Beck: Rocking the town like a mouldy crouton

The Associated Press Beck

"I hate Phoenix," I thought to myself.

OK, maybe I don't hate Phoenix as much as I fear it. I should love the city for bringing shows to this two-horse state, but Tucson is a far cry from the twists of loops, turn-offs, and roads that make the capital city what it is. Those loops got me prett y damn lost.

I was mad. I knew I was missing Beck. I flashed back to the Tibetan Freedom Concert months earlier when I missed Pavement. I was mad then too.

When I got into Celebrity Theatre, I heard Beck performing "Sissyneck." I had missed the first five songs in Beck's set and also missed Sukia, the opening band. As we found our seats I heard the crowd roar after Beck sang the line, "Let me tell you about my baby/ she was born in Arizona."

The venue was optimal. Celebrity Theatre holds only a few thousand people, so every seat in the house is good.

Beck was joined by Stagecoach on drums, Smokestack Hormel on keyboards, a DJ who was "feeling tropical," a two-man horn section (sax and trombone), a guitarist, and Showboat the bass player.

After "Sissyneck," they played the infamous "Loser." In a radio interview that accompanied a live broadcast of a Beck show in Toronto, Beck said he felt being a one-hit-wonder was akin to being "a shadow of a person."

Beck is clearly no one-hit wonder. He plays everything - rap, punk, funk, psychedelia - even country. His songs have been covered, most notably by Johnny Cash and Tom Petty.

Aside from "Loser," his least appealing song, the show consistently blew me away. I was disappointed he stuck to Odelay as much as he did, but it's only a minor complaint.

The band then left the stage and Beck did the solo numbers "Putting it Down," "Asshole," "Hollow Log" and "One Foot in the Grave."

He came out of the acoustic set with the song "Jack-Ass," named for the donkey sample at the end of the song. This song has some of the best lyrics on Odelay.

From there they went into an extra-long version of "Where it's At." Before the song he told the crowd, "Let's make this whole place - this whole city, make-out city!"

It was funky enough to make an albino weasel shake out of his skin. The whole show had people dancing in their seats, since security wouldn't let people out of their assigned spaces.

They ended the set with a punk version of "Thunderpeel," a truly wigging song even by Beck's standards. He changed the lyrics around a bit, but they still resembled the recorded version: "Now I'm rolling in sweat/ with a loaf of cornbread and a taco in my jeans."

After they all left the stage, and after the audience cheered for the obligatory encore, the DJ returned to the stage and threw everyone for a loop. He mixed it up fast and precise, and even had the gall to scratch with his elbows and throw records behin d his back while mixing.

After about 10 minutes of mixing, the rest of the band entered wearing costume horse and deer heads, with Beck decked out in a sparkling Elvis-esque jumpsuit.

They broke into a long version of "High Five (Rock the Catskills)." They ended the song by getting the audience to sing along with the truly strange sample, "All the ladies say Sergio Valente - Say Ooh, La, La, Sassoon - Say Jordache turn it up!"

How odd. How very Beck.