Shirley Manson = FAIL. Sia Furler FTW.

October 13th, 2007 by

There was a media report or two back not long ago that Beck was working on a song with Shirley Manson for her solo album.  I had added it as “Unknown Shirley Manson Collaboration” on Almost A Ghost.

Turns out, this rumor is not true.  The media lies!  Don’t believe everything that you read!  Get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve!

Beck’s right-hand man, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, does and has worked with Shirley and he debunked it.

Beck is, however, going to be on Sia Furler’s upcoming album, so look for that!

We Got A Red Alert

September 11th, 2007 by

An unofficial homemade video for “Timebomb” is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWtZ1TqMq4g

It’s brilliant fun, and definitely one of the best Beck videos out there. Take that, Michel Gondry and your fancy camera angles.

It was made by Hambeck, a Japanese fan for which we link to his her Beck blog over there —->

Great job man sistah!

Beck on new SNL CD

September 7th, 2007 by

Beck’s performance of ‘Nausea’ on SNL is going to be on a new CD. The disc, Live From SNL! Performances From Saturday Night Live is going on sale Sept. 9, exclusively at Target.

Two things bother me about this. First, September 9 is a crazy-ass date to release a CD; they normally come out on Tuesdays in North America. Second, ‘Clap Hands’ from the same show was way awesomer! That’s what should have been included, screw Nausea’.

I also heard recently about some new SNL music DVD, but I’m too lazy to look for that right now. Anybody else hear about this? Is Beck on it?

Tracklist:

  1. Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend
  2. Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone
  3. Foo Fighters – Best Of You
  4. Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
  5. P!nk – Trouble
  6. Beck – Nausea
  7. Dave Matthews – Save Me
  8. The Shins – Phantom Limb
  9. The Strokes – You Only Live Once
  10. Maroon 5 – Harder To Breathe
  11. Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out

[press release]

My Cyanide News

August 16th, 2007 by

Great, so right after updating for the first time in forever, it’s already out of date

“Timebomb” will be released on iTunes on Monday!

And Beck put up a cover of Lee Hazlewood’s “Forget Marie” on beck.com.  They recorded it last year, and he put it up in tribute to Lee, who died very recently.

Enjoy the songs!

My Summer News

August 14th, 2007 by

Hello, sorry for the lack of updates, but Beck’s been quiet.  But there’s a few new things to note here.

 1. “Timebomb”–a song Beck has played live a few times–will be a digital single soon, according to the .com.  No word on when exactly, or where (probably iTunes, as Beck’s album covers are all over iPod commercials).  Hopefully there will be b-sides!  “Timebomb” is a fun song.  There will also apparently be a 12″ vinyl version too.

 2. So for a while we’ve heard about the Deluxe 10th Anniversary version of Odelay.  It has not happened, and it has been 11 years since Odelay was released.  But I’m told that Odeluxe is still being worked on, and a release is still planned.  Stay optimistic!  (There’s also plans for another deluxe version of an older album, but I can’t tell you which one quite yet!)

 3. Beck recently put up a nice tribute to Jeremy Blake on .com, and promises a tribute to Ingmar Bergman soon.  I guess there is a reason to go to beck.com now!  Keep using the site for things, Beck.

 4. Beck’s been in and out of the studio for the last few months, doing different things.  I posted about some of them before on here.  It is still, as usual, up in the air what will come out and when.

5. Also Beck’s band has released an album (Beck’s not on it).  They’re called Wounded Cougar, and you need the record.  Even if you are not interested in hard rockin’ facemeltin’ heavy metal, you probably do want to support a bunch of amazing musicians putting out their own records completely independently.  Go to their myspace for info on how to get the record.

Tribute

June 4th, 2007 by

Got an email from AJR, letting me know about Tributosaurus, who on Wednesday in Chicago will be playing two shows of Beck songs. Hopefully it will be as good as their Supertramp evening! If anyone goes, let us know how it is!

Check the link for more info…

UPDATE:   Here’s an update from AJR, sounds like it was fun… any bootlegs?
surprisingly high-energy show. really weird/refreshing to hear almost note-for-note recreations of the album versions—something you don’t hear from beck himself anymore. i mean, when was the last time you heard him do the “THAT IS COLD, SOMEBODY PUT A FLAMETHROWER ON THAT” interlude from “beercan”? plus, the band’s instrumentation was fucking impeccable—huge horn section, huge string section, full-on sitar during “nobody’s fault”, even live backwards-sounding vocals and guitar parts during songs like “loser”. i would highly recommend the band, if they’re playing someone you love. their banter was great, too—they replaced “glendale” with “glenview” (only chicagoans would really get that) and at the end of “the new pollution”, the guitarist said “X-R-T” in the way that local middle-of-the-road radio station WXRT does their callsign. it was funny at the time.

anyway, here’s the setlist:

1) loser
2) devil’s haircut
3) sunday sun
4) que onda guero
5) beercan
6) girl
7) nobody’s fault but my own
8) think i’m in love
9) “pink panther theme” interlude
10) the new pollution
11) crystal clear (beer) [!!!]
12) sexx laws
13) jack-ass
14) missing
15) paper tiger
16) lost cause
17) debra
18) tropicalia
19) where it’s at

the tradition for the band is that their encore is a song from the artist that they’ll be covering next month, so they ended the night with “the weight” by the band.

ajr

i’m so glad download

May 28th, 2007 by

It’s been pretty quiet around here, so I thought I’d toss you guys a musical bone. Puritan Blister has an mp3 up of Beck’s cover of Skip James’s I’m So Glad. This is a really great song, especially if you like Beck’s bluesier stuff.

I’m So Glad @ Puritan Blister
I’m So Glad @ almostaghost

beck interviewed for new elliott smith book

May 15th, 2007 by

From Spin:

Elliott Smith, the troubadour behind haunting acoustic compositions such as “Needle in the Hay” whose life came to an untimely end in 2003, will be memorialized with Elliott Smith, a 200-plus-page photo book compiled by renowned photographer Autumn de Wilde, the same lady behind the lens of the cover shot from the singer/songwriter’s 2000 album Figure 8. The book, also containing Smith’s handwritten lyrics and interviews from Ashley Welch, Smith’s sister, Beck, Ben Gibbard, Chris Walla (Death Cab), and Matthew Caws (Nada Surf), among others, will arrive in November courtesy of Chronicle Books, alongside a five song CD of previously unreleased live material. The project’s proceeds will be donated to the SIMS Foundation to supply affordable mental health care to musicians, and Outside In, a Portland, OR-based homeless youth non-profit group…

De Wilde then recorded chats with the likes of Beck and Walla — whose discussion on being photographed will become the book’s forward — Caws, and Welch, as well as Mark Flanagan, owner of L.A.’s Largo Club, Neil Gust (Heatmiser), Sam Coomes (Quasi/Heatmiser), producers Rob Schnapf and Jon Brion, and Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie), the latter an individual who had never known Smith, but divulged the late musician’s deep influence unto his music.

Autumn De Wilde has worked with Beck on a number of occasions, I believe. I seem to remember her taking a whole bunch of photos for him and his albums. Anybody know which ones?

beck on ginsberg dvd

May 15th, 2007 by

Beck will be in the special features of the DVD for the 1994 movie The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, which will be released July 17, 2007.

new DJ Moule mashup

May 9th, 2007 by

I haven’t listened to it yet, but DJ Moule has a new Beck mashup up on his site called Tribute To James (James Brown Vs Beck Vs Peter Gabriel Vs Fatboy Slim, featuring RHCP) (scroll down to find it; there are a few other Beck mashups on there too, actually).

Things have been pretty slow around here, so I thought you might appreciate the heads-up.

[via A Capella v. 2.0]