New Beck - "Harry Partch"
Harry Patch, the longest surviving UK veteran of World War I, lived an honorable life, his very existence serving as a reminder to countless others of how far we've come, and at what cost, in matters of international conflict and discourse. And thanks to an initially subpar rocker beef that's blossomed into something going on classic, Harry Patch has also served as a reminder of the life of composer Harry Partch, and how far we've come in matters of incorporating his 43 tone scale into countless blog posts. To recap: Radiohead wrote a song for Harry Patch the Tommy, which the Fiery Furnaces' Matthew Friedberger mistook to be about Harry Partch the musician. After castigating the band for "brazenly and arbitrarily associating [themselves] with things that [they] know people consider cool," which never happened, Friedberger tried to backpedal with a tongue-in-cheeky retort that again missed the mark, closing with: "Matt would have much preferred to insult Beck but he is too afraid of Scientologists."
Too bad, Matt. Looks like Beck really, really wants to feel the wrath of Matt Friedberger's zing, because he's posted a song to his website titled "Harry Partch," as in the radical composer and not the UK soldier,. Hansen says it "employs Partch's 43 tone scale, which expands conventional tonality into a broader variation of frequencies and resonances." (In his initial slag post, Friedberger said it should be "48 notes to the octave." But that was probably a joke. It's hard to tell with him sometimes!) It sounds like a demented mashup revue of the last century's popular, classical and avant garde music forms, with a little outer space thrown in for good measure. Hear it at beck.com or below. It's 43-tones of ZING. And thanks to the Matt Friedberger for eliciting this crazy piece of music by the sheer force of hot air alone.
Is this the most fun feud of the decade? It might be, once we figure out how to get Jay Reatard to take a leak on one of them.
Posted at 9:34 AM by amrit
Tags: Beck | Harry Partch | Radiohead | The Fiery Furnaces
If hip-hop has taught us anything, it's that comebacks are best when done via music.
Prior to all of this, the only time I'd ever read the name Harry Partch was in relation to The Stooges. Iggy Pop listened to Partch while recording Raw Power. Useless fun fact!
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in the end, does it really matter how much that dude cares about harry partch? i've never heard even a trace of melody from fiery furnaces
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Maybe this type of crap flys in Hollywood,CA...give me a break...
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i don't even have to listen to the song to know that beck wins
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....there's no beef here, one guy no one knows makes a lame attempted diss. No response. the end.
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Why am I more intrigued by Beck now, in the last couple of years, than ever before?
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I hate to post "me too" so I'll post "amen to that".
I always made a point of hating on Beck and now I suffer my deep regret.
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I think we need to get Miley Cyrus involved some how to make it more interesting.
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Where is the song? It's not up on the website as far as I can tell, just a picture.
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Do a bit of fact checking, Poland has a veteran alive that saw action.
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Oops that should read UK veteran, and it does so now.
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This is one of the best songs i've heard this year.
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i'm reasonably sure the section at the start is actually a direct rip off/mick take of the fiery furnaces' very own compositional style. well done beck
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