Amazing Cover Bands: Beck’s Record Club

Over the past year or so, Beck has be gathering friends in an LA studio to record covers of famous, and at times infamous, albums from random musicians and releasing them free to the masses. The videos of the performances are located at http://www.beck.com/recordclub and serves as a home page to the project. Dubbed Beck’s Record Club, the group features a revolving cast of people, including St. Vincent’s Annie Clark, Wilco members Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche, Jeff Tweedy’s son Spencer, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and many more. A good explanation of the project is on the site:

Record Club is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens.

It’s definitely a fun project, the most recent covered album was a Yanni record. Yes, seriously. They’ve also done Skip Spence, Leonard Cohen, INXS, and more. For a full list of the videos, check out Beck’s Vimeo page. Recommended Listening: Vitamin String Quartet: Alternative Hits of the 80's & 90's, Vol. 1