Beck - Black Tambourine - Napa, Live, Thurs. 10-20-11, front row, Uptown Theatre. After ~3 years, Beck is back! And he put the band back together from the Sea Change era.. Beck: "If any of you had the idea for us to play acoustic the 1st half, take a break, then come back and play... well" (audience cheers).
Lately Beck has been a music producer who just performs at charity benefits with one-time warm-up shows like this one. He'll be playing at the Bridge School Benefit in Mountain View, CA this weekend, which is likely why there were so many acoustic songs performed this night.
Other Tidbits:
In addition to the setlist being taped to the stage, for the acoustic set, lyrics to two of the songs were taped to the speakers. One was the lyrics to 'Sleepless Nights', a song that Beck has performed with Norah Jones before, and Norah is also performing at the Bridge School Benefit. The other was 'Pocahontas' a Neil Young cover, who, yep you guessed it, is also performing at the BSB!
Beck said during the acoustic set that he dusted off a lot of his songs and covers (the BSB concert is usually acoustic), and he joked that he was glad that he made it through them. That said, Beck did mess up on the lyrics to 'Lost Cause', a song from Sea Change, and he made light of it afterwards to a lot of applause and laughter from the fans.
For the first set, the fans actually remained seated, to which Beck joked during the latter part of the set that "I promise that the second half of the show will be a little more..... livelier." lol.
There was no opening band, despite the ticket reading "Beck + Special Guest". During 'the break', the Uptown Theatre actually had an intermission of ~20 mins, where fans then spent time at the 3 bars and outdoor patio, which was nice. Of course, since we were in Napa, there was a pretty good wine selection as well as appetizers. You also could bring back your drinks to your seat, and the seats even had cupholders! Not bad :P Very nice small art deco venue in downtown Napa.. It only has 837 seats which made this show a very hot ticket, selling out within a few minutes. The first 3 rows are essentially reserved for fans who have purchased yearly memberships ($100-$500/yr) to the theatre and therefore get to purchase their seats 5-10 days in advance of everyone else.
Surprisingly, Beck only used one pick the entire concert. After which, a roadie took that pick off of the rear speakers where Beck left it and gave it to a 1st row center fan. So, I guess that $500/yr membership was worth the money after all! :P
Also surprising was that Beck did not play the song 'Debra', especially since the merchandise booth primarily sold t-shirts and tote bags that had 'Debra' printed on them, lol.
The last time I saw Beck was at Outside Lands in 2008. Back then, his guitarist was Jessica Dobson, and for 2011's Outside Lands, Dobson appeared as the guitarist for The Shins. Even more of a funny coincidence was that Jessica embedded my video of her playing 'Sleeping Lessons' on her personal website! :P
Setlist:
Acoustic
1. The Golden Age
2. Lost Cause
3. End Of The Day
4. Guess I'm Doing Fine
5. Dead Melodies
6. Pocahontas (Neil Young cover)
7. Sleepless Nights (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant cover)
8. Already Dead
9. Winter Is Blue (Vashti Bunyan cover)
10. Sunday Sun
11. Jack-Ass
Intermission
Electric
12. Where It's At
13. Black Tambourine
14. Think I'm in Love
15. The New Pollution
16. Paper Tiger
17. Modern Guilt
18. Girl
19. Gamma Ray
20. Nausea
21. Devil's Haircut
Encore:
22. E-Pro
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Beck with the best partners he ever had. Wish I were there.
patatekosmik 1 month ago
It's great to see Beck moving again. I hope we get a new album from him soon. It's way overdue.
Dubwilcox 4 months ago