Our DJ always has two turntables and a microphone.

The Dog Days are upon us, and so is another exciting week.  Yep, it’s time to woof it up for another Monday!  That’s the day The Nest digs up another lost bone out of that resealable pouch full of expired doggie treats we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive!  The bitch… I mean, DJ Scratchy is back and ready to drop the needle on another dogeared record, while the Sponkies check their coats for fleas and ticks.  You mean this week’s song isn’t about dogs after all?  Surely you can’t be Sirius…

The DVA has been stuck in the 80’s for a while…. NTTAWWT, but The Nest does like to show that we can appreciate lost hits from other time periods as well.  So let’s dial the DeLorean back a few notches and only trek back a couple of decades this time, to the mid 90’s!  And one of the more…… um, abstract musicians to not come from the days of acid rock.

This is your brain on random.

From a Billboard perspective, the artist known simply as Beck is a verified one hit wonder.  His lone hit, the still-popularly played “Loser,” just reached the Top 10 in 1994 and sounds like the result of songwriting by dartboard.  I’m pretty sure “Loser” is the only song to contain references to “shave your face with some mace,” “a maggot on your sleeve,” and the ever eloquent “beefcake pantyhose.”  It’s not really a great song by my standards… just some more early 90’s crap that made me despise that era in music.  But thanks to the VH1 series Pop Up Video, I learned of another Beck song that is just as nuts, but that I actually like….. a lot!  And the video’s a hot mess of goodness as well…

“Where It’s At” was released as a single in 1996, and like every other non-Loser Beck song, it stalled out in the bottom half of the Hot 100, only reaching #61.  But this calliope of 90’s randomness is a winner in my book, and is maybe the only thing that wouldn’t make me want to take Beck up on his death wish.  One listen to this masterpiece of….. um, sound, and you’ll realize it’s easily the best use of amplifier feedback since the Lads did “I Feel Fine”…

It’s like three minutes at the drive thru speaker!

Sometimes when I research songs for the DVA, I find very little interesting information about either the song or the artist.  That is most certainly not the case for “Where It’s At”…

• You may have thought this song sucked giant cockroach balls, but the men and women who vote on the Grammys didn’t.  Beck won the 1997 Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for the very distorted vocal he did on this song.
• A number of the spoken samples in this song are taken from an obscure sex education video.
• Everyone knows that The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first video ever played on MTV in 1981.  But do you know what the first video ever played on MTV2 was when it debuted in 1996?  Yep.  And now you know…

You mean there was an MTV2? Man, who knew?

Clap you hands, just clap your hands… for the Wolfman!  Tying in both the song AND my canine theme in the intro!

Come back next Monday for another lost hit that won’t be a loser…