BECK - Electronic Ballroom, Camden, London

BECK’S in town to appear on Jools Holland and he suddenly announces a pop-up gig in a small venue and Dave and I are lucky enough to land tickets for the full “superstar up close” experience.

I’ll tell you up front – the main man and his 7 band members knocked the ball so far out of the park you can give up trying to find it.

He started off mellow with four tracks from his last album, Morning Phase – it reeked of class. Then wallop! Someone hit the shape-shifter button. A monster guitar-heavy version of “Devils Haircut” ensued and the roller coaster cut lose. We were served rock, funk, disco, pop, new wave and his own brand of weird indie-rap delivered via a stellar track selection featuring his greatest hits mixed in with the slick, funky new album, Colors.

Highlights included “Think I’m in Love” transforming into Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, an exhilarating “Mixed Biziness”, “Where It’s At” interrupted for brief covers of “London Calling” and “Once in a Lifetime” and of course a mega audience singalong to “Loser”.

The sound was overwhelming, the band were 6 foot in front of us, we drank lager. It was Heaven.

Here they are on Jools Holland a couple of days earlier. Blow the picture up 12 foot high, bang through 15 foot high speakers and stand 6 foot back for 34.6% of the experience we had:

#beck #electronicballroom