by Meg Ruddick
For the past few months, Beck has taken on the task of covering his favorite albums in a project he calls Record Club. According to his Web site , "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." He invites his musician friends to lend a hand recording the entire album in just one day. The songs and videos are then debuted in weekly episodes on the Record Club Web site . He has already finished The Velvet Underground & Nico and the Songs of Leonard Cohen with MGMT and Devendra Banhart.
This latest undertaking is the 1969 album Oar from former Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape member Skip Spence. Beck enlists the help of Wilco, Feist, and Jamie Lidell, who just happened to be in town. The first track, "Little Hands," went up today.
Record Club: Skip Spence "Little Hands" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo .
3:21 PM ET
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11-13-2009
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by Bob Boilen
In 1965, The Beatles played a 34-minute set (standard fare for the times) at Shea Stadium (which was unprecedented for the times). Fans back then were truly fanatic. No one heard The Beatles music, really. The screaming was a steady roar and the sound system inadequate.
In July 2009, McCartney came back to site that used to be Shea Stadium, and is now New York's Citi Field. The sets were five times longer and probably five times louder. McCartney and his band tipped their hat to that '65 concert by playing "I'm Down." But all the other Beatles songs they played had yet to be written when McCartney last stopped at Shea, with his old mates. Here's McCartney and his band performing "Flaming Pie," from McCartney's 1997 album of the same name. It's a song inspired by a 1961 quip from John Lennon, who said, "It came in a vision -- a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them, 'From this day forward, you are Beatles with an A.' Thank you Mister Man, they said, thanking him."
On Nov. 17, this video, and the rest of the concert, will be released in multiple formats. I'll let the press release (after the jump link) in this instance get all the facts right.
There was a time when most people listening to rock music were probably under 25, and anyone over 30 was considered old. The idea that you could be 40 and still rock was really just a bad joke. Maybe it's seeing the world with my older eyes and hearing it with my older ears, but Paul can still sing and play the most lyrical bass lines, and write great songs.
After returning to the stadium site for the first time in several decades, McCartney had this to say: "It was three great nights for the band, and for me personally, it was very exciting to be back, opening a new stadium, on the site of the old Shea Stadium, where we had played 44 years previously. Even more exciting, because this time 'round, you could hear us!"
Continue reading "Paul McCartney: Good Evening New York City" »
6:36 AM ET
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11-13-2009
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