Beck Celebrates "Modern Guilt" Birthday With Acoustic Version

Beck continues to add noteworthy new departments to his refurbished Website, launching the site's new Videotheque over the weekend. While Beck's Record Club focuses on the Mellow Gold singer and friends rerecording classic albums (like Velvet Underground & Nico), the Videotheque will for now feature Beck rerecording his own albums. "Modern Guilt was released one year ago this week! For the occasion we are putting up acoustic versions of the entire album recorded earlier this year after returning from the Japan tour (under severe jet lag)," Beck writes in the new section. First up in the Videotheque, album opener "Orphans." Four tracks from the acoustic session will eventually be released as limited EP.

Beck also promises to post all of the album's promotional videos in the Videotheque section as well. For Beck fans who were maybe turned off by Danger Mouse's ornate production on Modern Guilt, this new section is a welcome surprise. Previously, Beck also launched a DJ series called Planned Obsolescence and a weekly interview series called Irrelevant Topics, which as Rock Daily reported last week featured fellow Californian troubadour Tom Waits in its debut post.

Also on Beck.com, the singer's Record Club tackled the fourth song off Velvet Underground & Nico, "Venus in Furs." It might be the Record Club's best and most unique rendition yet, with Beck, producer Nigel Godrich (on the sitar) and the rest of the club offering up a more foreboding, avant-garde take on the VU classic which Beck called "Possibly one of the first, if not the first goth song ever." Expect the Record Club to post "Run Run Run" at some point this week, as well as Part Two of Beck's awesome conversation with Tom Waits.

Related Stories:
• Beck Launches "Irrelevant Topics" Interview Series With Tom Waits
• Beck and Co. Cover Velvet Underground's "Waiting For the Man"
• Beck Announces Plans to Redo Classic Albums for Record Club

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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