Esoteric Brezhnevism

  Participation in the New York anti-folk music scene of the late eighties and early nineties “made Beck realize there are no restrictions when it comes to subject matter for songs.” [1] Back in his native Los Angeles and playing the bar and coffeehouse circuit in 1991, the unknown musician further developed the idiosyncratic sense of humor with which he would become associated. “I’d be banging away on a Son House tune and the whole audience would be talking, so maybe out of desperation or boredom, or the audience’s boredom, I’d make up these ridiculous songs just to see if people were listening,” he recalled, adding that “‘Loser’ was an extension of that.” [2] The legend of the song’s genesis as an amateurish burst of “impromptu rapping” goes like this: […] Tom [Rothrock] and Beck went over to producer Karl Stephenson’s house to play around. Beck laid down some slide guitar, Stephenson looped it, and then Beck freestyled over a Public Enemy-esque beat. When he found himself at a...