Beck: MIdnite Vultures

Beck: Midnite Vultures

1999

DGC Reocrds

Format I Own it On: Compact Disc

Track Listing:  1. Sexx Laws  2. Nicotine & Gravy  3. Mixed Bizness  4. Get Real Paid  5. Hollywood Freaks  6. Peaches & Cream  7. Broken Train  8. Milk & Honey  9. Beautiful Way  10. Pressure Zone  11. Debra


I think everybody needs to check out this record again...It seems to be remembered now as a failure...A misstep on the way to "Sea Change." But I don't see it....It was 1999, the world was about to end, so Beck does a 180 from the somber, serious "Mutations" and  invites us into a late night world of sleazy hot tubs, flashy champagne bottles and automatic bzooty...



A proper party album built on the solid musical foundation of Prince-style sex jams and the rubbery funk of George Clinton,  and he tosses in plenty of Kraftwerk and blues to keep things interesting...Really only crossing the line into out-and-out parody on the ironic luxury rap of "Hollywood Freaks."

A lot of highlights here: This record starts the party right with "Sexx Laws" where R&B brass meets bluegrass banjo and the neon headrush of "Mixed Bizzness" which is just a whirlwind of all things funky...

The record seems to shift gears a bit in its second half...The gonzo sexuality and  robot-funk is set aside for a moment and the run of songs from the bluesy "Broken Train" to the country ballad :"Beautiful Way" could fit comfortably on "Odelay."

 The album closes with the glorious slow-jam "Debra" which would be right at home on side two of "Purple Rain."  Lover-man R&B where Beck woos some girl named Jenny ("Debra" is apparently her sister) with lines like:

"Lady, step inside my Hyundai,
 I'm gonna take you up to Glendale..."

 (This song always reminds me of hanging out at the Bambi Bar in Tucson, where this song always seemed to be playing on the jukebox...I miss the Bambi Bar...)

I hear up and coming bands doing music like this all the time and garnering tons of critical acclaim...This album actually seems to foretell "of Montreal" style indie-dance and the later Electroclash genre... But people didn't really seem to want this from Beck at the time..."Sea Change" got the acclaim but to be totally honest, I probably find this album more interesting and enjoyable...I couldn't stop playing it that winter of '99, and I'm finding it hard to take it out of my CD player as we speak...

Oh, yea, BTW...I just discovered today that my copy of "Sea Change" is too scratched up to play, so I'll be skipping that album in the meantime, but I'll get back to it later..





I was thinking of doing a "catch-up" week, where I cover albums starting with A-B that I've picked up since the blog started (some Angry Samoans and Alkaline Trio albums I've picked up recently...I also went through an archeological dig through my closet  that unearthed a few Anthrax CD's...)...Maybe I'll do that next week...Sounds kinda fun..

But to finish out our celebration of 1999's "Midnite Vultures" I dug through my comic box and scanned in some old ads from that year...

Ohhh yea...After achieving the record for highest RBI-per-hit tally in baseball history., Mark McGwire was a big deal in 1999, ...His face was everywhere that year; on Magazine covers, television ads, boxes of Wheaties...He even snagged an endorsement for...bedwetting? Alright...I'll go with it...I never used to understand bedwetting until a few years ago when one night I had a dream (I know...Hearing about other people's dreams is always mind-numbingly boring, but you might want to listen to this one, since it's a kind of cautionary tale...) where I had to take a piss real bad...In my dream I searched frantically for a restroom, and finally found one...But when I opened the door I was surprised to find that the urinal wasn' mounted on teh wall like one would normally expect...No, this urinal was horizontal on the floor...It looked kind of like this...

So anyway, I struggled with the logistics of how to piss in a urinal that was on the floor, until finally I came up with the brilliant solution, "I know! I'll just lie on my stomach and pee!" So I lied on the floor in what I can only describe as the position you get into when you start to do a push-up and said to myself,"Alright! Here I go!"

 Man, what a dirty trick for my mind to play on me!  Thankfully my body was kind enough to alert me to wake up in the nick of time! But it hit me at that moment, "Wow! That's how someone can piss a bed!"

I kind of wish it was Christmas now...Mainly, so I can eat Christmas-flavored Fruity Pebbles and  drink hot buttered rum with my 1999 Christmas Furby...

                                                     

                                                            "Kah boo koo doh!"

 

Woah! That old crappy CGI morphing effect was so popular in the 90's it even had its own book series, which was later turned into a television series!

Kind of like a 90's version of "Manimal."

Okay, I think we've all had just about enough 1999...Let's bust out "Mixed Bizness" by Beck...Enjoy...