Immortal Monday: The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s

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mp3 – The Beta Band – B + A

mp3 – The Beta Band – Dry The Rain

mp3 – The Beta Band – Push It Out

When John Cusack announced to all the wide-eyed 18 year old kids that we were when High Fidelity came out in the year 2000 that, “[he] will now sell 5 copies of The Three E.P.’s by The Beta Band,” each and every one of us (in the US at least) was glad when the record store customer (who, in my notes for this article, I’ve affectionately named ‘douchebag’) asked, “Who is that?”  The three short lines that followed have since solidified themselves in cult-movie history:

JC: The Beta Band.

DB: It’s good.

JC: I know.

Now, I would love to say that I knew exactly who was telling us that ‘It will be all right’ over and over again in that scene but I can’t lie to you, faithful reader; I didn’t know shit about The Beta Band.  But, to my credit (I think), I did NOT pause the movie and run to the record store before watching Cusack chase a young Seth Green out of his store for stealing records he wanted samples from.  I came across The Three E.P.’s in a totally roundabout fashion and, didn’t even recognize the now-famous Dry the Rain until the very end.  Because I’m sure you’ve seen High Fidelity many more times than you can count (and if you’ve not I suggest you take the rest of the week off work, put a Top 5 Movie Snacks list together, go purchase enough of those snacks to sustain you for the next 4 days and cancel all your other plans) I’ll spare you the gory details of that tune and talk about the rest of the disc.

The Three E.P.’s is indeed composed of material from…yep, you guessed it… three E.P’s.  Champion Versions, The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos del Beta Banditos (I’ll let you work the translation out yourself) are all individual discs with their own themes and sounds but are certainly variations on the same idea.  Characterized  by leader and vocalist Steve Mason’s nearly-spoken-word vocal style, not-quite-perfect-but-just-right recording and production, wacky, off-the-wall sounds and samples and crazy breakdowns that lead into almost Gregorian-style vocal chants (see Push it Out and Dr. Baker) The Beta Band certainly has a unique sound.

B+A is a great example of a marriage between the analog and digital ages; a great laid back clean guitar line makes you think you’re in for some down-home blues until they drop a throbbing hip-hop drum sample on top of it and you find yourself grooving damn hard.  The Beta Band’s ability to span and integrate so many unique and distinct styles of music into the same album (much less the same song) and pull it off is truly awesome.

So, on this lovely Monday afternoon I submit for your review The Three E.P.’s by The Beta Band.  Give it a listen and let me know what you think.