I love virtually everything Beck has ever done. But my not-so-secret hope is that someday he will release another lo-fi gem like Mellow Gold. With that said, here’s the video for “Pay No Mind (Snoozer).” Makes me feel funny, like climbing the rope in gym class.

“Chemtrails,” a track off Beck’s as-yet-untitled next record is currently streaming for your persusal on Mypsace and on Beck’s fancy pants web site Beck.com. I’ll tell you one thing, this track sure sounds like Beck! HAHAha…ha..haha…ummm. Here’s the related press release since I’m too lazy to think of anything creative to write:

While not a single, “Chemtrails” is a genre-bending tour de force that showcases Beck and producer Danger Mouse’s shared affection for late ’60s psych-pop as Beck takes his songwriting and performing skills in yet another bold, unforeseen and as always captivating new direction.

The album is slated for an early summer release. More info will be available soon, including the record’s title, release date and upcoming singles.

Beck embarks on a world tour beginning late June in Europe, hitting the States in time for several major festivals (Bumbershoot, Outside Lands, Austin City Limits) as well as his biggest ever hometown headline gig September 20 at the Hollywood Bowl.

Beck, the Foo Fighters and Alison Krauss with Robert Plant will be among the headliners for this year’s Austin City Limits Festival. Also performing will be Silversun Pickups, festival mainstay Manu Chao, N.E.R.D., flavor-of-the-week Vampire Weekend, The Mars Volta, Gnarls Barkley and Conor Oberst with the Mystic Band. There are also a whole bunch more signed on the play the three day fest, but it’s early and I’m not going to list them all.

Bottom line is, if you think of a band you’d want to see live, you can probably find them here. Last year’s ACL brought in over $11.3 million and hosted over 225,000 people, ranking as the fourth largest festival in the world.
If you’re the environmentally conscious type — and who isn’t nowadays — you can counterbalance all the waste you and your fellow festival goers are going to create for just an extra $5 over your ticket price. BeGreen is asking those attending ACL and this year’s Lollapalooza to go green and purchase a BeGreen Fan Tag.

Each Fan Tag is equal to offsetting 500 kWh of energy usage and will be used to purchase renewable energy credits from sources, such as solar, wind and biomass. Purchasers receive a unique, double-sided BeGreen Fan Tag sticker that can be displayed at the event to show off their environmental consciousness.

“Music has always been a great outlet for drawing attention to social issues and spurring change. We are very excited to partner with the organizers of these two major musical festivals to raise environmental awareness and do our part for Mother Earth,” said Gillan Taddune, chief environmental officer of Green Mountain Energy Company. “By giving concert-goers, through the Fan Tag, easy ways to decrease their impact on the environment, these festivals are showing a true commitment to fighting global warming.”

Through a partnership with the events’ organizers, C3 Presents, BeGreen also worked with the Austin City Limits Festival and Lollapalooza to make the two events 100 percent carbon neutral in 2008. This purchase of carbon offsets made from clean technologies like renewable energy credits balances out all of the show’s electricity usage, generators, staff travel and office-based emissions.

If you go to Austin, please be nice to the locals. They’re really cool, and they have infinite patience when putting up with outsiders, even if they do enjoy talking about you when you’re gone.

Just got this press release regarding the Deluxe Edition of Beck’s Odelay released this week:

The first pressing of the recent Odelay Deluxe Reissue was found to have gone out with unproofed lyrics that were taken from a lyrics website as place holders for layout purposes.

Beck apologizes for this unfortunate oversight and is making arrangements for the corrected lyrics to be available gratis via
Beck.com. Subsequent pressings of the Odelay Deluxe will also include the corrected lyrics

This is lulz for several reasons. First off, the fact that the staff at Geffen used a lyrics site for whatever reason is just a little bit ironic, given that the music industry has made a point to try to shut down these very sites through litigation and threats of jail time many times in the past. And second of all, the fact that the “corrected lyrics will be available” online kind of diminishes the idea that buying an actual legit copy of a record is worthwhile, especially at $19.99. But what do I know? After all, the music industry had a banner year in 2007, especially Geffen’s parent company, Universal.