Beck (lost unreleased albums from American musician; 1994-2012)
Beck (real name Beck David Hansen) is an American musician known for his diverse genre-bending music and several hit singles, including 1994’s “Loser” and 1996’s “Where It’s At.”[1][2] Beck has remained largely prolific throughout his career, but several finished albums he has recorded have not been released.
Untitled Indie Rock Project (1994-1995)
During the 1994 Mellow Gold tour, Beck played several songs that weren’t found on any of his albums. He later revealed that, at this time, he had been working on a more rock-based follow-up to Mellow Gold. Describing it as “…an album that sounds like a Pavement, Sebadoh kind of thing,” the only song confirmed to have been a part of this project is “Scavenger”, which was played live several times.
Collaboration with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (1995)
In 1994, Beck provided guest vocals for American blues-rock band Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on their song “Flavor.” It was later revealed that, in 1985, a full collaborative album was recorded that hasn’t seen the light of day. Expressing his fear that the record may have been lost in the 2008 Universal Warehouse Fire, Beck said “There’s a [Jon Spencer] Blues Explosion album I did in ’95 where I cut about 10 songs with them in New York City that’s never been released. But I don’t know [whether it’s gone], nobody’s telling us anything. We didn’t hear about it until the last year.” Despite this, Beck continues to collaborate with the band to this very day, with the two entities frequently appearing on each other’s recordings.
Lost Country Album (2001-2012)
In 2001, Beck began recording covers of country artist Hank Williams, saying “I wanted to celebrate that influence in my music and explore it.” An entire double LP of Hank Williams covers, recorded entirely by Beck without any other musicians, was cut and shelved that same year.
Later in 2005, Beck “went to Nashville on tour for two days” to work on original country music for the album release. He returned in 2012 to further work on said country, folk album at Jack White’s Third Man studios. “At the end of it, it wasn’t quite there,” Beck explained to Rolling Stone in 2013.
Rococo (2010)
Rococo was the working title of an album Beck began working on as the follow-up to 2008’s Modern Guilt. Self-described as “closer to the clutter and swerve of Odelay,” the album would have contained several long-form musical compositions upwards of thirty minutes in length.
After the album was inexplicably shelved, Beck began releasing songs from the album as 12” singles. “I Won’t Be Long”, “Defriended”, and “Gimme” all had single releases, each with an edited-down A-Side and an extended version on the B-Side. A fourth single, called “Shakey Ground”, was planned for release but never saw the light of day. Elements of three other songs, “Cities”, “Touch The People”, and “Spiral Staircase”, were later reused for Beck’s contribution to the video game Sound Shapes.
Untitled Morning Phase Follow Up (2014)
In 2014, Beck cut a follow up to his award-winning Morning Phase album which remains unreleased. “I have another album’s worth of stuff [like Morning Phase] recorded already. I don’t think I would release it now because we just did something in that vein, so there’s something to be said for trying different sounds.”
External Links
References
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/1999/02/28/arts/music-they-re-recording-but-are-they-artists.html
- ↑ Palacios 2000, p. 77