Soy un Perdedor

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Did I get him? Did I nail it? Does it look like him? I'm guessing you can tell what the rest is; an ice-cream truck, a bear, a beach in California. But are you looking at Beck, or just a man?

Beck is not just a man.

Recently (or maybe ages ago, I'm lost, y'know. I'm running down that first leg of the labyrinth, hoping a kindly caterpillar will tell me which way to go. Or at least invite me in for some tea) I told a friend an anecdote about a time I saw Beck play Brixton Academy and how the night ended with Damon Albarn wanting to shake my hand. It's an anecdote I wheel out every so often, but at least in this instance I'd been asked for a story about music, so I can sort of justify that little name-drop.

Afterwards, I wondered just how recognisable I was in the story. I wonder things like this, because I analyse everything and I have all the fucking time in the world right now to think about who I am and how I got here. I write a blog, or three, so it can't be any surprise how self-involved/interested/obsessed I am, right? The version of me with his paw stuck in Damon's hand is extroverted (had been dancing on a podium), flamboyant (wearing a three-piece grey velvet suit), and popular (surrounded by friends, Damon singles me out as the geezer who had been 'Giving it large.') I'm pretty sure the person I told it to knows me as introverted (anecdote was related via Facebook), uh...I'm a bit stuck on the Flamboyant one - I know I look my best when I'm dressed for Mexican Day of the Dead. Skip ahead to - solitary. (Your author, of course, being a sort of Conan figure, wandering the wilderness with little more than a scowl and a sense of irony when it comes to describing himself.)

And before you sigh and roll your eyes at another introspective, I know it's no big deal and this is what life is like for everyone. We all grow old and change and move on, whatever. I'm just thinking; is it for better or for worse? I'm often being told 'You know, the 'Old You' wouldn't give a fuck about this,' when I'm fretting about god-knows-what. I try and remember how 'Old Me' thought about things. 'Should I wear the Nine Inch Nails hoodie today, or the Dillinger Escape Plan one?' 'Should I punch this?' There's a sort of internal illusion that you've thought the same way your whole life. I feel like I'm no different now from how I was at ten, fifteen, twenty. Of course I'm different. I know it, even if I don't feel it. I went out dressed like Bjork when I was fifteen. Nowadays, I wonder if double-denim is going to get me sneers.

Anyway, I'm not going to do any soul-searching. Or at least, I'm going to do it in the bath and not subject you to my incoherent brain-itch.

I first heard Beck as the unlikely B-Side to a Pantera tape lent to me at school. James Pugh had done me a copy of 'Vulgar Display of Power', and to fill up the next 45 minutes, stuck 'Mellow Gold' on after. I knew what I was in for with Pantera, had no idea what to expect from Beck. So after listening to Phil Anselmo burst veins in his head over War and Love and Skulls and Fists and all that, the auto-reverse clicks me over to...WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? Minutes ago I was headbanging to a song called 'Fucking Hostile' and now it's all 'The sales climb high, through the garbage pail sky, like a giant dildo crushing the sun.' This thing sounds shitty. I don't mean shitty like East 17 are shitty. It's like this guy's a busker, man. This is an album? I thought songs got production. Songs sound like 'November Rain'. Even 'Bleach' sounds like an album, not like some man who broke into your bathroom, drunk on lighter fluid.

I exaggerate. The album was unexpected, but I knew it was awesome. Pantera became the B-Side. The main event was 'Mellow Gold'.

I'm not going to say 'Mellow Gold' broke me out of metal. Horizons expand, it's natural. The albums don't force it, they're invited. I wish I'd charted it all a bit better, because I'd love to go back and see what my own rock family tree is like. How I go from Billy Idol to 'Walk this Way' to Faith No More. It'd be great to break down each little love affair and what it lead to. Faith No More opens me up to everything from Nine Inch Nails to Ennio Morricone. I guess I go from Led Zeppelin to Tool. Black Sabbath to Mastodon. The Beastie Boys to, well...Jesus, it's huge. Chuck Berry to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to Clutch, to The Black Keys. Smashing Pumpkins, The Lemonheads, The Pixies, Nirvana, Weezer, Green Day... You live and love these bands, you marry them for a bit, but then you start seeing other people, and you stay friends, and it's weird because you have their consent. Veruca Salt wave you off 'You know how much you love us? Well you should go check out Redd Kross too.'

Now I'm in that nostalgia territory. About how at 16 you immersed yourselves in an album. Played it over and over for months. And now, grown up, you buy a few albums in one go. Give them a listen. They go on the shuffle. You know they are good but it just stops changing your life. A generalisation - I know. Some people can sustain that child-like wonder with music. Some albums genuinely do still astonish. But both are rarer and rarer in my day-to-day.

Anyway, along with 'Mellow Gold' I discovered 'Ill Communication' (and the arguably superior 'Check Your Head') and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion's 'Orange'(a tape I played to death. Man, I so wanted to be Jon Spencer). And I spent a few summers enjoying playful, dirty, lo fi fun before the coming of the great 'Odelay'.

'Odelay' - every track was just wonderful. The first listen just a giddy joyful anticipation - what is the next track going to be like? Pantera, bless 'em, are going to deliver crushing riff after crushing riff and that's it. Listening to them it's just a case of 'Will this be good, or will this suck?' On Odelay, it was 'What will this be like? Where will this go?' It was great. I thought it was the best record ever made. Beck was playing pass-the-parcel with me, and the wrapping paper and every layer were ace. Ace. ACE.

I followed Beck round festivals the next couple of years as well as the Brixton gig. But, weirdly, when 'Mutations' came out, I didn't buy it. I imagine I'd found new sweethearts by then. 'OK Computer', 'Fat of the Land', 'Mezzanine' had all wooed me. 'Midnight Vultures' was good enough, I suppose. It took 'Sea Change' to really bring me back to Beck, and - unsurprisingly, for a miserable old dog like me - I think it's 'Sea Change' and not 'Odelay' that stands as Mr. Hansen's best work.

So what does any of this tell you? Nothing you don't know. Music's grand isn't it? So are books and movies and food and anything else you can love. It's good people keep filling time with new music, so the further we go into the unknown, the more comfort we can take with us. The first CD I bought was 16 tracks. Now, however far along the journey I am, I have thousands and thousands and thousands of songs to go with it. I'm rich. And time is a piece of wax, fallin' on a termite, that's choking on the splinters.