My 12 Favorite Concerts - #3 Beck

#3
Beck
Oct. 28, 2006, The Knitting Factory (New York)

For the most part, I’ve only listed traditional concerts and left off festival performances, parties and private shows. But I have to make an exception for one night in 2006. Unlike almost every other major magazine in the U.S., Paste had never thrown a party in New York. We made a conscious decision that our magazine would be based in Decatur, Ga., but most of the people we work with—record label folks, publicists, advertisers, etc.—are in Manhattan or Brooklyn. And when we decided to put on a show at The Knitting Factory for all those folks, we sent out invitations before the lineup was settled. By the time we had secured our November cover artist Beck to play—he was already in town for Saturday Night Live—we already had more RSVPs than would fit in the 400-person venue. So we kept it a secret. Hem opened and ?uestlove DJ’d between sets, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. Other artists who were in town came by, including Ben Kweller, James Iha. I hopped up on stage along with Jay Sweet, who had planned the event, and we introduced Beck to a stunned crowd. He’d agreed to play 30 minutes acoustic, but he brought his whole band, and for an hour, they played requests. During “Devil’s Haircut,” I was up in the balcony, feeling like I was on top of the world.