Sunday, June 20, 2010

Beck's Record Club Is Wonderful

Record Club: INXS "New Sensation" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.



If you weren't already familiar (and I may be late on this one) Beck has been putting together a thing called the "Record Club" where he has several other musicians - Jeff Tweedy and others from Wilco, Feist, the MGMT guys, Devendra Banhart, etc. come and cover an entire album in it's entirety in the span of one day.

Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. As you will hear, some of the songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to ‘add to’ the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens. And those who aren’t familiar with the albums in question will hopefully look for the songs in their definitive versions.

Really cool stuff - so far they've covered INXS' Kick, Leonard Cohen's Songs of Leonard Cohen, Skip Spence's Oar, and The Velvet Underground's Velvet Underground and Nico. Some amazing interpretations.

Of particular note is the spectacular reinterpretation of INXS' New Sensation.

Check em out here:

http://www.beck.com/recordclub/index.php/page/1