/stream all the Song Readers out there who create their own cover versions. Hopefully it can be a nice place for people to hear this stuff. (This is also can be used for your versions of the 3 video game songs if anyone wants to email those in: computergirls@whiskeyclone.net ).

I think this could be fun, and hopefully a lot of musicians participate, from lo-fi amateur to famous to different genres to huge fans to whoever.

More to come…

Hijacked Flavors

Friday, July 6th, 2012

Hi all,

Beck’s mini-tours this summer continue onward, playing 2-3 nights every so often. Later this summer he does Vegas and San Francisco, and then in November, he is going to Australia. I do not know what this means, or implies. I intend to write more about the shows after the Vegas/SF ones happen, but at one of the shows I saw, Beck referred to it as “dusting off the cobwebs.”

One thing this tour did do was kick me into gear, and I have finished an informational revamp of Hijacked Flavors. I do not know who uses the site to this detail, except me, but regardless, I’m very happy with it now. Basically, I went through every show one by one, googling each to find as much info about every concert as I could. (Which would be tedious if it weren’t so interesting!)

Things I updated:

1. Venue names – lots of errors with these before, from minor spelling mistakes (“theater” instead of “theatre”) to needing to input the full official venue name instead of shortened versions to a few that were just totally wrong. Cities, too, were often slightly off, listing neighboring big cities nearby, instead of where the actual venue lies. But I fixed that.

2. Band members – this was what kicked off my revamp. After Smokey Hormel rejoined the band, I went and searched Hijacked to see how long it had been since he played. It told me he had played 35 shows or something. That, I knew, was waaaay off. So I really wanted to fix that. Now every band member is listed and searchable, so if you want to know how many shows, for example, JMJ has played, you can (472). I think there’s probably less than 10 shows where I was not sure who was playing.

3. Opening acts – this was actually kind of fun to figure out and enter. A lot of international shows are still missing this info, I could not locate it, though I figure it is more possible there wasn’t an opening act for those. For Beck’s numerous festival appearences, if I could find the lineup for the festival, I only included the artists who played on the same stage on the same day as Beck. (Otherwise, I’d have to enter like 100 bands in.) If this information is missing, it is because I could not find it.

4. Youtube – I’ve embedded a fair amount of Youtube clips onto the concert pages, as well. This is something I wasn’t as thorough with though, so if there’s any amazing Youtube clips that aren’t embedded on their respective pages, let me know.

So if any readers want to send ticket stubs, diary entries, half-assed memories of setlists, or anything that might be worth documenting, please send it along. (Also thanks to everyone who has done this in the past!) If you see any mistakes or anything, feel free to send along proof too. :)

Thanks all for reading.

Feel free to join our hopping Facebook group here.

Beck Summer Tour 2012

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

Beck’s little batch of tour dates kicks off today!

In case you missed it, Beck is doing 4 shows this week up the west coast headed to Sasquatch Festival in Washington, 2 shows in NYC around the Governor’s Ball Festival, and then 2 shows in August including Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco.  I have no idea if other shows are in the cards or not (I’d hope so).  I also have no idea what to expect, but do know that Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Joey Waronker are in the band again.  One site claims Smokey Hormel is back also!  We’ll know in about six hours if that’s true.  :)

If anyone is going to any of these shows, please keep good track of the setlist for me and send it along.  If anyone wants to ustream it through their phone back to Beck fans worldwide, also let me know and we’ll host your stream link.

Also, similarly, I’ve been updating Hijacked Flavors with lots of information lately, mostly opening acts and band members and stuff.  But if anyone saw Beck, in the ’90s in particular, and remembers ANYTHING about the shows please pass it on.  Even if it’s a vague recollection or just one song you remember for sure I’d like to add it.  :)

Finally, join our Facebook group: more ‘news’-y things happen there than I care to post regularly here.  :)  Also if everything works out I’ll occasionally post in there live from the shows I’m going to (tonight and Thursday).

Tonight’s show, I won’t lie, is making me quite nostalgiac.  Not only with JMJ, RJMJ, Smokey and Joey… but the El Rey.  My first Beck concert was in 1997 on the Odelay tour, and it was awesome.  But it was the second one I saw at the El Rey shortly after the Odelay tour that really kicked off my Beck bootleg collecting.  That night, “Beck and Friends” played a whole bunch of acoustic/country vibe songs, as a sort of way to come down after the long Odelay tours.  Hearing Odelay live was amazing, but realizing Beck could also play other styles?  Since I couldn’t go to every concert, I took to listening to as many as possible.  And here we are.  Beck’s at the El Rey again.  14.5 years later.

I hope it’s not a pure nostalgiac show (except for “Where It’s At”), I’m not ready for Beck to go there.  So fingers crossed this summer leads to some news about more regular new music.  But regardless, there’s going to be some good concerts!