So why is The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
II suppose on some level, and perhaps many, Pop Thruster and the best 1,000 albums ever project owe a debt of gratitude to Nick Hornby.
Hornby is a British author who has written some fantastically funny, compelling, and pop culture-drenched novels, High Fidelity,chief among them.
If you haven’t heard of Nick Hornby, you may be more familiar with High Fidelity the movie from 2000, starring John Cusack. Cusack plays Rob, a music-obsessed owner of a down-on-its-luck record store, and he and his music snob-meets-goof off employees spend a lot of their time drumming up Top 5 lists on every music-related topic under the sun.
There’s a scene in the movie featuring The Beta Band’s “Dry the Rain.” If you know, you know. On YouTube, it’s called the “Beta Band scene,” in fact.
Some dude at the record shop: “Who is that?”
Rob (Cusack): “It’s The Beta Band.”
Dude: “It’s good.”
Rob: “I know.”
“Dry the Rain” is the perfect indie song, the perfect record shop song, and High Fidelity deploys it to perfection in this scene. Absolutely delightful.
To take a step back, I’d describe The Beta Band’s sound as chill music with electronic influences, but Aaron Warshaw at All Music does a better job of fleshing things out a bit: “With reference points literally all across the map, the Beta Band… managed a sound that was startlingly fresh, broadly appealing to fans of jam bands, indie rock, electronica, and Britpop, which is no small feat in and of itself.”
It’s delightful lounge music, coffee shop music, or any number of work/life scenarios. “Dogs Got a Bone” isn’t quite as mesmerizing as “Dry the Rain,” but it’s pretty great in its own right.
“I Know” leverages a light but peppy hip-hop-style break beat and leans into The Beta Band’s electronica side a bit more.
And “Inner Meet Me” shows off the group’s acoustic hippie jam band influences.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s
High Fidelity was rebooted as a limited series TV show a few years ago, and it was surprisingly great while maintaining a similar tone and spirit as the book and film.
Part of the reason for its success was smartly recasting Rob as a woman, and Zoë Kravitz (daughter of Lenny Kravitz, as an aside) knocked it out of the park in the lead role. And Da’Vine Joy Randolph was particularly good as Cherise, a stand-in for Jack Black’s funny and brash music shop employee role from the film.
Even more pop culture stuff that has something to do with The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s
Here are a few more things related to High Fidelity the movie, if you can stand it.
There’s a scene where the snobby record shop crew gets extra snobby about Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band’s Safe as Milk (#986 of best 1,000 albums ever), and I must admit that when I saw the movie for the first time, I got a little kick out of having been well familiar with the good Captain and that album by that point.
“Zig Zag Wanderer” is one of the best songs on Safe as Milk, and is also the short code of a running gag between my old college friends Adam and Dan that dates back… oh, multiple decades now, let us say.
Finally, High Fidelity delivers many hilarious and poignant moments – it’s a legit great film – but I must detail one of my most favorite throwaway lines of all time.
There’s a scene where Rob is in the depths of dealing with a brutal break up, and the man (Ian) that his now ex-girlfriend is with – played with magnificently weird energy by Tim Robbins – shows up at the record shop. Rob tries to do everything in his power to keep it together, and then Ian’s beeper goes off (yes, this was the beeper era, kids!).
Ian looks down at the beeper and says, “Guess who?”
It’s one of the most devastating and hilarious lines – and two words, talk about economy of language! – to ever have been uttered in a movie.
An amazing sequence follows, but guess who is the pinnacle.
Some stats & info about The Beta Band – The Three E.P.’s
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Electronic Music, Indie Rock, Trip-Hop, Rock Music, Indie Rock, British Bands, Martini Lounge, Lounge Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was The Three E.P.’s released? 1998
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #314 out of 1,000
The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from The Beta Band’s The Three E.P.’s that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Take me in and dry the rain.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style (if you’re reading this far, you might know that Rob shows up on every single one of these album entries!). Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.