Here's a different recording that I haven't seen on here before.
Could be mistaken though.
Last day of
"Beck Bootleg Week!"
This last
Beck bootleg is pretty special, mainly because I'm the one who recorded it! Back when I was active in the NYC experimental scene – with
ambibat and
FRANKENHÖFF – I attended a "happening", for lack of a better word, which
Thurston Moore of
Sonic Youth was one of many performers. During that show I noticed a flyer for a "secret" special performance with
Thurston Moore and
Beck at The Cooler.
Beck was in town promoting his album
Mutations and his book
Playing With Matches.
I knew this would be a special show so I brought my portable tape recorder to document the occasion. The Cooler was a pretty small venue, in a basement of some building in the meat packing district, so the place was...packed. I could tell some of the people were waiting to see
"Loser" Beck but I knew what to expect.
Beck and
Thurston came out with guitars and
Tom Surgal joined them on drums – I'd seen
Thurston and
Tom improvise together before. When they began to play it was obvious
Beck was out of his league. As
Thurston wailed on his guitar
Beck fiddled with a few blues licks and some finger-tapping. He eventually abandoned trying to keep up with
Thurston and
Tom and turned to performance art instead. He jumped around with his guitar up his shirt and ended the show by taking apart
Tom Surgal's drums piece by piece, bringing them backstage until only
Thurston was left standing. All-in-all the performance wasn't great but it was a one in a lifetime event witnessed by few.
As I started writing this post I decided to google this performance and found that someone actually released a version of it on tape cassette...I had know idea. Apparently, the piece is called
"Kill Any/All SPIN Personnel", but I'm not sure if that's official so I left mine
"Untitled". I found a download of it and compared their recording to mine...very little difference besides tone. I'm sharing both versions so you can choose which you prefer.
First up is my recording...(I found the images of
Beck on the web shortly after the performance, back in '98, and kept them in a folder until now. Unfortunately, whoever posted them cropped out
Thurston)...
Link:
http://franklinmintblog.blogspot.com...al-cooler.html
[DOWNLOAD] Beck / Thurston Moore / Tom Surgal @ The Cooler, NYC (1998)
01- Untitled (35:22)