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Beck Colors tour breakdown: “Nausea”

a straight-line walker in a blackout room

“Nausea” was a big part of Beck’s setlists in 2006-2007 on the Information tour, and then also in 2008-2009 for Modern Guilt. Since then it has only been played a few times (twice in 2011, once in 2012).  But then, in October 2017, Beck played it 4 times, before dropping it entirely once again. The Colors tour started in October 2017 with a quick worldwide run - 2 shows in London, a show in LA, 2 more in Tokyo (and a handful of TV/radio spots).  The main run of the tour didn’t really begin until 2018.  Beck played “Nausea” 3 times (and once on a radio show), and each time was back in those early October shows,right as the tour started.  When they resumed the tour in 2018, the song had been forgotten. Colors tour lineup Beck Hansen - electric guitar, vocals Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - tambourine, percussion, backing vocals, synthesizer Dwayne Moore - bass Chris Coleman - drums Cecilia Della Peruti - percussion, backing vocals Alex Lilly - shakers, backing vocals Jake Sinclair - acoustic guitar, backing vocals

I only have video of one of the versions of “Nausea,” which you can see below. I also watched the radio show gig, but I can’t direct embed that one, but if you want to watch it click this link. Anyway, this band did a solid if unmemorable version of the song. The extra vocals, as always, enhances songs that I, for some reason, don’t expect them to. Also during the final verse, Beck kicks his guitar up a notch, roaring in there with a stronger louder riff: that’s the best part.  If you watch the version Beck did on Letterman in 2006, back then they played it with a bit higher energy and a lot more percussion/drums (two drummers, even). Still, “Nausea” seems to have matured into a more straight-forward rock song, which can still be an exciting live bop.

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Beck Colors tour breakdown “Up All Night”

see the colors and all the kids going home

“Up All Night,” being the main single from Colors, made its debut as the tour started in October 2017, and then was played at every night for the rest of the tour.  (Except once, it’s not on a setlist for one show in Australia.)  Beck also played it on a handful of TV shows through the year as well.  

Colors tour lineup: Beck Hansen - vocals, electric guitar (first half of the tour, then he went instrumentless for the second) Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - synthesizer, backing vocals Dwayne Moore - bass Chris Coleman - drums Cecilia Della Peruti - electric guitar, backing vocals Alex Lilly - keyboards (1st half of tour), keytar (2nd half), backing vocals Jake Sinclair - acoustic guitar, backing vocals, percussion (sometimes) As I’ve written before, Beck doesn’t usually experiment much with his new tracks on stage. He likes to let the audience know the new songs a bit, sometimes even before attempting them, let alone trying anything different with them. “Up All Night” he felt comfortable doing as a popular single, though certainly he did not do much beyond replicate the recording on stage.  There was one slight addition to the song during the second half of the tour, and another big one in Japan, which I’ll get to. But first let’s start with the start of the tour.  I’ve been trying to stick to live gigs as examples, but due to the sound quality here, my favorite version is from Beck’s appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show. It really shows off the B-53s’ voices and some of the cool guitar.

I think hearing this live version back when it happened helped me dig the song more; just the way Jason works on the guitar, pushing that choppy riff.  I started to like the song and get it.  On the second half of the tour, the song did not change drastically, but Roger kicked off a sort of pre-intro, consisting of an electronic robot voice / slowed down Beck vocal loop.  It gave Beck some space to improvise some talk before the song started, and he usually led it off with a bit asking the audience if they’re afraid of the dark.  I like this bit a lot, it ups the drama when the “Up All Night” riff does kick-off properly. You can hear them do this here:

Lastly, on the Japanese version of Colors, there is a remix of “Up All Night” in which Japanese pop/hiphop singer Daoko sings over Beck’s rap section (the “one two what you doing? jumping through some hoops” part). So while in Japan for the two nights of the Summersonic Festival, Daoko was also on the bill, and Beck had her on stage to do her rap.  I love this!  Daoko’s section is in Japanese but I like it more than Beck’s rap, to be honest.  I kind of wish he had Cecilia of the B-53s rap something in that part of the song at the other shows throughout the year!  Here is her appearance at the Tokyo night of Summersonic:

Anyway having listened to a lot of version of “Up All Night,” I do think it is one of the ones Beck mentioned was done for Colors, but meant for the stage. It is lively, with a lot of movement. Certainly there were some versions that fell flat, but as the band continued to do it, they got more confident with it.   

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Beck Colors tour breakdown: “Think I’m In Love / I Feel Love”

whisperin’ hello through a smoke-ring smile

“Think I’m In Love” has been a regular in Beck’s setlists basically since it came out. The song has not changed too much, though some earlier tries were noisier, more rock, and over time Beck embraced the groovy disco side of the song a little more.  And I mean that even before he started tacking a brief cover of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” on to it. Still, “I Feel Love” has been part of the song now since summer 2013. I think there are occasional “short” versions of the song where they don’t tag with “I Feel Love,” but mostly, it fits right in. And even when I listen to The Information, I half-expect “I Feel Love” to show up, it has become so embedded. This year did not change all that, though the frequency of “Think” fell off a little for the second half of the tour. Overall, Beck played it at 31 of 59 main shows: this was frontloaded to 18 of the first 21 shows, and just 13 of the last 38.  For this, I listened to about half (15) of them. Colors tour lineup Beck - vocals, electric guitar (though in 2 of the videos I saw, he didn’t play any instrument) Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - keyboards, synthesizer, backing vocals Dwayne Moore - bass, backing vocals Chris Coleman - drums Cecilia Della Peruti - bongos, backing vocals Alex Lilly - percussion, backing vocals Jake Sinclair - acoustic guitar, backing vocals

As said, the song has pretty much settled right in, and even with new bands or time passing, it does not change. It sounds much like the record, maybe a little fuller, grander, though they drop the fourth verse, jumping straight to the outro.  (The outro in turn morphs into “I Feel Love” usually for about a minute.) The fuller band here on the Colors tour does help the song: they can better duplicate all the little percussion and details of the song (for instance, Cecilia plays bongos). That said, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. also does a lot -- little piano keyboard runs during the intro, mimicking the strings throughout on synthesizer. And it’s hard for this song when the rhythm section is on lock: Chris Coleman and Dwayne Moore laying the steady groove for all the details to land on.  A few times, the band played a little longer intros to the song, usually to give Beck time to go get his guitar, or because Beck is chatting to the audience. Here is one of those from the show in Hamburg.

One time in Dallas, which I can’t quite figure out why, Beck started singing with the drums before the band jumped in, which does give this song a slightly different feel to start. I really liked starting the song this way, hearing the band sort of fall into shape behind him: 

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Beck Colors tour breakdown - “Mixed Bizness”

pour champagne on a honeybee “Mixed Bizness” has been one of Beck’s most popular live songs to do on stage since he wrote it. It was a regular on (almost) every band tour he’s done since it was released on Vultures in 1999. The two times it was not was in 2008 on Modern Guilt’s tour (though he did do it around half the time), and in 2014 for Morning Phase (when he did not do it at all).  However, in 2016, it made its return and pretty much has not left his setlists since. This year on the Colors tour, he did it 54 of the 59 main shows. The times he dropped it were 4 shorter festival sets, and one crazy club show he did where he played none of his ‘common’ songs.  Somewhat strangely, I was only able to find about 20 versions from this year.

Colors tour lineup

Beck Hansen - electric guitar, vocals Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - synthesizer, backing vocals Dwayne Moore - bass Chris Coleman - drums Alex Lilly - percussion, keyboards, backing vocals (and for a few shows, keytar) Cecilia Della Peruti - tambourine, backing vocals Jake Sinclair - percussion, backing vocals This is a tough one to write about, because there were a number of variable sections to the song over the year.  The basic structure is basically thus: an intro section, two verses (”I’m mixing business with leather” and “Word up to the manthing”) and choruses (”all right now”), the longer bridge (”Do you want to ride on the Baltic sea?”), another chorus, then an ending jam.  The song very often then stops completely, before Beck revives it with his “Do you want to take it higher?” spiel.  This, by the way, omits the third verse/chorus and second “Baltic Sea” bridge which appear on the record.

So, in the beginning of the tour, Beck stuck this basic structure. It may be the bad luck of my sampling, but it also seemed early on the tour, that Beck and the band did not feel particularly engaged during “Mixed Bizness.” It sounds fine, super funky even, but watching some videos and they were sort of just vacantly staring ahead. Some were better than others, surely, but yea.  Here is a good “standard” version of the song, from Charlotte:

This definitely did not last long, though. By April, the song was much more hyped and a joy to watch. Beck started adlibbing all through the song -- he’d intro the song with lots of office talk (”send you a fax from the boardroom,” or “are we coordinating schedules?”).  The band occasionally came down and danced next to him, and they added a little sideways synchronicity hop to the act, and it’s all just a blast!  Also sometimes, Beck would BEGIN the song with his “I wanna take you higher” bit. Just whatever he felt like doing in the moment.  The song could start any way, and end any way. This version from Alabama is all kinds of fun:

Lastly, there’s two more notable versions I should mention. I’ve mentioned this for a few other songs, but in Nashville, Beck had the Preservation Hall Jazz Band as his opening act, and he brought them out for like six songs during his set. A “Mixed Bizness” funk jam with actual full jazz horns?  Sounds like a great idea to me.  (Alas, I know of no recordings.)

Second, in Atlanta, Beck extended the song about twice as long as normal. I don’t know why, he just got in a mood for it, I guess. The intro goes on for awhile, then they go through the song like usual.  Then he tacks on a “I wanna take you higher,” again like normal. But after that, he tacks on another “let’s take it lower” section and they just keep going. Here it is:

I will add that the second half of the tour seemed to be slightly more standardized again; the experimentation of April and May sort of subsided. But it was still really funky, and a lot of fun.  Beck and the band have a great handle on this song, which allows them to play with it up there. "Mixed Bizness” was definitely one of the highlights for 2018 for me!    

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Beck Colors tour breakdown: “Seventh Heaven”

with the gold glass heart sending messages

As I noted for an earlier song (”Dear Life”), Beck sometimes likes to let new songs settle in his fan’s minds before putting it on them on stage. So throughout the Colors tour, Beck leaned to the main 4 or 5 singles, and mostly ignored the others. “Seventh Heaven”  was one he pretty much ignored, and to date, has only performed it four times. Fortunately, I have heard all four versions (and will include two here for you).

Colors tour lineup

Beck Hansen - vocals Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - synthesizer, backing vocals Dwayne Moore - bass Chris Coleman - drums Alex Lilly - keyboards, backing vocals Cecilia Della Peruti - electric guitar, backing vocals Jake Sinclair - electric guitar, backing vocals “Seventh Heaven” made its live debut at the Studio Coast show in Tokyo, Japan (a show where he also debuted “Dear Life” and “Fix Me”).  Jason sounds amazing on it, leading the song and dropping cool guitar licks all over.  Roger nails the glassy synth sound, and keeping it all together is a great performance from Chris on drums.  They play all the sections of the song Here you can watch it:

A few months later, Beck went to Australia and New Zealand for a short leg of the tour. At the Melbourne show, Beck introduced the song as one they’d never played before (yep) and called it a “feel good song.”  This is probably my favorite live version of the song - with a strong groove and good vocals; alas, it’s not on Youtube so, I don’t know, trust me, I guess.

Two shows later, Beck did the song in Dallas as well.  Beck at each performance seems to be worried he’ll forget the lyrics (at least twice, saying something like “help me out if you know the words” to the crowd), but he does a generally fine job with it!

Lastly, 3 months go by after Dallas, and at a show in June in Brussels, Belgium, Beck played “Seventh Heaven” once again.  This time, however, Beck struggles a bit with the words, and though everyone sounds ok, it does feel a little like something is not quite clicking for the band. But in a way, because of this, I kind of like this version a lot!  The uplift and joy of the song comes across pretty well.  

“Seventh Heaven” is certainly one of my favorite songs on Colors, but I did wonder and feel hesitant about hearing it live: would they be able to pull it off?  It is a highly constructed song, with lots of moving parts. I’m not sure if my question was answered. These versions sound pretty good to me, but maybe they stopped playing it for a reason?  I really hope sometime in the future it can become a regular stage song...

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Beck Colors tour breakdown: “Soul Of A Man”

gris-gris and a goldenrod

Beck played “Soul Of A Man” quite often on his last two main tours (Modern Guilt in 2008, Morning Phase in 2014), as well as all the gigs from 2014-2017.  This seemed to have ended on the Colors tour, however, as the song was just done 11 times in the 59 main shows of 2018. And most of those were early, 7 of them were in the first 15 gigs, before only showing up twice in Europe and twice in August (one a club show, once in Japan). Unfortunately, for this, I was only able to find 2 versions of the song. But its form was pretty well-embedded, and I don’t imagine the song ever came out any differently.

Colors tour lineup:

Beck Hansen - electric guitar, vocals Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - tambourine, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals Dwayne Moore - bass Chris Coleman - drums Alex Lilly - keyboards, backing vocals Cecilia Della Peruti - tambourine, backing vocals Jake Sinclair - acoustic guitar, backing vocals “Soul Of A Man” comes off pretty well on stage, where I enjoy the song much more than I do on record. One of the versions I heard (the Melbourne show) was a bit more herky-jerky than the other (Washington DC show 2). The Melbourne one isn’t on Youtube, and the DC show only has half of it; so instead, I’ll dip back slightly to this show in September 2017 a couple of months before Colors came out, as an example of the song live.  It’s the exact same band, and I think it’s a good version, so it works as an example here.

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Beck Colors tour breakdown - “Timebomb”

we got a red alert

A quick timeline of “Timebomb”: Beck started playing it live in 2006, just a few times; we figured it would be on The Information. It, obviously, was not. Then in 2007, he dropped it as a single. He wasn’t really touring at the time, but when he did go back on the road in 2008 and 2009 for Modern Guilt, he played it quite regularly.  Then where were sporadic tours for about 5 years, and he did not play it at all.  In 2014, behind Morning Phase, Beck brought the song back near the end of the year for about 15 shows.  It then showed up 3 times in the summer of 2017 with his new band, who a few months later, when the Colors tour began in October played it one time in Japan (October 24, 2017). They would not return to it at all for the rest of the tour. Colors tour lineup:

Beck Hansen - vocals Jason Falkner - electric guitar, backing vocals Roger Joseph Manning Jr. - synthesizer Dwayne Moore - bass Chris Coleman - drums Alex Lilly - backing vocals, keyboards Cecilia Della Peruti - electric guitar, backing vocals Jake Sinclair - electric guitar, backing vocals Almost always in that history of “Timebomb,” Beck speeds the song up on stage.  In 2008, they’d play it fast, and cut off the ending verse/chorus, making it all feel even faster. This carried over to Morning Phase tour, where it was fast, but they did do the whole song.

Last year in Japan, the one time they played “Timebomb,” the song does have a totally different feel to it. The buzzing synth riff is gone, led by percussion and vocals. It feels more punk rock to me, harder than the original, less groove. Beck seems to enjoy singing it, though misses his mark on the ‘rap’ in the middle. It’s a lot of fun -- this Studio Coast show in Tokyo had a HYPED audience, which make its videos a blast.  Here, you can watch it, though it misses the very beginning of the song and is a bit shaky. If this is what this band was going to do to “Timebomb,” I’d have loved for it to get more reps!