Backed by 157 Musicians, Beck Reimagines David Bowie’s 1977 Classic, “Sound and Vision”

The last time we looked, the singer-song­writer known as Beck con­tributed to the fall musi­cal pro­duc­tion, Rework: Philip Glass Remixed, before pub­lish­ing Song Read­er, a series of 20 songs released not as record­ed music, but as sheet music meant for oth­er musi­cians to inter­pret and per­form. (Lis­ten here to what the Port­land Cel­lo Project did with the Song Read­er col­lec­tion.) Now, Beck turns to an entire­ly dif­fer­ent project. On Sun­day night, the ver­sa­tile musi­cian appeared on a sound­stage at 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox in L.A., where he per­formed David Bowie’s 1977 song, “Sound and Vision,” backed by a 157-piece orches­tra con­duct­ed by his own father, the com­pos­er and arranger David Camp­bell. Accord­ing to Rolling Stone, the event was spon­sored by Lin­coln, the Detroit car­mak­er, who is using Beck­’s ver­sion of “Sound and Vision” for a new ad cam­paign. Hap­pi­ly, David Bowie gave his enthu­si­as­tic bless­ing to the project.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

Hear Beck’s Song Read­er Song­book Per­formed by the Port­land Cel­lo Project

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969


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Comments (3)
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  • Arthurtime says:

    Nice selec­tion in terms of con­cept, but Becks wispi­er talk/sing voice isn’t matched to the symphonic/choral dynam­ics and gets lost out in the vast ocean of his thin idea for get­ting extra val­ue out of a car com­mer­cial. Bowie always had enough idea of his voice and could project to hold his ground, or at least knew what he could and could not man­age.

    But hon­est­ly, it’s a car com­mer­cial sound­track com­mis­sion. They do new orches­tral ver­sions and remakes of hits all the time. Dress­ing this up as if more than that does­n’t real­ly con­vince. In terms of Glass etc..Beck is today’s col­lab­o­rater because he appar­ent­ly since more than a decade stopped being able to do any­thing else than fid­dle around with so-called “art” con­cepts (re-record­ing songs by oth­ers each week on the net, etc.etc..) which are them­selves quite aged and safe. Find­ing reli­gion is rarely good for musi­cians it seems.

  • We are a group of film­mak­ers who enjoy shar­ing with the world the musi­cal tal­ent found all around. We make music videos and hope you will check out some of our work

    Here are two of our videos you can watch. Enjoy

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3db2371nrok

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGjla6pnAzk

    Our Face­book page — http://www.facebook.com/UnmarkedNotes

  • pat terry says:

    love it! can’t find it on itunes, where can I pur­chase it?

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