NPR Music - The golden age of slacker rock

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Thirty years after the release of Beck's "Loser," we look back at its impact on the rise of slacker rock and how we still hear its influence today.Note: This episode originally ran on Feb. 27, 2024.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language. Well, dig out your case logic, CD binders, get your baggy worn out t-shirt and ripped jeans on your trench coat with the oversized shoulder pads sewn in. And flop back in that nasty old recliner you and your roommate picked up after someone left it on the street. Because maybe the most inescapable song of 1994, Loser by Beck, it is 30 years old. the opening track to the album Mellow Gold that came out on March 1st of 1994. Absolute watershed year for Beck. But also for what I think you could call the Golden Age of Slacker Rock. So on this episode, of All Songs Consider, we're going to look back at 1994,

why it was such a pivotal year, what was so special about it, its impact on popular music, and how we're still hearing that impact today. In the time I'm puttin in my braids, I'm out to cut the chuggy with the plastic egg balls, Spray paint the vegetables, dog food skulls with the beef cake pantos. Kill the headlights and put it in the news. The cruise control. Babies in Reno with a vitamin D.

Got a couple of couches. Sleep on the love seat. Someone needs to complain up in my shirt. You know, this song was so overplayed at the time. We all got so sick of it, but it sounds so good now. It just really holds up. I'm here with Cheryl Waters, DJ and host, for the amazing K-E-X-P in Seattle, Washington. Hey, Cheryl.

Hey, how you doing? All right. And the less amazing in yours, Stephen Thompson is here. Stephen Thompson is also here. And also Stephen Thompson, yes. I very vividly remember hearing the song Loser for the first time.

But I'm wondering about you all. You know, like, do you remember when you first heard it or at least what you thought when you first heard it? You know, like, why did this song stand out so much? I mean, when I first heard Loser, I was immediately captivated by the, this new folky hip-hop song with that ramshackle shuffle. It just made you want to bob your head and move.

And Seattle Station, the End, who had just switched to an alternative format a couple years earlier, were actually the first commercial station to run with it. And when I say run with it, that is an understatement. That's where I first heard it, and they played it nonstop. They joked about almost wearing out the vinyl of that. I bet. And I just loved it. It just seemed like it was coming on the radio all the time.

Yeah, I don't necessarily have an, I remember where I was the first time I heard it. The way I do with smells like teen spirit, I don't necessarily have a story associated with hearing it for the first time. But it did immediately grab me. And it's the kind of song that once a radio station picks it up, they're not going to put it down. Right. I recently had an argument with my partner about Loser, where I was, I said, I was like, God, is there a more 90s song than Loser by Beck? and she was like, absolutely, and she was right. She, first of all, she said,

Rattled off all. First of all, she said, steal my sunshine by Len is the most 90s song of all time, which I think is right. And she also said, loser, if it had come out at any point in the 30 years since, it would be just as big a hit. Yeah. Because it's basically perfect. There's a lot there. I mean, Beck was fusing a lot of sounds and then, of course, went on to fuse even more, which he's become so known floor. but his influences, what he was listening to at the sign, were old folk songs.

Like Mississippi John Hurt was one of the early super influential artists to him, Skip James, Charlie Patton, Brian Willie Johnson, Leadbelly. I mean, he did say he loved the Beatles and Sonic Youth, Cheap Trick, bands like that, but he dove really, really deep into folk music. And he also loved hip-hop. And so this song was a fusing of those two styles together, which was really, I feel sort of unique at the time. And it really was something special and captivated our attention.

And just to have that sort of observations of slice of life. I mean, it's worth noting that he grew up with limited financial means. And he didn't grow up playing in bands like his friends. Circumstances of life gave him no money for equipment or a garage to start a band in. So he started as a folk singer, just him and a guitar. And as popular as that song was, as mainstream as. it became. I mean, at the heart, it is a folk song. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's hyperbole to say that there was nothing else on the radio at the time that came even close to sounding like this.

I personally think, like, I definitely remember where I was on Alps Road in Athens, Georgia, and I was going around this bin in the road and nearly drove off the road because I turned the radio on and that boom, boom, bomb, boom, boom, came on with the slide guitar. And, I mean, like, grunge was certainly dominating everything. But coming out of, you know, coming out of 19, 93, you're still hearing Whitney Houston's bodyguard soundtrack on the radio and Erosmiths get a grip. You know, I want to push back because I think that's true that pop radio didn't have anything that sounded like loser on it. But college radio and alternative radio, I think, did have at least a lot of those pieces in place. I think that's fair.

I mean, that's always been the case, right? You know, top 40 radio is always different than college radio, college radio, always playing some, you know, stuff that. It's kind of out there compared to what mainstream is hearing. And we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the stuff that informed his work that came before it and some of the stuff that came after it. But Loser completely blows up. You can't escape it. And Beck goes on MTV's 120 minutes, the TV show, to talk about it with Sonic Youth Thurston Moore. Welcome back to 120 minutes.

I'm Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, your guest host tonight. And my first guest tonight is Beck. And this is Beck. So Beck, your song Loser, man, it's a smash hit. How do you feel about that? It's like surfing and some oil spillage. Yeah, it is like that. Smash.

Smashing. Yeah, I understand. And Thurston Moore isn't getting anywhere with Beck in this conversation. You know, he asks him about the song, and Beck pulls out a little voice memo recorder, and he plays a bunch of noise. You know, a little bit later in the conversation, Thurston Moore asks Beck about his name, Like, is Beck your name? Who are you? And Beck takes off his shoe and he throws it against the wall. What exactly is your real name? Is it Beck?

Were you christened Beck? All right. And another question I sort of wanted to ask you, though. All of this was only reinforcing the idea that this guy is a total joke, that loser is a one, you know, he's a one-hit wonder that we're not going to remember. And even Beck himself, he either didn't know what he was sitting on, or at least he also didn't think that there was much to it. people thought that Beck would be a one-hit wonder with Loser, and Beck actually thought the same.

He anticipated the backlash against loser, and so he did everything he could to rally against it. When he would play the song after it had hit the mainstream and was being played everywhere on radio and MTV, he would change it up in ways that almost made it unrecognizable. He might distort it to make it sound like a noisy, fuzz-out wall of sound, or another time perform it like a reggae tune. or even a spoken word style. And sometimes he would change up the lyrics so people couldn't sing along to it. But what was crazy was that the frenzy still ensued, even though he was doing that and having fun with it.

It is fascinating to go back and revisit that 120 Minutes appearance because so much of underground art and music that was being made in the early 90s was designed to be subverting sort of subverting, subverting the mainstream. And what ended up happening simultaneous with that is that the music industry was trying to harness that subversion. And they're saying like, yeah, subvert, subvert. But how do you?

But let's capitalize on it at the same time. But also we want to capitalize it at the same time. And so you're constantly like how surreal it is to see Thurston Moore who came up from the art rock of Sonic Youth trying to interview Beck who came up from busking and making weird art wherever he could, and all of a sudden they're on MTV, which is synonymous with the music corporate mainstream, no matter how much it was trying to present an alternative to that. See, there's this weird snake eating its tail thing that's going on where, like, how do you subvert an industry that is trying to capitalize on subversion?

Well, another story, which I think I've shared with you before, just another example of him having fun is he talked about one time when he was playing at a bowling alley right when this frenzy was going on and there was a band playing after him and he asked if he could use all their equipment and then he figured out how to tape all the keyboard notes down so that they would just play and then they had a pedal so he just hit the guitar so it would feed back and he had all this stuff playing by itself and then he just left and went home and then he called bar from home and the bartender answered and he got him to reach the phone it was a phone with a cord all the way to the microphone on the stage and hold it up. And the audience is still standing there. And then he

spoke through the phone and just told the audience he was at home. And he just disappeared. And he still got signed, which was amazing to him. You know, I went back and I read as many reviews from that time as I could for both Loser and the album Mellow Gold. And they were all, you know, for the most part, pretty glowing. A lot of five-star reviews. But there was one review that really stood out to me. It does say that Loser is a great little song like nothing else on the radio, but this review says,

as far as the rest of Mellow Gold goes, and I'm quoting the review, it's awful. Beck's rambling, meaningless lyrics are cute and four-minute doses, but they're really grating over the course of 12 songs. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Picking a back

up here, says, perhaps the most offensive thing about Beck is that slavering 40-year-old critics will call him things like Slacker Poet. And of course, the voice of Generation X, expect mellow gold to land in cut out bins within the year. Oh, boy. About the wrongest I have ever been.

Yeah. I mean, talk about... Was that you? Yeah, it was. Oh, my gosh. I was so wrong. And boy, you know, I've gone back and read some of my 90s writing. It's pretty bad all around.

I so wanted to say, like, where's this guy now? Oh, he's sitting right here in this studio. Like, how did you get this job? Talk about some whiffs, Stephen. I mean, how could you think that? How could you listen to the rest of Mellow Gold and think that? So probably the biggest mistake that I routinely made as a reviewer in the 90s was I was constantly listening to music through the prism of like,

who's trying to sell this to us, man? And so I often made this mistake, the mistake of conflating the machine that was feeding us music with the artists who were making that music and thinking of, the artist as if they were part of that machine. And so I was very skeptical and very frustrated with the way that Generation X was covered in the media in general. And I listened to this record and heard this kind of weird, shambling sound, and it felt kind of phoned in. It felt rushed. It felt incomplete. And it sort of felt like, I got to fill out an album with something. And that's not actually what was happening. I wound up kind of.

synthesizing all of these kind of wrong-headed impressions into this review that was wrong. What drew me to the song was Beck's mischievous sense of creativity. He seemed to have, to me, no attachment to his artistic self-image. He was interested in the currency of cultural images, and I think that's part of the magic of why his music and art resonates with people. It was recognizable to all of us. And in that song, where he's trying to fuse folk and hip-hop, He recognized and appreciated the similarities between the two styles of music, the way that they both chronicled day-to-day life. And to me, actually, it felt genuine to me.

I mean, let's listen to some other things from Mellow Gold here. Here's the song that I always love called Truck Driving Neighbors Downstairs and then in parentheses, Yellow Sweat. He's stained buck-tooth, backwoods creep, goes to sleep. It's just a shit, kick and speed, taking truck, drive. I laughed out loud when I first heard this. To your point, Cheryl, he's so playful. And, you know, he's got this, it sounds like a home recording.

I always wondered if it was staged. Oh, no, I know the story behind that. I mean, the truth behind these songs is that they were based on actual people in Beck's everyday life. And, I mean, this is like one of the wildest anecdotes. These couple, they were a couple. These truck drivers lived in the apartment. downstairs on him and they were just whacked out on drugs. And one day they were having an actual fight.

And one of the guys threw something out the window. And Beck was recording on his four track at home that day. And it was right before they finished mellow gold, I think. And so he lowered his recorder out the window and captured the fight going on through the broken window. Although he said that was like going on all the time. He talked about these neighbors all the time to the people in the studio we was recording with.

So one day when he shows up at the studio, that recording on a four track, they couldn't resist putting it on the record. I mean, we should probably attempt along the way here to define what slacker rock even is. But to me, this song also perfectly captures what you might call the trappings of the slacker life, right? I mean, you're living in a crap apartment with crap neighbors, probably working a crap job. You're just trying to record this thing at home and this fight breaks out. Someone else pick a song from this album. Well, one of the songs I really love on that album, and it's actually the one I play the most on the radio, and 30 years later, I still play it all the time on my show, is beer can. And that song, well, Beck, by the way, was anything but a slacker. He worked so many jobs. He was a painter. He sold hot dogs and root beer. He just about everything. He worked in a video store. He moved refrigerators and furniture. And one thing he did also,

was he was a leaf blower and that was described in the song Beer Can which I love which I think has a similar vibe to Luzer. You know, some of the songs on Mellow Gold are very quiet and contemplative and fulky and a number of them, five or six of them, have that upbeat ramshackle shuffle

and those are some of my faves and this is another one of those. Eating the laughing gates, swirling chickens cotton flag out of focus, much too black coming down, shining deep game show suckers try in the But I got a drug

And I got the buck And I got something better than love How you like me now Pretty good going on Feeling strong My sleeves Choking like a one-man dustbow Talking and cold went down

This ironic Swagger You know Like how you like me now How do you not love that song? And then he's like I quit my job blowing leaves You know

It's just like Yeah dude I love you now I love you now is my answer to that. 30 years later, I love it as much as I did the first time I heard it. Well, 30 years later, I love it quite a bit more. Now I'm running like a flaming pain. The road just shake your bones to let it all get loose.

I want to play the song that closes the album. It's called Black Hole. It was just such an arresting way to end this album, I thought. You know, an album that for the most part had been pretty ridiculous at points. It's just Black Hole, the song, it's just very. reflective, it's very somber, and lyrically, a little more direct. You know, he seems to be saying in the song, it's like he realizes that life isn't a joke, that things are actually not great, and he reflects on when he was a kid, and there's even a moment where he's sort of

telling himself and the kid that he wants was that everything's going to be okay. I don't know, for me, a song like this actually helps keep this album from being the novelty, Stephen, that I think you thought it was. You know, there was clearly to me a lot more rolling around in this guy's head. Well, I think that song should have tipped me off a little bit. When I first heard it, that there is more to this guy. You know, that this is not necessarily somebody who's even trying to duplicate loser or trying to catch lightning in a bottle with the one song that everyone knew, that he had more ideas and more sounds and more tones and more approaches in him. And that song really hints, which will obviously get to some of his

subsequent records, that hints at some of the stately beauty that he's able to accomplish in some of his later records and hints at how much depth there actually is in him as an artist. I think the success of Loser gave Beck license that anything goes. And we were talking earlier about how his lyrics were initially dismissed by critics. They said they were just Ward Salad, a bunch of nonsense strung together. But they were very in. intentional. Beck was incredibly well-read. He dropped out of school at 15 and spent his days in the public library. He had a poetry magazine when he was a teenager and he was influenced by the anti-folk movement that he was a part of during a short time living in New York, which was just prior to recording loser. And his grandfather, Al Hanson, was a mainstay of the Fluxus movement and artistic movement of the 60s. It was based on found art and collage. And it was marked by wit and spontaneity. And that sense of turns up in Beck's work. He's definitely very influenced by that free associative surrealism in songs as his grandfather was in art. And I mean, he thought rap was so exciting, like modern poetry

opening this whole new space for modern music. And he was excited about doing wild poetic things with lyrics to put art into the lyrics. And he felt like a song could be art on the level of a painting or a great film. And that excited him. He didn't want to be. He didn't want to be art. He didn't want to be art. He want to be cliched or trite. And I think even on this early album, we could see the breadth of his talent and which he went on to illustrate so beautifully over the year since then. So we have to take a quick break, but we will talk more about Beck and 1994 in Slack or Rock when we come back. So we've been talking about, you know, Melo Gold, what a big hit it was for him and why 1994 was such a pivotal year for him. But he actually released

three albums and what he called an EP, but it has 12 tracks on it. In January of 94, he had a Western Harvest Field by Moonlight, February. He has stereopathetic soul manure, mellow gold in March, and then in June he has one foot in the grave. We don't have to go through all of them, but I thought there were some highlights that were worth noting. Cheryl, you mentioned how, like, nonsensical a lot of people thought his lyrics were. I thought we could hear a little bit of the song, Satan gave me a taco. Satan gave me a taco. Satan gave me a Taco from stereotyopathetic soul manure. It's a pretty easy narrative to follow, but it's also just so absurd.

Satan gave me a taco, and it made me really sick. The chicken was all raw, and the grease was mighty thick. The rice was all rancid, and the beans were so hard. I was getting kind of dizzy, eating all the lard. I did read somewhere once when he was sitting outside of a club in New York, just noodling on his guitar. And a guy sat down next to him and just started singing a song about potato chips. And that blew his mind. And he went inside that club and just free-formed a song similar to that.

And that really, and he got totally immersed in that anti-folk movement in the short time that he spent in New York. And it was just such a freeing feeling. to him that you could just really write a song about anything. We should also hear a little bit of Roeboat, another song from Stereopathetic Soul Manewer, notable in part because it was later covered by Johnny Cash on the American recording series that he did, and Johnny Cash clearly an artist who influenced Beck. Well, one thing I'd like to mention is with so many albums released that year, the widely experimental Stereopathetic Soul Mnour and One Foot in the Grave,

I actually had forgotten about the other one that you mentioned, Robin, but I bet his fans really felt like they had struck gold. Here's this brand-new artist that they discovered, and then there were all these records for them to buy in their local record store. Yeah, I mean, it was like whiplash to me as a fan, just discovering all this stuff. And also, I kind of lost the thread of the timeline, so they came out so quickly that, and they didn't feel necessarily in any logical order to me. Well, and he had two label deals simultaneously.

So the major label had the right of first refusal, but if they didn't want it, then he would put them out on another label. And so it was hard to tell the chronology of what he was even recording. Well, and that was unheard of at the time. I mean, he'd been writing songs for years. I think he probably has. like six or more albums worth of material that he was working on, and he really valued his art.

He was holding firm to what he wanted to do with his music, which was to release his bigger studio productions on Geffen, and the more foxy-bloosy songs, the stuff that Geffen would be likely to pass on, he wanted those to come out on independent labels. I know when the bidding frenzy was going on at the end of 93, he was in no rush to make a disaster. decision because he was going to hold firm to what he wanted. No one wanted to offer him that

at first. And so he just took off for three days to Olympia and recorded one foot in the grave. But Mellow Gold had already been recorded. And the funny thing is, I don't even think Geffen knew what a gifted artist they really had. I mean, more than one record executive told him that really seeing Mellow Gold's follow-up Odley, which is one of my favorite of his albums, would be a big mistake. And that's his biggest selling album of all time. Did they, Did you ever glean what basis they had for saying that? Because, like, Odalay to me, I was obviously a mellow gold skeptic. And by the time Odelay rolled around, and I heard it, I was like, oh, actually, this is amazing.

Right. I mean, he talked about playing loser for the guy who signed Bon Jovi. And he said that he liked it, but he didn't know what slot to put it in. But then the whole Gen X scene began to take shape. And then all of a sudden they had a compartment for what Beck was doing. I mean, there's a long story history, Stephen, of labels having no idea. A label had a wrong idea? If a label can't label something, then they don't know.

I mean, you know, like Wilco with Yankee Hotel Foxtrotter, whatever. There are million examples. You know, like, well, we don't know what this is, so it can't be good. Cheryl, you mentioned one foot in the grave. Let's hear the title cut to that record. There's an old hobo on the patio and an old bob while on the funeral fire. Roll out the carpet and it better be ready. Well, he better be long as the troubles in my head.

You'd be living one for it in the grave. Well, he loved to play this song live. You can hear that he's totally going nuts on the harmonica and yelling. People eat it up. I mean, the people who got to see him at those early shows just love that. I can't remember if it's the first time I saw Beck Live. I think the first time I saw him live was actually in 1996. I didn't see him until then after O'Donay came out.

And I was such a big fan of O'Dolay. And I drove all the way down from Seattle to San Francisco for those Tibetan freedom concerts in 1996 in Golden Gate Park on that big pole field. There were like 100,000 people there. And Beck wasn't even on the lineup. He was like an in-between artist. And I expected he was going to come out and play those songs from Odley. And he didn't. He played some songs from One Foot in the Grave.

And I think he was just like, on a little, I don't even know what it is. I'm not a musician, but some little DM box or something. I mean, as much as he can be a showman, he also really likes that connection with an audience and he likes to surprise you and challenge you, I think. And that song definitely does that as simple as it is. It's kind of like seeing it live. It's like, what is this?

So in a lot of ways, you know, Beck becomes the poster child for this thing that's happening that's blowing up. You know, we're seeing it sort of reflected back at us in all kinds of ways. You get films like in reality bites and clerks and airheads or TV shows later like my so-called life for freaks and geeks. You know, it's just like the industry is capitalizing on this in all kinds of ways. But Stephen, to your point earlier, he was not the first by any means to do this. So let's talk a little bit about what came before Beck and, you know, maybe some of the things that were informing his work. Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily stuff that was getting played on Top 40 radio. I don't mean to suggest that he had forbearers that were massively successful. But I do think he grew out of, as Cheryl said, not only the anti-folk movement, but also out of hip-hop and also out of blues music and also out of different kind of indie experimentation that was happening in some cases on major labels before mellow gold came out. And I wanted to play a little bit of three different songs. I'll do this. chronologically, one song from 91 and two songs from 92, so like right before

Mellow Gold came out. I want to hear a little bit of the song Brand New Day by Basshead. Yo, so it's been up with your girl, man. My heart feels like it's been over and over kicking on a roller coaster ride. And the thing that I feel on the inside are wisely covered up with pride. They say every cloud is it lining, but like the sky, I am so blue. I don't be. It's sweat in my face, not crying.

And though no talk that you'll keep going. Keep thinking over an moment. Don't you know that it's a shirt? It's a bit of a shame. That we've been together for so long now I'm from back into the game. Buying drinks. And getting names. Silly dates and silly dates.

Dane. All the silly stuff I go through, you know, I wish they're still the same. Say every cloud is a lining, but I wonder if it's true. Don't worry about it. You never catch me crying. I did not know that's not got you. Consider the positives, ma'er. I did not know basshead until you flagged this for me.

I heard this and immediately thought, yeah. One of my favorite albums of the 90s, Basshead, Michael Ivy, who's actually from here in Washington, D.C., made this kind of mumblecore, slacker, hip-hop, very conversational. Took all these little weird hairpin turns. At one point in the song that you play, there's just a record scratch. Wait, wait, wait a minute, man. somebody else kind of jumps in is like, you're taking a break. How about you? Give me one. And then all of a

sudden, boom, jichabum. And so like ideas kind of just flying all over the place at the same time as the tone of the song is ambling along as if the guy can barely sit up from his couch. He's so stoned. And I think Beck and the hip-hop influences that he drew, I don't know if he was directly influenced by bass head, but there was definitely a movement within hip-hop that I think helped lay the groundwork for what Beck did later. I also want to play a little bit of Push the Little Daisies by Ween. That was a major label record that was very big on college radio and very weird. So he wasn't the only one he was being weird.

Yeah. And so there was certainly precedent for incorporating very weird sounds into music that had major distribution. And finally, I want to play a little bit of the song Detachable Penis by King Missile from 1992. too. I woke up this morning with a bad hangover and my penis was missing again. This happens all the time. It's detachable. This comes in handy a lot of the time. I can leave it home when I think it's going to get me in trouble or I can rent it out when I don't need it. So again, like there's a little bit of a spoken word vibe to it. John S. Hall is from King Missile is of that anti-folk movement. But that was a big college radio hit for obvious reasons. What I'm just saying is, saying is not necessarily like Beck had it easy, but he did kind of come up out of this

petri dish where more experimentation was kind of leaching out into what was to become mainstream. I agree. Definitely wasn't inventing experimentation. And there are some bands that embody some of that quote-unquote slacker sensibility. I also know he was influenced by just noise rock. He loved Sonic Youth, and he loved a band out of Boston, garage rockers, Pussy Galore. So he took all kinds of disparate elements and put them into his music, whether you can hear those direct influences, which I actually think you can, because he's doing so much in that, in his music. And I don't know if he was influenced by Lemonheads, but they definitely embody that Slacker rock sound films like Slacker. created a vacuum for mellow gold to exist in bands like the lemonheads, I think. I mean, any number of songs would embody that.

I think half the time from Lovie is arguably a song that sort of shows an entire generation of slackers what the lemonheads could do. Hey, Robin, can I ask permission to just derail this entire conversation and just take turns playing our favorite songs of the early 90s? because I would do, first of all, an entire segment on the Lemonheads alone. Yeah. This is a little janglier than I think of Slacker Rock to be. Oh, but Evan Dando. Yeah. Maybe we should just try to, like, how would you even describe Slacker Rock?

I can't. I can't do it. I mean, I think resistance to stardom is a part of it. Like a resistance to the trappings of the promotional. It's an. attitude, you're saying, more than a sound? Yes, and I would argue that a slacker really wants to be famous. But they don't want to appear that way, which is why I don't think back as

a slacker. Well, that's the thing. You know, you talk about what a hustler he was and how he was always working at, you know, when I was, as we're all part of Gen X and when we were coming up at that time, you know, I remember being called lazy all the time just because I was part of that generation. I thought, man, I'm working three jobs. I had no health insurance. I'm making, you know, $6 an hour.

And, you know, I didn't feel like a slacker at all, but we were labeled that because we were bucking so many conventions that people were used to at that point. I don't think you can overstate the resentment felt by our generation when we were in our 20s. I mean, there's still residual resentment of baby boomers today. And, like, in the early 90s, that was at its absolute apex. Like you used up all our resources, you took all the jobs, and you're calling us slackers?

All right, we have to take a quick break, but we'll have more right after this. It's all songs considered from NPR Music. I'm Robin Hilton. I'm here with Cheryl Waters of K-E-X-P and NPR Music, Stephen Thompson. We're talking about back 1994 and all things, slacker rock. I do think that the one sort of unifying thing that I think that you hear in a lot of what I think of a slacker. Rock is it's very self-deprecating often. It's kind of woozy or droll or deadpan. It's super, super chill. But then you have, if you take what Beck was doing, then it's also got a sense of humor in it, too. That's a good point. I do think when I personally hear the term slacker, I don't think of the NUE of a whole generation, I think of a vibe of a sound. And even though, like you just said, the ebb and the lemon heads is very jank.

which is also a sound I love in music, it has that chill vibe to it. A slacker has a vibe in my definition of it. I wanted to play a little bit of the band Sebedo from their album, Bubble and Scraped the song Soul and Fire, Stephen. Oh, okay, yeah, you're just going to play some of my favorite songs of all time. All right.

You know, it's also got this sort of, I think this is maybe another unifying thing, is that it has a DIY quality. Everything's a little off-mic. It sounds like they recorded it in their living room. But to me, Sebadoe is sort of what you might call the missing link between the grunge era and Slacker Rock era. You know, it's got a touch of grunge. It's got a touch of shoegaze, really, in it.

Nowhere near as playful is what Beck was doing, but a lot of similar vibes. Well, I think it's extremely heartfelt. You know, Lou Barlow from Sebado is nothing, if not a heart on his sleeve mope. And I think it's interesting thinking of Sebado as a missing link to Beck, because one thing that has made Beck and door for 30 years and counting, is that along the way he's made music that is deeply, deeply, deeply heartfelt. Yeah. And that is accessing sophisticated layers of emotion and really accessing something deep inside

himself. And I think in some ways, the fact that he had played the jester so much up to that point made his kind of excursions into something more heartfelt, made them hit that much harder. I mean, it wasn't that much time after Mellow Golden Odolade that he ended up giving us sea change, which is this like gorgeous, deeply felt elegy to lost love, you know, with very plain spoken lyrics, like completely turns his sound upside down. Like no one in a million years in 1994 would have predicted that this guy would do something like sea change. But to your point, Stephen, all those feelings and ideas were always there percolating.

Yeah. What's something else, Cheryl, that came before Beck and might have informed what he was doing? Well, another band that was certainly prolific, as I think of Beck being, is guided by voices. And at the time, you know, they were mining all kinds of feelings. And I don't even know what. For their lyrics, I mean, in the way that Beck could just write about anything, Bob Pollard has said that, you know, he goes to the bathroom to take a crap and he'll come out with a song. I'm not sure what to think of that.

You know, he's just always writing a song. And that's what I think about back in those early days, you know, just riding a bus and playing bind Willie Johnson songs and putting the lyrics to what he's seeing in front of him to the songs. And I think the sensibility of guided by voices really reminds me of Beck. And I don't actually think there's a band more prolific than Guided by Voices. I remember when Guided By Voices put out their 100th album? That was 25 years ago, right? That was in 1998. They're still doing it.

I mean, they have so many albums. Vampire Antitis preceded mellow gold, so I just chose that one at random. But number two in the Model Home series is a great song. My automated spouse has a bug in her blouse, invading my private space. as sacredly she sees and sacredly she sees

and sacredly she sees and sacredly she sees and sacredly she sees we've already talked a lot about hip-hop and how much that influenced his work I think bass head is a great example Stephen when I was not aware of at all I think you have to think of Run DMC

maybe De LaSole certainly Beastie Boys I think you had check your head from the Beastie Boys in 92. Ill communication came out in 94. These were albums that, you know, they were full of tracks that, you know, built on samples and just these really sick beats and obviously a sense of humor and play and all of these things were part of Beck Sound, particularly as he, you know, progressed through the rest of the 90s. I also mentioned films that came out, you know, like reality bites and stuff like that. But before Beck, we had, I think you have to say,

Bill and Ted in 89. That was 1989 and 91. Slacker, the film came out in 90. Wayne's World, 92.

What a time to be in college. What a time to be alive. Singles, 92. Dazed and confused, 93. I mean, it was in the air. It was inescapable.

Let's do one more band, I think, that we have to mention that came out at that time. It was kind of before Beck and after Beck. and that's pavement, the band pavement. You know, they had to be an influence.

Their debut album, which was universally acclaimed, if not a big chart topper, was slanted and enchanted. That came out in 1992. And then in 94, the same year Mellow Gold comes out, we get Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Darling, don't you go and cut your hair? Do you think it's going to make him change? I'm just a boy.

And that's a pretty nice hair. I mean, you listen to the song, Cut Your Hair. It even sounds a little like Beck. Even the voicing and the phrasing and everything. Well, I think the trajectory is somewhat similar. The early pavement recordings and some of the albums of odds and ends that were kind of cropping up around that time captured a band that was mutt that was very, very freewheeling. And then on Crooked Rain, Cricket Rain, they had sort of harnessed it into something that was true to what pavement sounded like, but still catchy and commercial.

And so I think of their trajectory. Obviously, pavement didn't blow up quite as big as Beck. But there is some of that same thing where you have all these, like, really intriguing basement recordings and then recordings that were huge and polished and kind of suitable for mainstream acceptance. And certainly not as big as Beck, but Stephen Malcolmiss has continued until current day. So he's had a pretty long and successful career. Yeah. I don't know.

Do you think it's fair to say that some of these, you know, like maybe these bands, didn't get as big as Beck, but when you look at the bands that came before him, that maybe they got a second look later on because of his success, or because this whole sound kind of blew up? Oh, absolutely. I think people all get caught in that whirlpool when something becomes popular, and it opens the doors for other people to find that success as well. One thing that's really interesting to me is as much as Beck was associated with the slacker rock,

scene at that time, he left it pretty quickly. I mean, you know, he just kept reinventing himself in just these incredibly surprising ways. We mentioned O'Dolay. That came out in 96 just a couple years later. We could do a whole show just on that record. We mentioned C-Change that came a few years after that. On mutations. Mutations. I mean, there's so many, and all of them are just incredible. But Slacker Rock itself, you know, it never totally went away. And if anything, I feel like it's kind of been enjoying

an appropriately understated revival. It's not trying to. It's not trying to. It doesn't want to bother anybody. You know, a kind of revival in some ways. How are we hearing that now? Who are some of the artists who are making what you could call Slack or Rock now? First that comes to

mine, one of my favorite artists of all time, Courtney Barnett. She tells it like it is with a refreshing earnest appreciation for literalism and this amiable deadpan delivery. The song History Eraser from the double EP, a C of Split Peas, is a perfect example of that. Stephen, what's one of your picks? Well, in preparing for this, Cheryl mentioned a couple of artists who I don't think should go unnamed Kurt Vile, Mac DeMarco, you know, who are trafficking in that very laid-back, very mellow,

not seemingly trying too hard but actually with a deep work ethic behind it kind of music. I would mention Alex G. Who put out a great record a couple years ago called God Save the Animals. And as an example, it's here a little bit of runner. So again, you know, you hear that song

and it's got this sort of wave-like feel to it. Like it's kind of bobbing on a gentle sea instead of like doing something really hard charging. But at the same time, as with these other artists, there's an enormous amount of craft an enormous amount of effort being put into seeming like it's not trying as hard as it is. That's another great way to define it, I think. I have to mention car seat, headrest, for sure.

I think Vivian Girls, Speedy Ortiz, Cherry Glazer to some degree, maybe a little more polished. Yeah, but also Frankie Cosmos, you know, Greta Klein's project. She's someone who I think she channels a lot of that slacker energy in the best ways. Like, her debut album was called Zenthropy, Zentropy, which is both the idea of chilling out, you know, getting Zen with life, but also coming up against entropy, a loss of energy and degradation and resistance to change and randomness. It's just a brilliant name, Zentropy. Frankie Cosmos had another album out in 2018 called Vessel that had the appropriately named song, Apathy. You know, she's talking about being 22 years old. she's tired of herself.

She thinks that, you know, maybe she's just boring. She's hoping for some clarity and life and companionship. Also, I think, very much. Well, and I think Frankie Cosmos is a good example of the fact that these movements that Beck sprung up out of also continued alongside him. So, you know, anti-folk never really went all the way away either. You know, so Greta Klein, I think, is influenced by that as much as she is by Beck. Same goes for something like the moldy peaches, you know, which made a lot of

all these great anti-folk records that kind of are speaking to some of those same ideas, but musically are heading off in other directions. Well, you know, one trend in popular music that I have noticed lately is that, and this is something we've talked about on the show, is how optimistic and life-affirming it's become. And it's not just life-affirming, really. It's, you know, a lot of songs that celebrate the self and how awesome we should all think we are. And, you know, I'm down with that. I think that's important.

But I got to say, I miss what you might call the hyper-realism of slacker rock and so much of the music that was coming out back then. I guess what I'm wondering, and I'll throw it to both of you, is what do we want to keep from that period and that sound? You know, not just how we want to remember it, but, you know, like maybe what's worth holding on to. Well, if we look back 30 years to Mellow Gold, I think we can say that record opened the door for so many things it came after. it had such an impact on artists making music these past three decades. I think it's pretty fair to say. Musicians today, they're blending genres, mixing up music from all kinds of different sources, and Beck was one of the pioneers who fused organic and sampled sounds in a way that

spoke to that generation of indie music lovers. I've been lucky enough to see Beck many times in concert since that first show at Golden Gate Park, and I always feel so euphoric afterwards. His music and energy, it just makes me happy. And he does still play loser regularly in concert. I feel like he's totally embraced that legacy and just revels in the joy that it brings to his fans. And I should add that it is now recognizable the way he performs it. And I know I'm not alone when I sing along at the top of my lungs every time I see him play at live. Yeah, I think Cheryl put it really well. I think that one of the big mistakes that I made in that very wrongheaded review of mellow gold that we hit on earlier in this conversation is I think I defaulted to assuming that this guy was chasing trends. And he just wasn't.

He was making the kind of music he wanted to be making. And it just happened to suddenly have a lot of commercial interest descend upon it. And I think throughout his career, he has seemed to make music that he has wanted to make when he wants to make. it regardless of genre, regardless of trend. And I think that is what has worked for him so brilliantly now going into the fourth decade of his career. And so I think that is what has given him his longevity. That and the ability that he really showcased as these albums kind of rolled out over the 90s, the ability to go deep and access emotions that weren't oppose. I think that's so important, and that's what has caused him to really be as enduring as he is.

I think at the core, he's interested in people and he has a deep curiosity. Rob and I think of a story you were telling about the one time that you interviewed him, and when he was off mic, you could hear him talking to the people. Maybe you want to tell the story. Yeah, he was talking to the engineer and anyone else in the room. He was doing the interview at Capitol Studios, and he wanted to know, hey, man, who all's been here. Like, he sounded like an eager, curious teenager. I don't know. I think there's just a real light in him and a spark, that curiosity that has driven him. It's just very inspiring.

Well, this has been a lot of fun. I could just keep on talking about the 90s. Like, yeah, Stephen, you just want to just hang out after this, Stephen, and just play 90s hit show. Recreate our college radio show. I'm in. I'm in. Let's do it. So much great music then. Well, that's the thing. I don't I don't miss that period because I can and do play those records all the time. When's your shift if people want to tune in anywhere online and listen to KexP.org? When are you on? I'm on Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pacific Time. I would love to have you join me.

All right, Cheryl Waters at KexP, Stephen Thompson from NPR Music. Thanks so much for doing this with me. Thank you. Thank you. This has been so much fun. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.