Count Five: Beck's Favorite Things

Posted on Dec 3rd 2008 5:00PM by Benjy Eisen
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Given Beck's latest album, a pairing with Danger Mouse entitled 'Modern Guilt,' we thought now would be a good time to ask Beck to list his five favorite guilty pleasures. But he gave us a list of his five favorite non-guilty pleasures instead. "I think there was a misunderstanding," he insists. "I thought they asked me to pick my five favorite things." And so, he did.

1. 'Lost Boys of Sudan,' a documentary by Megan Mylan and Jon Shenk: This is a documentary that I saw about four or five years ago. It played on television and it was just something that struck me. I'm not sure why. There's something compelling about [it]. Obviously there's this heartbreaking story of these kids who are caught in the middle of a political upheaval, grew up in these refugee camps and were sponsored to go to America and be integrated to the American educational system. The thing that I was struck by is the way these boys, who had grown up together, really took care of each other. It's interesting to see them coming into an American culture, which is just completely alien to them. We grew up in it so we're used to it, but at the root of who we are as human beings -- it's probably pretty alien to us. It kind of shows you that we're all strangers in this whole modern landscape.

2. 'Low' by David Bowie: It's a great record from the '70s. When I was a kid, 'Let's Dance' was a big song on MTV. But this was one of his records that was more experimental; half of it is instrumental. The style and the production, it's really between genres and between periods. It's [after] that period of early '70s prog and glam-rock, but it's before punk and new wave. It's a really interesting moment and it captures a feeling of experimentation. And also, there's a simplicity to it.

Bowie's gone through so many different guises and approaches to writing, and then on that record he gets to this -- I don't know if you could call it minimalism but he's cut out a lot of sort of mannerisms. That was a big influence for my last record -- that sense of restraint. There's a lot more than meets the eye on that record.

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