Beck

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Beck's Bio: Initially pegged as something as a voice of a generation when Loser turned into a smash crossover success, Beck did wind up crystallizing much of the post-modern ruckus of the 90s alternative explosion, but in unexpected ways. Based in the underground anti-folk and noise-rock worlds, Beck encompassed all manners of modern music, drawing in hip-hop, blues, trash-rock, pop, soul, lounge music and pretty much any found sound or vinyl dug up from a dusty crate, blurring boundaries and encapsulating how 90s hipsters looked toward the future by foraging through the past. In another time, Beck may have stayed the province of the underground, but he surfaced just as alternative rock turned mainstream, with his 1994 debut Mellow Gold launching Loser, a hit that crossed over with the velocity of a novelty, a notion Beck quickly punctured with a succession of indie LPs delivered in the wake of Mellow Gold, including the lo-fi folk of One Foot in the Grave, delivered on the K imprint. But the album that truly cemented Beck s place in the pantheon was 1996 s Odelay, a co-production with the Dust Brothers that touched upon all of his obsessions, providing a cultural keystone for the decade while telegraphing all his future moves, from the soul prankster of Midnite Vultures to the melancholy troubadour of Sea Change.

Fittingly, Beck came from a distinctly artistic background, the son of string arranger/conductor, David Campbell, and Bibbe Hansen, a regular at Andy Warhol s Factory whose father was a pivotal contributor to the Fluxus art movement. Adopting the surname "Hansen" after his father left, Beck grew up in Los Angeles, dropping out of school in the tenth grade to play as a street bucker and attend poetry slams. Bashing out blues and folk, Beck wound up assembling a home tape called the Banjo Story before departing for New York, where he operated on the margins of the anti-folk scene without ever breaking into it. He returned to Los Angeles where he continued to play clubs, eventually gaining the attention of Bong Load records, an independent operated by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf. All parties agreed to pair Bec's fledgling folk with hip-hop beats assembled by producer Karl Stephenson, whose kitchen provided the studio for their first efforts, including Loser. These tapes remained unreleased as Beck recorded an album's worth of material with Calvin Johnson for the latter's K label, but the first release Beck had was the Flipside single MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack and Sonic Enemy's cassette release of Golden Feelings. But what really broke the doors open was Bong Load's 12" single of Loser, which garnered considerable play in L.A., coinciding with increased underground attention. Soon, Beck signed with Geffen, striking a deal that allowed him to release on independent labels. One of these immediately followed -- Fingerpaint released a 10" record A Western Harvest Field by Moonlight in January 1994 -- before the Geffen debut Mellow Gold appeared in March of 1994. … Read more