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Beck - Record Club: The Velvet Underground & Nico
| Pitchfork |
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As the Internet has proved a-billionfold over by now, anybody can do a cover song. Be it fanboy karaoke love letters, guilty-pleasure attention-grabs, lazy B-side filler, or just plain amateurs singing into their laptops and broadcasting the results on YouTube, there's a seemingly unquenchable thirst for musical masquerading. Now covering an entire album, that takes a special testicular virility and devotion, a feat that only a few bands have had the gall (or the chops) to attempt-- your Camper van Beethoven, your Pussy Galore, your Petra Haden, your Phish. The motivations might be the same as covering a single track, but the commitment is exponentially higher. Just think of all the chords and words you have to learn! So I doff my cap to Beck for making not just one attempt at full-album reenactment, but launching a whole systemic "Record Club" effort of recreations on his website. The game is this: Beck, and whatever L.A. scene buddies are around, spend a day covering a chosen album without rehearsal or forethought, though presumably they're printing out some lyric sheets. It may seem self-indulgent, but in practice it's likely a hell of a lot of fun. It's also an A+ use of a website, embedded video players, and a home studio, and considering the people involved, is way more interesting than most albums of original material....full text |
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| Agooddayforairplay |
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The first edition of Beck’s Record Club has come to a close. If you don’t know what this club is all about, it’s basically Beck inviting a group of friends in a studio to cover track-for-track an album of their choosing and record it all in one day. Nothing rehearsed or arranged ahead of time, they just go for it. A song from the album is then released once a week as a free download on Beck’s new re-designed website for all to enjoy. For this first go-around, they chose to cover the classic 1967 album “The Velvet Underground & Nico”. They almost went for Digital Underground’s Sex Packets album which hearing Beck cover “The Humpty Dance” would’ve been quite the treat....full text |
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| Devhub |
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As the Internet has proved a-billionfold over by now, anybody can do a cover song. Be it fanboy karaoke love letters, guilty-pleasure attention-grabs, lazy B-side filler, or just plain amateurs singing into their laptops and broadcasting the results on YouTube, there's a seemingly unquenchable thirst for musical masquerading. Now covering an entire album, that takes a special testicular virility and devotion, a feat that only a few bands have had the gall (or the chops) to attempt-- your Camper van Beethoven, your Pussy Galore, your Petra Haden, your Phish. The motivations might be the same as covering a single track, but the commitment is exponentially higher. Just think of all the chords and words you have to learn! So I doff my cap to Beck for making not just one attempt at full-album reenactment, but launching a whole systemic "Record Club" effort of recreations on his website. The game is this: Beck, and whatever L.A. scene buddies are around, spend a day covering a chosen album without rehearsal or forethought, though presumably they're printing out some lyric sheets. It may seem self-indulgent, but in practice it's likely a hell of a lot of fun. It's also an A+ use of a website, embedded video players, and a home studio, and considering the people involved, is way more interesting than most albums of original material. To launch this project, Beck aimed low, choosing a little-known cult record called The Velvet Underground &Nico. Seriously though, it's a ballsy move but a smart one-- icons, after all, wear fawning worship well, and I'm much more skeptical about his in-progress follow-up pick, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen. The roster for VU & Nico features frequent co-conspirator Nigel Godrich, members of Beck's touring band and "Introducing Thorunn Magnusdottir as Nico." Oh, and Beck's bro-in-law Giovanni Ribisi, who the singer claims is "a virtuoso of just shredding."...full text |
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