Fresh off a sold-out, symphony-backed performance at Berkeley’s Greek Theater on Wednesday night, ’90s alt-rock music icon Beck clacked through the halls of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a pair of brown loafers with gold buckles, a tan corduroy suit, bright orange socks and pink-tinted sunglasses with a tote stuffed with vintage vinyl.
He was headed to “HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 2,” part of SFMOMA’s “Art of Noise” exhibit, which features over 100 artifacts and objects from the last century of music and over 400 Bill Graham posters from the Summer of Love. Beck’s assignment: spin specially chosen records for four solid hours in front of an audience of around 100 people.
With typical rockstar punctuality–55 minutes late–he became the latest renowned artist to play SFMOMA’s room-sized hi-fi, following appearances last month by Grammy-winning producer Mark Ronson and mega-DJ Fred Again.
“This is a real thrill to get to do this,” he told the crowd, who’d gotten word through the artist’s Instagram and a late-arriving museum calendar about the mid-afternoon performance. “I brought a couple of my records from home. Originally I was gonna do all reel to reel tapes, but it was gonna be too complicated…. we’ll do that next time.”
Some fans shouted out late happy birthday greetings—Beck turned 54 on Monday—while others tried to submit requests.
“Hope you brought some Scott Walker,” said one audience member of the enigmatic British songwriter Beck has been covering on this tour. (He did).
“Did you bring any Beck?” asked a woman, to laughs. (He didn’t. But, he replied, scratching his head, “I could rap over some Henry Mancini.”)
Currently on a 13-date U.S. and Mexico tour, playing songs with local orchestras at each stop, Beck opted for a mix of ’60s alternative, space-age pop, movie soundtracks, bossa nova and beyond. While his personal playlist elicited smiles, sways and soft nods from the crowd, the musician probably needs to work on his DJing chops. Most record-transitions led to a vinyl-skip or an abrupt ending.
“In case anyone was wondering, that was music for your plants,” he said, holding up Mort Garson’s seminal 1976 album “Mother Earth’s Plantasia.” “I don’t have much to say. I’m just picking some songs I love, and then a couple I’m playing by accident. Thanks for coming along for the ride.”
The room itself is an immersive audio experience designed by Devon Turnbull, a New York friend of Beck and Ronson’s who goes by the moniker OJAS and has dabbled in graffiti, clothing design, and preeminently, audio engineering. In the all-black room, three giant speakers stand sentinel next to double vinyl decks and an amplifier. The entire setup is straight out of “Blade Runner,” which, as it so happens, was one of the vinyl soundtracks played by Joseph Becker, curator of the Art of Noise, while filling in for the late-arriving Beck during the event’s first hour.
“This is my dream living room,” Beck said at one point. “The sensory deprivation is cool.”
While the “Art of Noise” will close on August 18, Becker told The Standard that the museum hopes to keep the listening room going. Beck, it seems, could be a hint of even bigger artists to come.
“There will be some great, important people coming in the future,” he said.