I'm bloody fortunate to play in a band that rehearses an album for 3-months, gigs it once, and then moves on to the next. It's great fun, it's challenging, and for someone who's really easily bored, it's a great way to be constantly engaged with a band. So, we're doing Odelay by Beck at the moment, gig in June. It's an interesting departure for me coming from a mostly rock/funk/blues background to be playing such an eclectic and informal album. Odelay's often cited as his best album but I felt that musically it wasn't quite where I'd always placed Beck - although I realised that as an artist he'd pretty much passed me by for 30 or so years - so having a day to myself set out to do some wider listening.
f*** me! I'm honestly quite blown away by the sheer creativity, diversity, and musicality of his work. As a bass player (I use the term loosely), I'm drawn not only to some extremely well crafted bass lines but also to some wonderful bass tone, the below being a great example...
...but over and above the well known tracks (Devil's Haircut, Where It's At etc), there's also a whole load of crazy in there, although also including great bass playing and tone (alongside some lovely impersonation/plagiarism, Prince and Kravitz get on down), the fretless and and upright in this is sublime....
I'm gonna be spending quite a lot of time working on some of his basslines, once I've mastered the Odelay tracks