The Moose in the Closet: People Who Hate Me: Beck

(There's a special Monday edition Here's the Thing... up about King's move to comics. Good discussion, come on by.)

During November I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month. All of the MITC stories appearing in November have been written in advance as has this generic little opening you’re reading right now. Instead of comic book plugging I’ll be linking comic sites, blogs, artists, publishers and writers I dig and I encourage you to go check them out, have some fun, try something new, whatever. Today’s link is:

Ad-House Books

Feel free to check out my NaNoWriMo progress right here and, if you're up to the challenge, feel free to read my NaNoWriMo novel right here. The novel will likely be very raw and extremely offensive, both to your moral sensibilities and the English language.

Story time…

____________________

I saw Beck at Lollapalooza in 1995. Randall’s Island, an amazing line-up graced the stage along with him – Pavement, Sonic Youth, Hole, Cypress Hill, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Elastica, Patti Smith, The Jesus Lizard. Beck was, without a doubt, the most one-hit wonder nobody performer on the tour at the time and, remember, the fucking Mighty Mighty Bosstones were there as well. I liked “Loser” but beyond that, at that point, he wasn’t doing much for me. Compared to Pavement and Sonic Youth, to this day two of my favorite bands of all time, Beck was a waste of an hour.

The crowd thought so too.

This was the year after the ’94 abomination known as Woodstock stormed into upstate New York. There was a huge mud fight with Greenday at that show and, as I remember, we threw some mud at Greenday during Lollapalooza 1994 (Beastie Boys, Smashing Pumpkins, A Tribe Called Quest, Nick Cave, The Breeders, George Clinton, L7 – that was a fucking show). The mud throwing phenomenon was hot at the time; you’d think an up-and-coming artist would be honored to be the center of a mud fight.

You’d think.

Beck…he didn’t like it all that much. The mud first started coming to him at a slow pace, a gob here and there during one of his songs, after which he kindly asked the audience to lay off the mud throwing. He wasn’t rude about, the dude just didn’t like getting mud thrown at him – can’t say I blame him. But telling a couple of thousand people to not throw mud is probably not the best way to handle the situation.

Mud starts flying towards the stage. Pelting the equipment, the musicians – one piece of mud hits beck square on his hand while he’s strumming away and he throws a hissy fit, stops playing, and hides behind his speakers.

He tells the audience that he’s going to stop playing if we keep throwing mud and was answered by a chorus of boos and jeers.

When he comes back from behind the speakers he plays for about five minutes without any more mud flying towards him. I guess the crowd agreed that it wasn’t worth chasing him off-stage before he got to finish up his set.

The crowd might have thought that but one individual thought better, picked up a piece of mud, and hit that fucker right in the chest.

And in case you’re slow, that fucker was me.

And the look on his face was that of an artist that has taken too much. He was just trying to get his name out, critics where calling him a one-hit wonder, and this was his forum. Tens of thousands of people that normally wouldn’t come to see him crowded around the stage, listening to him play, listening to him as he tries to expose his vast library of hipster-folkish music to the world, trying to tell his critics that he has more in store for them.

And I hit him with mud after the audience decided to let him have his forum.

And, of course, the rest of the audience started throwing mud again. He played on, without saying a word, and eventually ended his set and walked off the stage – defeated.

You know, until he became ass-rich.

Either way I’m sure he occasionally thinks of me with nothing but contempt.

Labels: mitc

People Who Hate Me: Beck

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

0 Comments

Previous Posts