Beck: He's Where It's At -- He Says He's A Loser, But His Musical Talent Proves Otherwise

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Beck and Olivia Tremor Control, 8 p.m. tomorrow, Paramount Theatre; sold out. -----------------------------------------------------------------

He doesn't look like a savior.

Beck is a slight, blond, baby-faced revolutionary. Three years after the death of Kurt Cobain, the little scamp is breathing life back into rock.

At a time when sales charts and radio playlists are crammed with throwbacks and pretenders like No Doubt, Bush and Marilyn Manson - all familiar, formulaic and unchallenging - Beck has joyfully gone his own way, gathering elements of the pop culture all around him and turning them into fascinating, compelling, amazing abstract music that - much like Cobain's - celebrates the past while at the same time presses toward the future.

Beck - born Beck Hansen in Los Angeles 26 years ago - became famous, of course, for "Loser," the slacker anthem he originally recorded in 1993 and that lay around a couple of years before exploding into an overnight sensation.

The fact that KNDD-FM (107.7) was the first station in the country to jump on the single is among several ties he has to the Pacific Northwest. Shunted between divorced parents and two sets of grandparents while growing up, he lived for a short time in Woodinville (as well as a Hispanic neighborhood in Los Angeles, in rural Kansas with his Presbyterian minister grandfather, and in Europe with his other grandfather, a noted artist). And he maintains a close association with K Records, the influential indie label in Olympia which also was an artistic haven for the young Cobain (who moved from Aberdeen to Olympia because of K Records, and tattooed himself with the K logo). Beck has recorded an album and several singles for K, and plans to do more.

Not just a one-hit wonder

"Loser," with its unforgettable tongue-in-cheek refrain, "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me," had all the earmarks of a novelty one-hit wonder. But Beck was too crafty to let that happen. Instead of exploiting the song - as, say, Right Said Fred did with its novelty hit, "I'm Too Sexy" - Beck largely ignored the hoopla surrounding it. When performing "Loser," he often made fun of it, substituting something like "I'm a softie, baby, so why don't you squeeze me," in order to underscore that the song was meant to be taken as a joke. He still performs it in concert, but seldom does it as it was recorded.

While he could have gone on every TV talk show and awards telecast and done "Loser" to death, instead he moved on, using the popularity of the single to ensure his artistic future. He signed with the same manager Cobain had, John Silva of Gold Mountain Management, and cut a deal with the same label as Nirvana, Geffen Records (Beck appears on its DGC label).

His first DGC album, "Mellow Gold," released March 1, 1994, expanded Beck's image far beyond that of an amusing waif. His aural pastiches, made up of original music and lyrics over "found sounds" from other recordings (a k a sampling), ethnic TV programming (especially Spanish-speaking stations and Arabic music video shows on public access), Hong Kong movies, urban street racket, even animal noises, proved to be rich and fascinating, with layers of material that made repeated listenings fun and enlightening.

`Odelay' took him to new levels

But Beck really hit his stride with the release last June of "Odelay," in which his gifts as a musical collage-maker rose to a new level. His most imaginative work on the album has to do with his appropriation, in the most positive sense of the word, of rap and hip-hop, notably in the song "Where It's At," in which he gleefully celebrates the simplicity and freedom of "two turntables and a microphone," and all the possibilities they represent.

With that one song, Beck resurrected one of the lost strengths of rock music - its alliance with R&B, which used to be one of rock's biggest influences. That's where Beck departs from Cobain - "grunge" was a white urban phenomenon, while rap and hip-hop are almost exclusively of the African-American community. Beck has broken down the barrier.

Everything turns up on "Odelay." There are snippets of the folk music Beck grew up on, as well as his first love, blues, along with jazz, funk, country, gospel, even classical music. He gathers together all the diverse elements pop has divided into in recent years. Found sounds are all over the record. The one thing he wasn't allowed to use was the voice of Cell Phone Barbie ("Come to my house Tuesday for pizza!"); Mattel threatened to sue.

In concert, Beck re-creates the rich texture of his recordings with the help of a tight four-piece band. He brings the same sense of joy and celebration in his recordings to the stage. He wears flashy costumes, a la Elvis, and dances through the whole show, except when striking silly rock-star poses. He encourages audience participation.

On recordings as well as on stage, Beck makes revolution fun.