14: Loser - Beck

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Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far, a podcast where a Scotsman and

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Today we're looking at the life and times of

quintessential 90s alternative music weirdo

who may or may not be a Scientologist

the eternal and possibly immortal Beck

This is everyone's favourite 1993 music video

Yes, again 1993, our favourite year, Loser

In the time I'm chimpanzees, I was a monkey.

Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the chuggy with the plastic eyeballs.

Spray paint the vegetables, dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose.

Kill the headlights and put it in neutral.

Start car flaming with the loser and the cruise control.

Babies in Reno with the vitamin D.

Got a couple of couches, sleep on the love seat.

Someone came saying I'm insane to complain about a shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt.

Don't believe everything that you breathe.

You get a parking violation and a magnet on your sleeve.

So shave your face with some mates in the dark.

Saving all your food stamps and running down the trailer park.

Yo.

Cut it.

I didn't realize Beck's a...

Is he really a Scientologist?

He can't be.

Uh, it's...

No, he's like...

He's probably a Scientologist, I think.

But early notice, I think, he came out and said,

Oh, yeah, I'm a Scientologist.

like just second generation Scientologist or whatever.

But then later on, like recently, like I think last year,

he was like, oh, I was never a Scientologist, I'm Jewish.

So this is why it may or may not be.

I presume he might have dabbled in it as younger

and then he was like, no, fuck this shit or whatever.

He could have dabbled in something more fun than Scientology, I'm sure.

Anyway, Neo, history, you go.

This video was directed by Stephen Haft,

somewhat of a video film film director but most importantly a friend of Beck. Inspired by the music

video for Sabbath Bloody Sabbath the video was entirely shot on a 16mm camera full of random

footage of them and I quote fucking around. The film was done across the whole of California

including a Santa Monica graveyard. The music video was later referenced in another Beck video

the one for a 2014 song Heart is a Drum. It includes the Grim Reaper and another version of

back wearing a white outfit from the loser video.

This video helms the pantheon of offbeat alternative 90s music videos that include the likes of

Smashing Pumpkins, Bjork, Radiohead, Blur, The Chemical Brothers, Oasis, Beastie Boys,

etc etc etc.

The 90s were definitely the peak of bizarre videos of indie darlings and all of us who ever

worked on short films were definitely better for it.

There's no way to really describe the video beyond things happen and also cough in stop

motion.

Actors that appear in the video include Beck, Beck with the guitar, Beck with the featherhead gear,

at least one stone guy, probably possibly all of them, Dancing Ladies in Negative,

the Grim Reaper, Beck with the leaf blower. So let's talk about it.

I've seen it many times, but I was kind of watching it initially going,

how the fuck are we going to talk about this? But I think every time I watch it,

I'm actually kind of more interested about what's going on.

it's kind of the case of those videos where you don't talk probably directly about what's happening

rather just talk around it yeah i am i don't know but i couldn't really find like a correlation of

anything it just seemed to be uh more of a trippy montage maybe maybe it's like you know that's what

beck seen his early career maybe that's what he's sort of seen it reflected as you know from other

people but it just seemed like he was having a bit of fun yeah i think that was the point he was

making in the things that he at least i read in the wikipedia page where he was basically literally

fucking around which is not very difficult to guess it sounds like like the actual song itself

came from that as well where it was just improvised at one day and it wasn't really particularly meant

to say and i think i think the video the video kind of reflects that i guess would it would have

been a bit offensive if anyone spent more than a day on the video and the song considering the

actual qualities of both i know we like loser is probably his most famous song without he's anything

but one hit wonder

but honestly I would have been

surprised as he'd been like oh yeah no I spent

like two months writing it and

however days with the producer in the studio

it's literally like

okay got stoned maybe

got drunk potentially and I'm just gonna

wrap her up about things

well to quote the Wikipedia

the source of all knowledge on the internet he was saying

it was accidental but it was something that

I had been working towards for a long time

which I think does happen

can I have something in your head sort of vague idea

and then you actually go do it

and sometimes something good comes out.

What was the idea behind that?

It's just things happening.

Not even happening, just things.

Another bit I read in the Wikipedia,

paraphrasing because I can't find it,

but it's basically he was doing gigs at coffee shops

and bars and stuff like that.

People were just kind of ignoring him.

So he would start improvising sort of funny shit

just to kind of test and see if people were listening.

And I think that led to the song,

which explains a lot of the random shit

that is said lyric wise.

That's an interesting origin story of Beck to be honest

considering the quality of music he comes out today

I'm quite surprised to hear that he was not very successful.

I think he was a finger right somewhere

that he was not necessarily homeless

but a bit like car strapped at the beginning

and just kind of improvising everything.

So he was working minimum wage job at the time

to survive and doing the music at the same time.

That sounds familiar.

He must be seen as a modern hero then.

There's something to look towards.

Got to achieve his dreams in a way.

I mean, not the best circumstances, but he still got there.

Considering the type of music he does today, nowadays,

I would not be able to draw a direct line between Loser

and the songs that he did at the time,

like Sex Loss and Beer Cans or whatever,

and the stuff that he does nowadays.

They just are completely different types of music.

I've not really listened to much Beck stuff apart from this,

so I can't really speak to that.

Although I'm going to after this podcast.

No, I'd really recommend his stuff.

They're really, really good.

Especially this side of the century.

So let's have a discussion.

If we were back and were given, I believe, the budget was $300 in 1993 money.

And we had to come up with whatever the fucking bullshit we wanted to.

What stuff would we have put in our loser video to show that we are, in fact, losers?

I would like something related to farming.

Farming.

Farming.

why farming?

I don't know

it's a dirty job

isn't it

you know

shoveling stuff

all that

maybe you should have

like a

stop motion tractor

walking behind you

sounds like a lot

of money Nelly

does it all stretch

a stop motion

rake

shovel

how much does

a shovel cost?

I can get one

pretty cheap on eBay

like one for the

neighbour's garden

you need to steal one

yeah

in fact there you go

that's it

a video clip of you

stealing a shovel

It'll be random, yes.

And then later on in the video,

you see the shovel doing stop-motion shit,

so people know that's why you stole it.

Yeah, and there'll be a very angry farmer

who is washing your windows with blood, I guess.

Random thing I'd put in if I was to show

how much of a loser is it.

Probably back to when I was a teenager,

I'd be standing outside the job centre

with my little book full of jobs

that I pretended to apply for.

That'd be a good one.

I did apply for some of them

but

it's the saddest thing you said

well you know

I got there eventually I guess

I can picture David, sorry I know this is maybe a tangent

but I can picture them reading that

and going and saying ah yes Mr. David

that's astronauts

that's very very interesting

oh it's a shame you didn't get it though

you should have seen their face

when they said

what was it you studied at college

or what are you going to study at college

probably at the time. It was just like, oh,

same production, and just the look of...

Okay, so we've got

a place at Argos.

And I did get

that job. I did work at Argos.

There's another one. Me working at Argos and hating

every fucking second of it. That'd be another one.

Are we allowed to say this? Are we going to get sued by

Argos for doing bad promotion

of the employment or something?

Fuck Argos. They paid on time, I guess.

That's the only next thing I'll say about them.

That's not much.

It's not little.

Nelly, what's your loser clip thing?

My loser clip will probably be watching the video for loser and trying to emulate Beck.

Rather like 16 year old me watching the loser video and trying to emulate Beck.

Down to the randomness of him jumping around and wearing a headgear.

Just that, like, just me, like, on my sofa,

watching that video, being dressed like big.

Like when it has the Indian headdress on,

you're just kind of tentatively putting one on as well.

Well, maybe, like...

Is this racist? Don't know.

Maybe it would be, like, reluctantly.

Just be like, hmm, it's cultural appropriation, maybe?

But I'm in 2006, Bulgarian, no one cares.

Question mark?

I think we've got a solid video there.

Yeah, that would be a video of a video.

I've got the video going on a loop and there's a picture of him

jumping over a mound of dirt

or something like that. I'm pretty sure a video

does exist of me doing that exact same thing.

Probably all of us have done that.

It was a big pile of stones.

So that could go in there as well.

We've nearly got a full video.

So would you just do a shot by shot

recreation of his video, but

set in a fucking

I don't know, Kilmarnock

somewhere. I think that's like a looser

a looser interpretation.

Just us being losers. We are losers

so that's fine. Well we are doing a podcast

so yeah.

We are losers. Cool people don't do podcasts.

Cool people post inspirational

posters on Instagram.

They face tune.

They face tune their friends.

Cool people TikTok nowadays

I believe. Fine. Go into

forecast on TikTok at

I don't know how TikTok works. We're not having a TikTok

Dave. No we're not doing this.

The Chinese government does not need to know about this podcast.

They already have enough on you.

Yeah.

So let's get back to

favourite big outfit.

There's quite a lot to choose from there.

With astronauts, that's a classic, obviously.

Native American headdress thing.

There's one where he's in a white suit

with a scarf and a hat

so that's clearly the winter

or summer. He's dancing in the dust.

Yeah, that's a good look.

I think there's maybe the same suit,

but I think there is a shot where he's dressed kind of like a cowboy.

Like a sort of

hipster slacker cowboy.

Yeah, same suit.

I'll probably go for the outfit where the one where he's standing in front of that shop

where he's just wearing a hat and blue sunglasses.

And he looks like such a dog.

I kind of love it.

It's just, I think of all the outfits he's wearing in the video,

that one is the most, like, loser-like for me.

It's kind of on point.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I've just rolled to that.

That is a good one.

Probably everyone's first impression of the video,

because it's at the start of the video,

is when it zooms into him walking along,

his face is censored out,

and then he kind of lifts the sort of sensor blur off.

I always liked that.

I was like, that's a cool effect, blah, blah, blah,

and it gets your attention and stuff like that.

But thanks to a YouTube comment slash also Neely,

found out something interesting.

Do you want to elaborate?

Who, me?

You posted a comment in the notes.

Why would I have to talk about it?

Well, you confirmed it, but okay.

The comment from someone on YouTube,

I won't say their name because it's their real name,

but I can look at it on the video.

Fun fact, in the beginning, he has a blur over his head.

Apparently because he's wearing a Stormtrooper helmet,

he could have gotten sued for it, I guess.

So they had to blur it out.

Blur it while he's wearing a Stormtrooper helmet

and then a bunch of emojis.

The emojis are very important, obviously.

And yeah, that makes sense.

A slight moment of sort of an accident

or a negative thing actually turns into something cool

because I always liked that.

And it turns out it was totally not deliberate.

Although I was thinking,

how are we going to confirm this YouTube comment?

And then I don't know.

Now that I think about it,

I wonder whether I've just read this and I imagined it or I actually watched it because I definitely

remember seeing this as a kid and then I remember years later when I watched it again like on YouTube

or whatever it was blurred and I was obviously I knew it was Stormtrooper helmet so I was like oh

that makes sense because they can't afford Disney money or whatever but I I hope I'm not making this

up I'm fairly certain I've seen it if you google back Stormtrooper there's lots of blurry photos of

it so i mean so i mean there's some truth to that even if you look at the video yeah it looks like a

stormtrooper of the blur of a stormtrooper yeah you obviously you don't really know that till you

know it but i think i buy this i buy this conspiracy theory i definitely heard of that before but i also

had seen it i think i don't know i think i've seen it i'm pretty sure it was now you're making my head

hurt i like to think that bulgaria just gives that few fucks about copyright that they just put it on

wholesale. Uncensored. Uncensored.

The true edition, only

available in Nellie's house when she was a kid.

When I was four. Yeah.

Considering that quite a few episodes ago

actually, we watched

Sledgehammer. What do you make

of the coffin stop motion? Oh, you know

it's a bit of a time, isn't it?

It's a bit shit, but you know what? It's a little

charm. Yeah.

It's quite brave considering it was on

film. You know, I think that gives

some credit, I think.

No one has a charm too. Towards the end there's

just a shot of the coffin just sort of sliding

towards the shop and just for some reason

that makes me laugh because it just looks like the coffin

is sneaking up in the shop. It's like it's good it's gonna

buy some fags or something like that.

That's not towards the end. It's a one minute 41

coffin sneaks up.

See? I wasn't lying.

It must have been on wheels.

Oh wait no that bit's not snowballing.

That's on wheels that bit.

What the fuck? They had

multiple fucking coffin

manoeuvring techniques. It's completely possible that it was

on wheels they just cut the frames to make it look like stop motion.

That would actually make sense now I think of it.

Yeah, but it can't go on wheels on the dirt.

So maybe this was a complete, another happy accident,

failing upwards sort of thing.

And they were like, shit, we can't roll the coffin

because we're in the middle of a forest or woods or something.

And so like, they were just like, stop motion.

What with the coffin though?

Like, obviously coffin, then Grim Reaper and Blood and all,

but why?

Like, did they miss some part of the song?

The coffin is the only consistent thing in the whole video.

And the dancing ladies.

And the dancing ladies.

They're dancing in the graveyard, though.

Oh, yeah.

Death is a theme in this.

We found a theme.

Yay.

Although the coffin does seem to contain a possibly homeless guy playing guitar.

No, he didn't come out of a coffin, though.

He came out of a box, no?

Is that a different thing?

Fuck, I haven't watched this video.

No, no, hold on.

I'm going back to the...

Oh, no, yeah, it's a coffin.

It looks like a coffin.

It also looks like someone standing up, standing behind it, propping it up, because it kind of

shakes around.

Possibly.

Man, how stoned were they when they created this?

Probably pretty.

Well, if you look at 1 minute 19, you can see just how the stoned is.

So I'll get a screenshot of that, actually.

Just a little bit.

The answer is yes.

So yeah, starting with like this, which is them like spending $300 on a video in a graveyard,

Going to winning a Grammy for Best Album in 2014 is quite the way to go.

Man, he's really fucking prolific and he had so much music.

Every single album is kind of different from the other mostly.

He just doesn't really give a fuck, I guess.

I like it that way.

If you're a musician and you just keep doing the same things over and over, it can get kind of stale.

So I've always kind of respected musicians who don't mind going a different direction every now and again or every album, whichever they prefer.

If every album just sounds the same, you get kind of bored of it.

Well, I guess it's very difficult for some musicians who have big fandom

and specific things that their fans are expecting from them

in terms of, like, music and output and shit.

There's a lot of bands who kind of became known for whatever music

and then they decided to switch it up and fans were, like, up in arms for it.

This is kind of a common thing in all kind of art forms.

Like, if you look at movies and stuff like that,

take the fucking recent s*** thing as an example.

it's like whenever they try to do

anything even slightly different, all the fans go

and then they kind of turn around

and try and appease the fans

and then that just winds up shit because

it's not a real artistic vision, it's just trying to

keep the fans happy. I think just in

general, you know, fuck the fans, just do what you want.

You said the words

and now we're going to get

rammed by f***ing fans.

Oh no.

I'll do a beck and

censor the name of the

name of the film it's fair we're going meta this podcast so should we have a quick talk about

90s offbeat music videos because we did have for a while before i cleaned up the the list of music

we did have a fair amount of videos that were there this were kind of like the same kind of just

things happening and kind of low randomness what is your general opinion on song videos that are

like this versus videos that have a story and it depends on the song really i think it works for a

video like this because the song is kind of a random mishmash of stuff anyway but i don't know

honestly i don't watch enough music videos to have an opinion on it you can have have videos that just

are basically the story of the song in video form but they always seem a bit on the nose or you can

have a completely different story but sometimes they don't feel like they link up to the music video

or you can just have something completely random and weird i want to say that i think it's maybe

quite telling that whoever funded the video just threw some money at Beck a very small amount they

provided him with a camera film and just told him to go make a video and i think it's personally i

prefer the style of this to a lot of other videos that are you know the way they're maybe approached

and and thought out you know there are a lot a lot of other videos try to be like a film and you know

sometimes you just need a random montage of someone just having a bit of fun i saw an interesting line

in the in the wikipedia reads uh Beck insisted they were fucking around when they made the video he told

option in 1984 we weren't making anything slick it was deliberately crude they deliberately made

a point of fucking around which doesn't it make it a bit worse tiny bit no i think i've been on jobs

where you're you're there on a job but you're kind of getting what you need by fucking around and that

just kind of makes it better it's multitasking you're fucking around but you're also doing something

at the same time it's uh efficient it must be fun to to have like a really well-known video and people

I'll ask you,

so what was the creative process

behind your videos?

Like,

oh,

we're just fucking around,

mate.

In that accent,

yes.

Really surprised.

I mean,

if you look at the view count

of this video,

it's 130 million.

So it obviously resonated

with a lot of people.

And at least a million of those

were us watching the video

the last couple of days.

Some Wade reaching

fucking around right there.

So who of you guys

put the nose,

why is everything on fire?

What is on fire?

Are you joking?

Everything's on fire,

Nelly.

Did you not see the fire?

What fire?

I will list the fires.

What are you talking about?

Well, not everything is on fire, but a lot of things are definitely on fire.

You're on fire.

I know.

Fuck, I've lost the fire.

I've lost the fire, guys.

There's no fire.

I think the first fire's about halfway through.

Two minutes, 44.

He's swinging a guitar on fire.

It looks like a recording from a live show.

I think I did read that he did that sometimes.

Oh, that's fire.

When he's cleaning the window towards the end, three minutes, 15.

He's like, he's like got a squeegee to clean a car window.

That's on fire.

Kind of reminds me of like a Turkish barbers where they do that thing where they kind of

laugh the flame at your ears.

Exactly the same, yes.

So I guess it's, that's what it is.

And I think there was one more.

Oh, two minutes, two minutes 50.

There's like a trippy inverted acoustic guitar fire play.

Yes.

Yeah, there we go.

But that's not everything on fire, is it now?

Okay, okay.

Maybe I exaggerated with everything, but there's a significant amount of fire.

But if they were just fucking around, then yeah, if setting stuff on fire was a good way

fucking around I can confirm that from my child.

So this is

yet one of those

very well known videos which

I held very dearly to my heart

as it was among the ones

that introduced me to

Trinity Frog and just back

in general whose body of work has been

fantastic in my opinion

but upon revisiting the video

I kind of felt cheated and

a bit bored. It's probably the years of watching and working bad student productions that jaded me

and probably I probably need to give it some credit for being an early 90s work but is being

low budget a reason to just be so kind of cliche and overdone? Afterwards I kind of went back and

watched other Beck videos. Honestly my final point in his work is that he should just stay purely in

realms of sound like amazing music fantastic shy videos like all of them i liked this video when i

first saw it still like it it's got a certain certain charm to it which i can't really can't

can't really place i don't think it kind of matches the randomness of the lyrics and stuff like that

my only real complaint about it is uh it's difficult to talk about in a podcast because

you don't really know what the fuck's going on still like it still like it's all and i'm actually

gonna go and listen to more back stuff because i did it kind of made me realize that i'd never

actually properly listened to him over the years. I've never listened to Beck before,

so this is my sort of first experience. But I like this video. I think it kind of serves as a great

timepiece of the early 90s. And I kind of think in a way it reflects to what many people do now,

especially with smartphones. You know, people document their life, the fun bits, the boring

bits, the pointless bits, and bits only relevant to them. And I think ironically we've come around in

a full circle. And I think this video is a little bit ahead of its time, sort of documentary and

kind of recording everything. But I don't like this song. I don't like the pace. It just doesn't

work for me. I find it really dull. I just doesn't really have a tune that resonates with me. But I'm

after kind of listening to a little bit of Beck's recent work. I kind of much prefer that. And I think

I will give Beck a little bit more of a chance and maybe add it to a couple of playlists that I listen

to and see if I can sort of learn to like it. So, best moment for me is Beck with the leaf blower

for no reason, for no specific reason.

It just made me laugh when I saw it.

I also quite like the sitar

part of the song. Sounds

really cool. And the worst moment for me

is anything in the sepia tone, negative

filter that just made my eyes hurt. I just

really hated it. My favourite moment is

the opening shot where he's walking along

with a blurred head slash Stormtrooper helmet

and he takes it off. I always liked it because

I thought it was just cool that the

sensor thingy followed with him.

And I didn't know about the Stormtrooper thing until now

Although according to Wikipedia, the moment where Beck is wearing a stormtrooper mask is often censored for copyright reasons.

So it sounds like it's not always censored.

It just depends on which version of the video you see.

So a lot of people out there might have completely different memories of that opening shot.

So I think that just adds to the intrigue of that particular shot.

My worst part, at 1 minute 56, there's like a second of ridiculously overexposed footage.

and I was leaning into my monitor

trying to watch for little details

and it nearly burned my fucking eyes out

so I didn't like that.

I can't see, thanks to Beck.

Thank you Beck, but fortunately you don't need to see

to do a podcast.

244 someone, I think it's Beck,

sets himself on fire, just cuts off

just before anything bad

happens. I don't think anything bad does happen

but it just looks like he's engulfed by flames

which I thought was quite hilarious.

I just watched that part.

yeah it's like the guitar around his head yeah yeah so it's probably just i don't know what it

is the vapors or whatnot but yeah it does look pretty uh pretty violent it look it looks like he

explodes but yeah the worst part i put down the actual song itself

i mean i think that's probably a bit too it's a bit too harsh um no it checks out it's fine

if you like it you'll like it yeah sure back doesn't mind yeah he can cry in his millions

I'm going to give it an eye because Beck nearly set himself on fire and I admire that commitment.

If we had an option to kind of be on the fence, I would choose that.

But I think I would probably give it an eye based on what Beck has kind of made from this point.

I'm going to give it a no and just hear me out on this.

As a 90s music video, yeah, it's fantastic and everybody remembers it.

but I really don't think it stands on its legs nowadays.

I think it's not good anymore.

I just kind of looked at it through the eyes of not a teen and not a child

and it just doesn't do anything for me.

So I just, nah, it's not, nah.

Still love Beck, but nah.

Nostalgia has no power over Neely.

It does, but not with the video.

It was weird because I started off like that thinking this is just kind of meh,

but it kind of grew on me the more I watched it.

Yeah, but I don't know. It was the other way around for me.

It was like, I thought, oh yeah, it was really fun and cool.

And when I watched it, I was like, oh fuck, I've seen like a million of these when I was a student.

I'm bored of them.

It definitely has become a thing or has always been a thing.

I don't know, but it's a common type of video where it's just lots of random shit.

And you kind of just go...

Yeah, oh well.

Again, I'm sure he's crying his millions because of my opinion on the video.

What we do next week?

Spread your sheets

Spread your boards

Let me see those

Columns

A number between, okay Dave

You get to choose a number between 2

And 53, go

Say, say, say, say, just say a number

16

we've done that one

Dave say a number

22

we've done that one

Dave say a number

35

35

okay

so 35

foreigner

I want to know

what love is

I want to know

what love is

I want to

I got that one

okay

that is

Mark

that's next

let's take a better one

bye

bye all

bye

see you next time