Monday, June 22, 2009

The World's Got Everything In It

Perhaps that's not an entirely true statement, but certainly over time the New Yorker has had pretty much everything in it. But even they have exceeded themselves with this year's Summer Fiction issue, which includes not one, not two, but eleven pages from the forthcoming R Crumb edition of the Book of Genesis. The first eleven pages, at that. You wouldn't buy it just for that, because you will, of course, be buying the book itself when it comes out. (Although it also has a Dan Clowes cover, the second in a month (!), and fiction by Jonathan Franzen, to further lure you in.) But you should at least sneak into a newsagents to flip through the Crumb pages (you will find them towards the back). The most surprising thing is how closely it resembles pretty much any of Crumb's work from the last 40 years. (Adam and Eve, particularly, come across as archetypal Crumb characters, both in the way they look and the way they are.) In fact, it will be an interesting exercise, after reading the R Crumb Book of Genesis, to go back to his other work and see if, perhaps, one could argue that Crumb has been a "biblical" writer all along. (I see a thesis coming on.)

And while we are on the subject of modern interpretations of classic works, it is worth clicking through to beck.com, where the Beckmeister is showing off his latest project: getting a bunch of friends together to record their own take on a classic album. In a day. Unrehearsed. The first album to be tackled is "The Velvet Underground & Nico". At the time of this writing you can watch Beck and his friends running through a gorgeous version of "Sunday Morning", complete with upright bass and marimba. Beck is perhaps under-recognised as a singer: over time he has convincingly tackled everything from Prince to Hank Williams to front-porch southern blues. So it should be no surprise that he sings the lead part here really well, but what makes the song work is the hauntingly gentle backing vocals.

You might assume that an exercise like this is in aid of helping a musician to find, or in Beck's case rediscover, his or her own voice, or to figure out which direction to go in next. It might also amount to airing one's undergarments in public. But with Beck what you see has always been what you get, and every album has been, in some way, a step towards somewhere else, and anyway "Modern Guilt", although I suspect I have neglected to mention it here, is one of my favourite albums of last year. The songs are simple and, for Beck, tightly focussed and arranged, and the whole thing is wrapped in a dense layer of pastoral psychedelia, which is almost always a good thing. So my advice is just to enjoy this latest little venture on its own terms, and with a healthy degree of curiosity as to where it might lead.

(I am also interested in the fact that, of all the music that I have exposed the boys to over the years, the artists who have stuck fastest are Abba, The Beatles and Beck. Fortunately, there is usually enough going on in Beck songs that it is possible to listen to them over and over again without getting tired of them. I don't know how many times I have heard "Midnite Vultures", and yet I still love it. Possibly more than ever. But I can't figure its appeal to pre-teens; exponentially so something as diffuse as "The Information". Carl's level of knowledge of Beck has extended to lyrical minutiae. Which can be a challenge for a parent. I have a feeling Beck is making it up as he goes along. "We've got warheads stacked in the kitchen" was today's example. Dad, what are warheads? Well, they're the explosive pointy end of a missile. Why would you have them stacked in the kitchen? Except, "Warheads" are also an incredibly sour lolly that Jules occasionally and somewhat masochistically buys at the shop. Which it makes sense to have stacked in the kitchen. So who knows? Another time we were stuck on: "Word up to the man-thing / She's always cold lamping." Dad, what's cold lamping? Like I have any idea. (Except for a sneaking suspicion that I am better off not knowing.) (I see another thesis coming on. Beck studies. Carl and I could do for Beck what Christopher Ricks did for Dylan. Except we're not, you know, professors of literature. Or of anything else for that matter.))