It’s tough being Beck,
but he did the job

By Nadine Kam
Features Editor
Star-Bulletin

AH the dilemma of being Beck. Judging from the crowd reaction at his Andrews Amphitheatre show Saturday night, most came to be moved by the scratch, snip and paste-up sounds of "Odelay." Those moments were rare in a show that had the energy level of a jazz concert.

The Beastie Boys he ain't. But that's an unfair comparison. Beck is so much more, and at the same time, so much less. The Beasties possess a purity of spirit that doesn't dilute their work, whereas Beck seems, at heart, a country-and-blues troubadour in an era of drum 'n bass. As Cracker's David Lowery once sang so eloquently: "What the world needs now is another folk singer like I need a hole in my head."

Tons of verbiage have been dedicated to deconstructing Beck's music. He counts among his influences Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, blues legends Blind Willie Johnson and Leadbelly, country and folk greats Johnny Cash and Woodie Guthrie, the Artist and the goofball popsters Ween, to name a few.

His brain must be like a pinata that's been filled with all the music of the past century. Whack it and the nuggets come tumbling out -- some whole, some melded together in a goo that's part sticky, sweet, sour and crunchy. Ummm! In his universe, street rhythms link gracefully to snippets of "Swan Lake." He makes Puffy Combs seem musically challenged.

So how did Beck reconcile his hip hop and folkie halves? Quite smoothly, thank you. Having bypassed Hawaii on his "Odelay" tour, he opened with "Novacane" and "New Pollution" from that album, practicing his robot moves, along with Prince-styled splits.

Taking the audience way back to '93, Beck quickly introduced the song that catapulted him to fame, "Loser," with more of a sitar feel than on the disc. Backing him was a seven-piece ensemble, with DJ Swamp at the turntable, "Smokestack" on guitar, "Stagecoach" on drums, "The Brass Menagerie" of two Davids on trombone and sax, "Shotgun" on keyboards and "Cooley" on bass.

Even in the late '90s, there proves to be room for the arena-rock drum solo, which came in the midst of "Sissyneck." Then it was samba time with "Tropicalia," a tune from "Mutations."

At this point, Beck switched gears and went soulful, his voice reaching its upper registers a la Prince, with an impassioned, "I Wanna Get With You," followed by a reggae interlude from the band, who teased, "Do you like reggae?"

Beck returned to save the day with a Pixies-ish alt-punk number, "Minus," which had him playing rock star, spinning his guitar around his neck, before taking on "Hot Wax."

Then he issued a warning that he was going to "bring things down." The explanation was necessary lest anyone collapse from the shock of going from 60 to zero. "Everybody chill," he said, before exploring his more contemplative side with tunes from "Mutations," starting with "Cold Brains."

Crowd surfers rose and fell even with these slow ballads.

"Now be delicate with that child," Beck said, as he acknowledged one girl being passed above the crowd. "She was born in 1990."

OK.

The guitar songs showed Beck's talent as a gifted singer and musician who can play a guitar, bass, blues harp, piano and glockenspiel, of all things.

He turned in a Tom Waits-like rendering of "Sing it Again," before going a capella with a bluesy "One Foot in the Grave," sung to the rhythm of audience handclaps that had to speed up to keep up with him.

"Nobody's Fault" and "Jack-Ass" followed and rain started falling at the opening of "Where It's At." The song brought most of the audience to its feet, many dancing their way from the stands to the grass, looking like a bunch of New Age sprites doing a rain dance.

Then the band abruptly left the stage, leaving DJ Swamp to do his thing. His turntable gymnastics ended with snippets of "Wild Thing," "Eye of the Tiger" and "Smoke on the Water."

Just as suddenly as they had left, the band returned, ready to rock. The guitarists had donned hair-band wigs and Beck wore a cape to perform Eddy Grant's hit "Electric Avenue."

This is about the point where the show really started. The last few songs packed the most excitement of the evening. "High 5 (Rock the Catskills)" and "Devil's Haircut" were the final songs and instead of the usual chant, "Everybody say yeah!" Beck had the audience calling to the beat, "Ser-gi-o Va-len-ti!" before saying his last good nights.

What a guy!

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