Beck is in the news and this time it’s not for another sheet-music format album. No, he has announced on Australian radio station Triple J that he is about to release a new album in standard format. This is what he said:
‘I started a record, largely recorded in 2008, so I'm trying to carve out some time from all the production work that I'm doing to finish those songs before they become relics from a lost era. It's going on a half decade old at this point’.
Half decade old? What is he waiting for?
He didn’t announce a specific date for the album, whereas his ‘Song Reader’, in music-sheet format, is due on December 11th.
I don’t totally understand why he is not recording the songs on this one, or at least will he play them during an upcoming tour? He didn’t play any new songs when I saw him early this year at the El Rey theater.
A few artists are apparently thinking it is a waste too, so they are about to play them during an upcoming in-store performance in London’s Rough Trade East on December 3. This is what was posted on the store’s website.
‘Faber Social presents Beck's Song Reader
Earlier this year, Beck Hansen sent an extraordinary message to the music world when he announced his new album, Song Reader, would be released not on vinyl, cd or as an MP3, but as unrecorded sheet music. To hear the new Beck album, you would quite simply have to pick up an instrument and learn the songs yourselves.
Faber Social in association with Heavenly Music Services and Rough Trade East are proud to bring you the UK premiere album playback of selected titles from Song Reader. Ed Harcourt will lead a specially put together band of musicians, including Liverpool's Stealing Sheep, Steve Mason (of The Beta Band), Liela Moss (of Duke Spirit) Megan Washington, ex-Libertine Carl Barat and special guests to be confirmed for an evening of music, dj-ing and conversation dedicated to this unique project.’
It’s a cool idea, of course to attend the show you will have to be in London and to pre-order Beck’s ‘Song Reader.
Could Amoeba get the same idea? And because it is in Los Angeles, we could even have Beck himself interpreting his own songs for the special in-store,… Amoeba would sell copies like crazy!