Beck - The Vagabond - Non-Album Tracks (2000-2001)

I've posted eight Beck albums so far, all from the 1990s. That was his most prolific time of his career, and it took a lot of effort to organize his stray tracks. But the rest of his career since has been impressively prolific too, and I'm finally ready to move into the 2000s with him.

In 1999, Beck released his "Midnite Vultures" album, which was all highly produced, upbeat, dance music. A long tour followed well into 2000. It seems that once that ended, Beck had his fill of that type of music for a while, and switched back to a more acoustic style. So even this is a grab bag of whatever he happened to be doing at the time, I think it holds together pretty well stylistically.

Only four of the 13 songs here have been released officially. Three of those are from various artists compilations, and one ("The Vagabond") is a collaboration Beck did with Air that was put on an Air album. The rest are mostly cover versions, although "Creole Belle" is an obscure original and "Beautiful Way" is an original from the "Midnite Vultures" album that is totally transformed here because it's played solo with just an acoustic guitar.

Luckily, of the nine unreleased songs, only three come from concert bootlegs. The rest are from bootlegs of in-studio radio shows where there was no studio audience and the sound is nearly as good as a studio recording. The first two songs don't sound quite as good as the rest, since those are songs he only did once in concert and they come from an audience recording. By the way, Beck appears to have been really enjoying the music of Daniel Johnston at the time, because both of those are covers of Johnston songs, and he also does one other Johnston cover on this album ("Some Things Last a Long Time").

I'm still surprised I haven't gotten any flak yet from commenters about my song edits. I make these albums mostly for my own enjoyment, and I'm not shy to edit songs if I feel it will improve my listening experience. That's the case again here with the last song, "Funky Lil' Song." The song was over five minutes, and I liked it, but I felt it went on way too long, with the last two minutes just repeating what was done earlier and adding nothing. So I lopped those last two minutes off, right at a point where the recording luckily came to a complete stop for a moment.

01 Devil Town - Spirit World Rising (Beck)
02 Who's That Knockin' at My Window (Beck)
03 [I Heard That] Lonesome Whistle (Beck)
04 Go Easy (Beck)
05 Some Things Last a Long Time (Beck)
06 No Expectations (Beck & Beth Orton)
07 Creole Belle (Beck)
08 Stagolee (Beck)
09 Last Fair Deal Gone Down (Beck)
10 Win (Beck)
11 Beautiful Way [Acoustic Version] (Beck)
12 The Vagabond (Beck & Air)
13 Funky Lil' Song [Edit] (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15126540/BeckH_2000-2001_TheVgabond_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art from a 2000 Beck concert poster, and just changed the text at the bottom.