09.21.08
gasoline - airborne toxic event
Airborne Toxic Event, a band from Los Feliz, CA, has a series of acoustic versions of their songs that are completely amazing. The song below, gasoline, features brush hits on a snare and an upright bass, for a version that surpasses the album song.
I saw Beck last night, performing with his father and string orchestra conductor, David Campbell at the Hollywood Bowl. The show was well designed. He started off with Loser, the song that propelled his career, to get it out of the way, and raced through 3 minute arrangements of Odelay, Hell Yeah, Timebomb, and other classics. The orchestra came out for 4 to 5 songs, to wonderful effect. I was disappointed before by the last strings/band collaboration at the bowl, when I saw Belle & Sebastian and the Philharmonic in 2006. In that case, the music was just too diffuse and the melody and vocals were washed away in over-orchestration. But not so, with Beck, probably because David Campbell did much of the original orchestration for the Beck albums anyway. And finally, I forgot about the ability to put on great light shows at the Bowl, and the Beck producers took full advantage of using light to amplify the effects of the music.