Beastie Boys: Classic or Dud?

Partly also because I dont know how much of my dislike is music and how much is context (not that you can separate them really): I mean "Intergalactic" was a fun single for a few plays. When you go to indie clubs or to parties or to people's houses and it is the ONLY THING WITH A BEAT YOU HEAR it gets a bit grating. ("Body Movin'" was shit from the off, though). So while I deplore the fact that the Beastie Boys have for most of the 90s been the now-I-will-like-some- hip-hop choice of every student, thats not the Boys' fault. Or is it?

The problem is they're awful rappers. This matched the themes of Licensed perfectly but nowadays it's just tiresome - so occasionally you'll hear something good ("Sabotage" I like a whole lot mostly cause it's not pretending to be hip-hop at all) but generally it's blah. So dud, nowadays.

I'm conflicted about Grand Royal the magazine, too. On the one hand these kind of this-is-cool magazines piss me off even as a joke. On the other hand it's often right.

Licensed to Ill is not one of the greatest records ever made, either. It's got a handful of (now extremely tired) classics and a lot of filler. I couldn't listen to it all the way through, so I gave it to my little brother a couple of years ago. And HE doesn't even listen to it. And he's 14!

It shouldn't even be a question.

They're swirling down the toilet at breakneck pace now, that last track was awful as was the last album. Tom, re your comment about the rapping -- I thought MCA was pretty good for a while there, as on "A Year And A Day" and "Professor Booty." But the other two suck, yeah, for sure. Great videos, though, which no one has men

They have been consistently 4-5 years ahead of their time with every album they put out. LICENSE TO ILL: White brat rap that pulled it off the street and into your house (via MTV). Weren't afraid to sample the most obvious beats. PAULS BOUTIQUE: Only the best rap album ever. The 70s beats and style predated the general populus' 70s revival by 4 years. CHECK YOUR HEAD: By the time everyone else was catching onto the 70s thing, the Boys come out with something COMPLETELY different. They combine punk, funk, soundtrack stuff, classic rap, play their own instruments, etc... Constantly pushing the boundaries.

Need I go on? Well, they might have faded *slightly* after that, but the rest of the albums are still really good and do still show growth. Also, look at their instrumental stuff. Quite good and varied. Impressive resume for 3 snotty kids from Brooklyn.

By far Hello Nasty is their most noble and mature album they have ever recorded and, too me, the one that represents them the most sincerely.

Anyway, the Beastie Boys ARE "palefaced pretenders", if by that you mean that they wear their influences on their sleeves. But, dismal and annoying "License to Ill" aside, they've chanelled that influence into innovation nearly unmatched in hip-hop. "Paul's Boutique", "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communication" are certified classics in my book, each great in its own unique way. So, despite wanted to slap their annoying faces with "License to Ill" and wanting to do it again with the try-to-hard old-schoolness of "Hello Nasty"...Classic.

Let it remain

These guys plainly know their shit and not only do they possess the musical skills, they are 'setters, they appear to be self-depreciating and they rip the fucking piss. These are good things, by the way. The cops vid - I know it's tired but it still reigns as the joint I'm afraid. And for all the ho-hum tracks, they write enough killers to be forgiven the toss.

I like em. I respect em. They played the game to their rules. And won. Sure they're a pain in the ass. But you need these boys: totally classic.

Are they marking their own albs down at the Record and Tape now?

I liked their schtick, LOVED their magazine, was happy to see their vids, enjoyed their pranks. I don't question their worth as an industry. I just think their achievements in irreverance on CD are pretty minor. "So Watcha Want" is their only transcendent hip hop single, and anyone who thinks Paul's Boutique is the greatest rap album of all time just isn't listening for the same things I look for in rap music, things that usually have something to do with, you know, rapping.

(btw, I don't think the Beatles were perfect so I ain't saying the Beasties are, dig?).

More people should voice their two cents on this group. They're more fun than any other ex-beerbrawlers-turned-new-age-buddhists. Allegedly MCA has an emo band. Their protest song has Zoolander quotes. They need an editor bad. They take an ungodly amount of time between albums. They're white rappers. Ad-Rock, who kicked the cutie in the patootie and needs girls to do his laundry, is dating Kathleen Hanna. They really look awkward when they play their own instruments. And when they're on, they make me happier than any other group ever.

nasty = nasty little man = public relations firm (dealing w/ beastie boys but more importantly ATP) = "hello nasty" = receptionist's phrase.

They're the San Francisco of hip-hop.

wtf? they are the west islip of hip-hop. not to mention they live in your town... just cuz they "pimp" harputs does not mean BB = SF... ew gross.

reminder: this is the beastie boys thread.

As an SF resident, I can't tell if I'm supposed to be offended or not...

btw when is your both show shakey mo?

I hope you haven't heard LL Cool J.

I'll defend the Beasties (on some levels), I just don't get where this weird regional insult is coming from, or what it has to do with anything...

HI! I have heard LL COOL J! OMG! HAHA! LOL! ^_^

sounds good shakey mo, let me know the details.

Beck's "Odelay" was a critical orgasm, but it was little more than Paul's Boutique Part 2 (and I'm guessing the upcoming Tenacious D record will be Part 3).

hahahaha. sigh.

roger adultery not to thread!

Need I go on? Well, they might have faded *slightly* after that, but the rest of the albums are still really good and do still show growth. Also, look at their instrumental stuff. Quite good and varied. Impressive resume for 3 snotty kids from Brooklyn.

Look at all the damn rap records coming out around Pauls Boutique. Listen to them. They were nowhere near the musical genius that Pauls Boutique represents. The beats were all one dimensional. And they were so far ahead of their time they still hold up today. I dont hear too many people listening to run dmc anymore and they were supposed to be the gods yet pauls boutique can still conquer and rap in todays society. C'mon, doesnt that tell you something?

http://www.creemmagazine.com/BeatGoesOn/BeastieBoys/LayItDownClowns.html

they have had their share of classics, and their share of crap. for better or worse, their classics are front-loaded. unfortunately, we're now living in the back-end and there's less (or NO) great music to detract from the smarm.

For the generation weaned on Danny Bonaduce, awakened by Haldeman, Erlichman and Dean, and enlightened by punk and its progeny, this disillusionment casts doubt and cynicism on not only our leaders, but on the mass media that stimulate our national mood.

I thought that was a really great article, until I reached this part, which just totally went over my head. Who are these people?

old school!!! (almost 20 years ago, natch, but yow!!!)

They all went to jail.

GHAGARRRAGH

I'll stop there. Sure the last few have been largely recycled material, and yeh, I've got mixed feelings about the whole "P.C. Boys" vibe. But are they Classic????? They are one of the utmost classic artists of our time, and if ya don't know, now ya know.

How about an instrumental "Paul's Boutique" release? Now that I'd buy...

Particularly for the way they divide people here. Cleverer and more innovative in retrospect than they seem at the time. Equally stupid and annoying and repetitive. I hated License to Ill as a teenager in the late 80s. (Kind of teenager I was.) The first album I got into was Ill Communication, which blew me away.

Yeah the rapping is horrible. (Except it sounds *amazing* on those Kleptones bootlegs that put Intergalactic and Body Movin over Queen's Radio Gah Gah and I Want to Break Free.)

Hello Nasty : Apart from Intergalactic some of the party tracks are kind of dull. But I love the song that sounds like Broadcast. (I'm forever putting it on mix-tapes with a kind of "guess who this is" subtext.) and some of the other non-rap tracks are more than filler.

What's the later stuff like?

I've always kind of liked them because they just sound fun. I think they also were pretty innovative in their time and seemed to be on the cusp of interesting culture just before everyone else caught up. I think I still would enjoy most of the stuff up to about Hello Nasty, but Paul's Boutique is probably the only one I'd think of putting on myself.

While you were still in shortpants.

By the way, by 1986, I had in fact graduated to the all-important longpants. And that, my friends, has made all the difference.

(Paul Revere still does hold a certain draw, however. I wish that I had "did it with a whiffle-ball bat", i guess.)

Looking Down The Barrel of a Gun
Known samples:
    Primary beat sample: "Last Bongo in Belgium" - Incredible Bongo Band (1973).
    Piano chord sample: "Time" - Pink Floyd (1973).
    Additional samples: "Put Your Hand in the Hand" - Ocean (1971).

"Rolling down the hill snowballing getting bigger
An explosion in the chamber, the hammer from the trigger
I seen him get stabbed I watched the blood spill out
He had more cuts than my man Chuck Chillout
   ( Influential old-school DJ who put out party records in the 1980's and has mixing credits on Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back )
24 is my age .22 is my gauge
Writing rhymes on a page going off in a rage
Out on a missionm a stolen car mission
Had a small problem with the transmission
3 on the tree in the middle of the night
I have this steak on my head cause I got into a fist fight
Life comes in phases, take the good with the bad
You bought those coins on the street and you got had
It's all high spirit, you know you gotta hear it !
Don't touch the mic, baby don't come near it !
It's gonna get you it's gonna get you -
It's gonna get you girl it's gonna get you...

Looking down the barrel of a gun -
Son of a gun son of a bitch -
Getting paid getting rich -
    (sample: drums and bit of guitar distortion here from "Mississippi Queen" - Mountain (1979).
Ultra violence running through my head
    (An allusion to Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange film (1971), a more obvious reference follows)
Fuzzy navel y'all making me see red
    (Fuzzy Navel is a mixed drink comprised of peach schnapps and orange juice. )
Rapid fire louie like Rambo got bullets
  (  John Rambo became the quintessential action hero, popularized by Sylvester Stallone, starting with the film First Blood in 1982. )
I'm a gonna die harder like my kid Bruce Willis
   ( Bruce Willis franchise of action movies began in 1988 with Die Hard. )
I love girlies waxing and milking
Co-ordinating trim is my man Dave Scilken
   ( Childhood friend of Adam Horovitz who died of a drug overdose in 1991 (two years after thisrecording). Scilken was also in The Young and the Useless with Horovitz prior to the Beastie Boys.  On the Licensed to Ill and Together Forever tours, Scilken earned the title of "trim co-ordinator".  His primary duties in this role was to procure females from the crowd and present them with backstage passes.)
Predetermined destiny is who I am
You got your finger on the trigger like the Son of Sam I am
   ( David Berkowitz was a NYC area serial killer in the late 1970's. He terrorized the city for 13 months before his capture, killing six people. The first nickname he acquired during his spree was given to him because of his weapon of choice, the ".44 caliber killer". Later, in letters to the police left at the scenes of his crimes, Berkowitz referred to himself as the "Son of Sam."This line of the song also seems to make brief reference to the story Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss which begins "I am Sam/Sam I am". )
Like Clockwork Orange going off on the town
    (Here's the other more obvious A Clockwork Orange reference. )
I've got homeboy's bonanza to beat your ass down
I'm mad at my desk and I'm writing all curse words
Expressing my aggressions through my schizophrenic verse words
You're a headless chicken chasin' a sucker free basin
Looking for a fist to put your face in
Get hip, get hip -  don't slip ya knuckle heads
Racism is schism on the serious tip."

the pants are fancy.

Having removed these we have:
Chuck Chillout - admittedly semi-obscure reference.
Dave Scilken - no disrepect to the dead , but too obscure to have any real lyrical meaning.

Ultra Violence, Fuzzy Navel, Rambo, Bruce Willis, Son of Sam - Not really digging deep here.

Clockwork Orange as "more obvious Clockwork Orange reference" - indisputable.

Still, I can't help but admit that Racism is schism on the serious tip. Whatever that means.

I think the Anthrax cover on that "Beavis and Butthead Experience" album is the superior version.

same ol shit.

haha, this is completely missing the coolest sample of all, Mountain's "Mississippi Queen"! Which was of course immediately apparent to me upon picking this album up day-of-release back there in the late-80s. Can't speak to the classic-rock hating morons and why they missed it. I always listened to Mountain as a kid, because I like good musicians.

Looking down the barrel of a gun -
Son of a gun son of a bitch -
Getting paid getting rich -
(sample: drums and bit of guitar distortion here from "Mississippi Queen" - Mountain (1979).

Iggy Pop - "Raw Power" - I'm a street walking cheetah with a head full of napalm

NWA - "Fuck the Police" - Fuck tha police
Comin straight from the underground
Young nigga got it bad cuz I'm brown
And not the other color so police think
They have the authority to kill a minority

Ramones - "Bonzo goes to Bitburg" - You'?re a politician don'?t become one of hitler?s' children

The Doors - "Peacefrog" - Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.

Chic - "Le Freak" - All that pressure got you down
Has your head spinning all around
Feel the rhythm, check the ride
Come on along and have a real good time
Like the days of stomping at the Savoy
Now we freak, oh what a joy
Just come on down, two fifty four
Find a spot out on the floor

Beastie Boys - "Looking down the Barrel of a gun" - I have this steak on my head cause I got into a fist fight.

As lyrics go, I'll give you even odds with chic, a fighting chance with the Doors (because I always thought Morrison was an over-rated dolt), and absolutely no fucking shot at NWA. As music goes (referencing music written by the Beastie Boys), no contest. Across the board.

Such a silly lyric that for some reason is fun/funny, whereas the reality of soaking your black eye with a steak is no fun at all.

This may be one of those lines divided by age: if you're over a cerain age you may not have been open enough at the time to recognize just how brilliant and inventive their whole package was for the eighties, (IGNORING ALWAYS 'fight for your right', which is in no way representative of their output) and if you're younger than 25 you may take them for granted (like how Metallica appears stodgy today compared to all the heavier bands they influenced). But here is a fact: when 'Licensed' dropped it was a revelation to all.

Certain tracks from License to Ill were ubiquitous at that time, and they are rap *classics*: Slow & Low, Hold it now, hit It, Brass Monkey, and Paul Revere were coming out of every trunk in Oakland that whole year - and if you go back and listen to the NEXT year's best hip-hop offerings (Such as It Takes A Nation of Millions & Straight Outta Compton) you will hear *exactly* how many times those artists reference the Beastie Boys. And if it's good enough for NWA & PE (etc etc) than it's good enough for me.

God, check out these fuckin snobs at the top of the thread here!

Hello Nasty fucking banged (well the good tracks did)

Shit can be summed up as:

embarrassing early years
followed by

2 great albums
followed by

2 good albums
followed by

being irrelevant, spotty, and in need of charity

embarrassing early years are the best shit ever

That this question was even asked breaks my heart.

embarrassing early years are the best shit ever

― ○◙i shine cuz i genital grind◙○ (roxymuzak), Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:23 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^hoos that^^^

Palefaced Pretenders should be the name of a tribute band

pretty excellent band though i sort of checked out before "5 boroughs" came out. i don't know what spencer's "sf of rap" thing is supposed to mean except i guess it's another southland zing. they always sounded nothing more than nyc to me and they got tons of play on the subway during my time there!

embarrassing early years are the best shit ever

I should clarify by early years, I mean as a hardcore band.

Although I've always been curious about their purported No Wave/World Music outfit that predated it.

And Cookie Puss is fantastic, still (which is what prompted interest from Russell Simmons anyway).

No Wave/World Music outfit that predated it.

I have never heard of this.

Wouldn't they have been about 12?

Young Aborigines

I can't find the lengthy timeline now that described in their own words what they wanted to do, but I remember them citing several things that were NYC du jour in 1981, including no wave and world music.

Anyway, since that timeline, Young Aborigines is cited all over, although downplaying it to "very very shortlived", which is fair, but non-descript of their original goals.

http://www.beastiemania.com/whois/the_young_aborigines/

By the summer of 1981 the Young Aborigines were performing at Jerry William’s 171 A.

http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/multiarticlesub.aspx?csid2=9&fid1=3028&csid1=59

Young Aborigines drummer Michael Diamond meets Adam Yauch at a Bad Brains show in New York and the two become close friends through their love of hardcore music. Yauch begins showing up at Aborigines practices; when founding bassist Jeremy Shatan goes home to do his homework, Adam takes over. When Yauch is on bass duty, the Aborigines (including percussionist Kate Schellenbach and guitarist John Berry) call themselves the Beastie Boys, a purposefully stupid name for their joke attempt at being one of New York’s first hardcore bands. The new line-up debuts at Yauch’s 17th birthday party. Record store owner Dave Parsons asks them if they’d be interested in releasing their first record on his new label, Rat Cage.

xpost

Yes, this sounds a little familiar. According to Mike D they broke up after only two shows so there probably wasn't much worth hearing.

I again would like to point to exhibit A -- which I failed to bring to the trial -- the timeline.

Seems they had been together for a fair amount of time rehearsing before their show(s), and had a clear direction.

Most people cite 1979 as the founding date, although it seems that's a stretch. Mike D would've been 13/14 at that time.

I wonder if it was like, "yeah, we want to be as cool as the Mudd Club scene, but you know, we're kids, and this hardcore thing appeals to us directly, so let's move on."

anyone heard the bootleg of them live in trenton nj 1992? it is large.

Where to find this? I'm not big on collecting bootlegs and the like but I remember that tour. It was great.

first two records are a couple of the greatest hip hop albums ever imho, but I never really bother with anything after that. although at the time I was really into Check Your Head and Ill Communication. Lost interest entirely after that.

Some Dumb Cop Gave Me Two Tickets Already = funniness

i'd like to give an early birthday shout-out to ad rock. i know halloween is his birthday cuz he said it was in a song once.

i always loved egg raid on mojo from the speed trials comp. as far as their pre-rap stuff goes. and cookie puss of course. which is still genius.

what the hell? I had never heard of this before

are you serious??????

they don't got no carvel where shakey lives.

He sometimes has arms and legs, but these are just icing decorations, not additional parts.

i'm like proust and his fuckin' cookie when i watch these ads...

if you live in NY and ever go out, you've probably run into Mojo. He's still around, still working the doors, putting on shows and playing records.

um, not sure what ilx3's policy on links to verboten materials are like, but if you search theultimatebootlegexperience blog its quite easy to find. [mods pls delete if this is a problem]

I've lived my whole life in CA guys. Been to NY twice.

yah but you could still know what a cookie puss was!

Thank you Stevie. :)

I never experienced a Cookie Puss while I lived in NYC but I did see the Beasties all the time. Perhaps I should have asked one of them to direct me to a Carvel's.

Carvel sucked, though I always really hated Ice Cream Cakes. Please also note Fudgie the Whale, who shared a mold with Santa, if I remember correctly.

Yeah Carvel is horrible, horrible ice cream.

i love carvel ice cream. i live for flying saucers.

yeah flying saucers are great, and the cakes, with the chocolate crunchies in between the layers. i totally miss carvel. a coworker and i recently tried to get a carvel cake sent to CO, but no dice. wickie the witch for a happy halloween.

so the beasties are obviously megaproud about being from brooklyn in 99% of their lyrics, so why in "shake yr rump" do they say "from downtown, manhattan, the village"

Only MCA is from Brooklyn. Mike D and AdRock are from Manhatten.

that makes sense. mca is the one saying "from downtown".

youre right, i forgot "you're from secausus, im from manhattan" - adrock

So there's a 20th anniversary remaster of Paul's Boutique out; is it any good? Does it just mash the levels up? B-Boy Bouillabaisse is split into 9 tracks at the mastering...

1. It is louder, as you would expect, but not mashed; Audacity shows no plateaus.

2. The bass has definitely been enhanced, but not overly so; much closer to the original vinyl.

3. If you like the album, it has never, ever sounded this good. Still one of the best headphone albums ever.

4. B-Boy Bouillabaisse is split but you don't notice it.

Just been and bought it, following that post, EZ.

Aren't you supposed to be convalescing?

I am, yes, but HMV's not far way and frankly I needed some fresh air. I also got a haircut.

Ah. Carry on - fine movies, neat trim hair, Paul's Boutique through the Grados - good day.

This is fucking awesome.

Told ya!

Really glad you like, to be honest. I always have a hard time repurchasing stuff, but sometimes it's worth it.

Bump, in light of the Check Your Head reissue.

I think CYH is my 2nd favourite Beasties record, definitely. I also think it seems pretty disingenuous to think of them as hip hop. They're just a band who happen to have done a lot of different things including a lot of rapping.

Looks like somebody just posted this on line after 22 years, so what the hell...

http://beatpatrol.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/chuck-eddy-lay-it-down-clowns-the-beastie-boys-take-over-1987/

...and Eloise, an overweight go-go dancer who’s supposed to look “sexy” when she strips down to her black lace, I guess, but mostly just comes off as gruesome.

reads like the 2009 internet xhuxk - consistent style!

MCA undergoing surgery for cancer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7CH3M7cECI

Damn. He sounds pretty hopeful about it at least.

Man, best of luck to him. Also, the new single with Nas works for me: http://www.spinemagazine.com/news_item.php?id=8830

It's a pain in the neck (sorry had to say it)

Huge respect for this comment. Also: 1) fuck cancer, as ever; 2) sincere hopes for a speedy recovery.

What cancer? Cant play youtube here.

Salivary gland and lymph node iirc.

Where is Mike D?

Mike D too scared to be close to him?

anyway, ouch! Lymph node doesn't sound good, but hell what do i know. hope he recovers soon!

Hope he recovers and is at ease.

bummed

Medical info on what's got/will be dealing with.

At what point did Mike D decide he wanted to be old Jewish lady librarian?

http://i31.tinypic.com/6i8nyv.jpg

Did anyone pick up the record store day single? It was "Lee Majors Come Again" and "Here's a Little Somethin' For Ya", both sides sounding like they went through a ridiculous amount of DJ/remix work. Like, there are breaks all over the place, a ton of samples (they seem to be based mostly off "Da Funk" and "The Number Song"), and some very heads-up production. I doubt the full album is gonna be like that, but what if it was?? The single is one of my favorite things they've ever done.

Couldn't listen to them for ages but am really enjoying Ill Communication and Check Your Head right now! Does anyone do anything like classic Beasties these days without embarrassing themselves?

Whatever summer it was when I was young and carefree and Ill Communication and It's Great When You're Straight came out, that was such a great summer. Shame the latter hasn't held up well at all.

Oh I guess they were released a year apart. Hazy days

God yeah..both albums I could spin anytime, anywhere and it just always feels both fresh and familiar.

when they re-released Check Your Head, and I think Paul's Boutique too, last year, they put up a commentary on their website for each of them, where they all sat around and talked about making the albums. Both are definitely A+, many lols, and worth digging up

I'll see if I can find the link

would be curious about the Paul's Boutique one...

dunno if it's still active but here you go

http://paulsboutique.beastieboys.com/content/download-pauls-boutique-audio-commentary
http://checkyourhead.beastieboys.com/content/download-check-your-head-audio-commentary

There's some great stuff on the Paul's Boutique one where they talk about all the clothes they wore in the Hey Ladies video

I'm suprised more albums haven't been released with commentary tracks like on dvds. (Poster Children did it several years ago, but I've not heard of any since then.)

Yeah, I think it's a really cool idea, especially with bands that are fun to listen to, a la Beasties.

I love the sample repository sites that sprang up in my early internet days about "Paul's Boutique" and also Pop Will Eat Itself's "This Is The Day..." album. It was intriguing to see the vatious consensuses especially where I did in fact know the source.

Did anyone else watch the full-length 'Fight For Your Right Revisited' the other night?

Link here: http://www.juxtapoz.com/Current/beastie-boyss-fight-for-your-right-revisited-full

It was kinda silly fun overall, like a big long music video...but I thought it was pretty fun. And Elijah pulls off his Ad-Rock homage pretty nicely!

feel like Beastie Boys are extremely unhip to like now. are the young people into them at all??

when i saw em at bonnaroo, no one sang along to "Paul Revere," but everyone knew the words to "Intergalactic," so

Paul Revere didn't even crack the top 40 when it was released what, 30 years ago? Intergalactic was a much bigger hit from not much longer ago.

but no kids don't care about the Beastie Boys. why should they?

tbh i'm always kinda surprised when friends of mine that are like 10 yrs younger than me seem to still care about the beasties

there's no reason they should care, but when I was a teenager I listened to "old" bands, y'know? just seems like Beasties fall from cooler-than-shit to eww-those-corny-old-white-guys??? in a relatively short span of time is pretty epic.

unconfirmed rumor of MCA's passing?

http://globalgrind.com/news/adam-yauch-mca-beastie-boys-dies-47-photos

really hoping this isn't true...these guys were so big to me when I was a teenager

Can anyone confirm?

http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/04/beastie-boys-adam-yauch-dead/

http://www.pitchfork.com/news/46406-rip-adam-yauch-of-the-beastie-boys/

oh man, no way!

fuck!!!! RIP :(

no no no no no please no

fuck, I always thought he had luckily beaten the cancer, sad news...

Oh shit.

FUCK

awwwww fuck

deserves his own RIP thread, surely

horrible news, cancer can get tae fuck

Oh fucking hell

xxpost -- Rather.

RIP Adam Yauch/MCA of the Beastie Boys

damnit when I saw this thread get bumped I thought it was them announcing a new album

Tempted to do a POX thread. But would that be Beasties overkill, or is there still enough Beasties love in the wake of Yauch's passing to make it worthwhile?

We did just have a Beastie Boys PoXX thread. Just check everyone's ballots.

And then cut them in half.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

http://soundcloud.com/ninja-tune/solid-steel-radio-show-31-8-1

Solid Steel in association with Serato (31st August) 3 years ago Solid Steel DJs Cheeba, Moneyshot and Food had the idea of collaborating on a version of the Beastie Boys‘ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album made entirely from the original sample sources, shortly after Moneyshot aired his mix of their ‘Check Your Head’ album in the same way.

Finally the result is here, titled ‘Caught In The Middle Of A 3-Way Mix’ - each of them have taken a third of the album to work on and combined their efforts into a mix that will make you hear it in a new way. Aside from the original sample sources they’ve included commentary from the Beasties, vintage interviews, demo versions and much more.

The mix was over half way completed when they heard the tragic news of MCA‘s death in May so the impetus to finish it was instantly doubled and new meaning given to the project. It goes without saying that this is also a tribute to Adam Yauch and the legacy he left behind and we hope it will be embraced by Beastie fans around the globe.

Caught In The Middle of A 3-Way Mix - a tribute to The Beastie Boys' 'Paul's Boutique' album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIO8LdsoN8g

so many rushing to disparage the 'Boys at the top of this thread.

One of the things Ad-Rock is doing now:

A gathering on Thursday in New York of “Artists for Warren” included some notable possible supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Dem who keeps insisting that she’s not running despite clamor among the fans of her populist message. The cool kids in attendance at the indie/arty mixer included Adam Horovitz (aka Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys) and actress Chloe Sevigny, we’re told. The host committee included actor Mark Ruffalo, and music was by Tennessee Thomas, a British drummer/actress.

The swanky backdrop? The loft of Julie Pacino (yeah, her dad’s name is Al) and Jennifer DeLia, filmmakers behind the production company Poverty Row Entertainment.

Per the invite: “Attendance is not an endorsement of Warren for President. Rather, this is an invitation to meet as a group of artists and activists to discuss how an Elizabeth Warren run could change the conversation, build progressive power, and move us closer to our shared vision of an America where everyone has a fighting chance.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2015/01/26/celebs-like-mark-ruffalo-and-chloe-sevigny-may-be-ready-for-elizabeth-warren/

seeeing Adrock being the dutiful husband in the punk singer kinda warmed my heart tbh

http://blog.funkygog.de/data/2006/10/beastie-boys-ill-communication-cover-back.jpeg

The back cover of 'Ill Communication' (I think - the one with 'sabotage' on it anyway) says it all for me: "Look at the funny coloured people! They've got natural rhythm you know! Wasn't Shaft a good film!" Patronising bastards.
― DG, Sunday, 11 February 2001 20:00 (13 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

huh?

old ilx had some weird opinions

these days I would defend them more stridently than I do upthread, the first three albums are such a great arc

DG was a shit poster don't worry about it

not worried about it, just kind of hilarious.

http://www.aloha-miscreant.com/2014/12/the-ultimate-beastie-boys-sample-source.html

The Beastie Boys slayed the crowd the couple times I saw them play live in the early 90s. Outdoor arena half emptied out with the Smashing Pumpkins trying to follow them at the Lollapalooza I saw them at. To be fair, a group would have had to have a unique hook to get an audience's energy back up after these guys especially at an all day concert. First time I saw them was at a cow arena at a state fair grounds on Halloween after Check Your Head came out with the Rollins Band and Da' Lench Mob. Really mixed crowd of punks, b-boys and people that knew the videos many of which where getting their slam dance on for the first time. They were really fun live, one of the best live acts I saw of that time.

Thank you so much for that link Josh! I've had a Paul's Boutique sample CD and totally loved it. Looking forward to hearing this...

https://open.spotify.com/track/1GhvZVUOeP6jdEAQvXtEoJ?si=XUxYzfWESwiEdaqqEXGJ4g

I gazed over someone's shoulder at a review copy of the book the other day and it looks nuts. I've heard it's not very revealing, but it looks fun.

Yeah does this look great or what?

https://cdn.hiconsumption.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Beastie-Boys-Book-1.jpg

Alongside the band narrative you will find rare photos, original illustrations, a cookbook by chef Roy Choi, a graphic novel, a map of Beastie Boys’ New York, mixtape playlists, pieces by guest contributors, and many more surprises.

https://kingsroadmerch.com/beastie-boys/view/?id=13926&cid=2024

Hope piskor did the comic

Been looking forward to the memoir but I hope there's a non-coffee table regular book version too.

Finger lickin good y’all

Ranking their catalog, one misstep at a time.

cursed with the terrible digital reproduction that plagued early hip-hop and Def Jam productions in particular

?

“Body Movin'” benefited from a much-aired Fatboy Slim remix and Spike Jonze album

??¿?!

Hello Nasty is the last time it seemed like they were really trying but tbh the rapping bores me to tears and the genre-hopping feels thin, I never go back to it

Body Movin'” benefited from a much-aired Fatboy Slim remix and Spike Jonze album

??¿?!

― I baste my thigh, gent (sic)

I corrected that. Not sure why I thought Jonze directed it.

Revisited -to the 5 boroughs- recently. That was a mistake

"Spike Jonze album" was baffling on the face of it. I didn't even twig that you were denying Hornblower, thought you miiight have meant the sleeve (a Drawing Board job iirc, that failed to draw from Diabolik fumetti in the way the video successfully sampled the film adaptation)

I bought 5 Boroughs in the ltd-ed textured packaging but only managed one play. sadly the remixes were all pretty great, suggesting that they could have done better by opening up the studio after dumping Mario, instead of replacing him with themselves.

especially the Just Blaze version of Ch-Check It Out, which got its own bespoke video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm22GRJhGak (which in turn likely inspired the excellent Letterman performance)

Man this is a really great copy of the '98 MTV 2 hour special; Beastieography, with all the bumpers and Sifl And Olly adverts and MTV promos and such.. it's freakin amazing https://vimeo.com/68587522

There's been a version on YouTube for years that's way shorter and looks terrible.

Hello Nasty is the last time it seemed like they were really trying but tbh the rapping bores me to tears and the genre-hopping feels thin, I never go back to it

― Οὖτις, Saturday, October 6, 2018 3:27 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^ This.

nooooo

hello nasty is grate

it’s definitely their fifth best album but still

“lovey and thurston howell-ing, the grasshopper unit is prowl-ing”

how can you be down on the rapping with gems like that

I watched the MTV thing last night. It really captures the whiplash of the changes through their first three albums. They were genuinely funny the way the early Beatles were, and leveraged their unexpected superstardom just as effectively. The brattiness holds up so unexpectedly well, probably because the tunes do too.

i'm with late great, absolutely love hello nasty

intergalactic was a staple of high school dances, what a sick song to bust out to

Hello Nasty yeah it’s probably my fifth favorite. It is ridiculously good though, I think the music and beats and lyrics are great, and the rapping style they utilized here might seem a bit formulaic now but it’s the beastie boys so it’s a blast throughout.

I'm curious to know if they mean anything to the 18-30 set. Based on my observation, no.

A young and impetuous Capt James T Kirk begs 2 differ

Well I'm the king of Boggle, there is none higher
I get eleven points off the word 'quagmire'

You can get Beasties nostalgia tees at Target and Walmart, so I imagine they still have some cachet.

Just went on a mini Momo Crawl in honor of Adam Yauch.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1kigbQJ3vA8wmdq8WHB6iz

Our evening began in Peter Sechelle’s comfortable study in his New York townhouse. Where the candlelight was just right, the hi fi was in the background, and the wine was delicious.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2wtNNJTXnYi1LLNP7dbbae

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_NAHTLDpcM

cool

Haha I have a Spotify playlist of 10,000 songs that I often play on shuffle and Blue Nun came up just this morning when I was driving home from the bank.

hankies at the ready, folks, this is gonna be emotional

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=0aCBDL1sUY8&feature=emb_title

fuckin' embeds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aCBDL1sUY8

great revive

ffs

Glad it's on Apple+ to guarantee maximum exposure.

can't wait to torrent it on april 24 so i can watch it on my birthday the next day

so it's like a screening with live commentary... or something?

it's kind of unclear!

I'm looking forward to watching it whatever the format. The book and a couple podcast interviews reminded me of all the things I enjoyed about the Beastie Boys when I was younger and made me realize why I drifted away and decided something was inherently uncool about them at some point -- they were inherently uncynical, perpetually learning and doing what they enjoyed.

I got off the bus when their rhyming got lazier

that's when things started to get hazier

Hey Shakey!

it was around the time when they defaulted to that rhyme-style of everybody yelling the last syllable of every line in unison

xps

they might have started defaulting to that but they kind of did that all along?

it's something they copped from Run DMC and there's nothing wrong with it - but there's a lot more variety to the rhyming styles on the first three records. Once you get to Hello Nasty though, that's the only style they use.

fair enough

I was immediately thinking of Slow and Low when you mentioned that style, and it's.. a Run DMC song recorded by the Beastie Boys

and I know I know by that point they were trying to do a million things - reggae, hardcore, jazz-funk, indie rock, whatever - and rapping just became one of many things they did, but their attention to the craft of it suffered, and as that was always one of the things that really drew me to them, it was disappointing and my attention wandered

don't get me wrong I'm not knockin' em, they went where their interests guided them and that's cool, I will always love them

The fact that they were trying to do a million things on Hello Nasty at least kept it interesting. When they decided to go to strictly hip hop with To the 5 Boroughs is probably where their lazy rhyme style ended up hurting them more.

^^ agree 100%

they definitely just started jamming on ideas based on things they liked by the mid-90s

as a teen during the mid/late 90s it was cool to listen to them as a sort of amalgamation of things you should get into, lots of musical ideas that, like the rhymes, were a grab bag of cultural references

agree on Nasty/Boroughs. Loved Hot Sauce Committee, it was a nice surprise to get another Hello Nasty type trip

I finally got around in the past year to watching the long, goofy celebrity cameo-filled video from that last album and it's in this weird technological gap where it exists online but only in a low resolution grainy version.

like there's this entire media shift that they didn't bridge as the project ended and MCA died :(

Hello Nasty was the last album I bought. Liked it initially and then less and less each listen. The production style/textures/equipment had no life to it.

That's one of the crazy things about BB to me, that they never really updated their rap style from their old school roots, yet managed to make it feel adequately fresh (for at least 12+ years) by re-contextualizing it with their music/production, which was always curious and evolving.

they definitely never before or after seemed to really try to write rhymes on the same level they did on Paul's Boutique

the peak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtEVKO9_ZDY

I only just noticed that they recycle (but reverse) the "We're from Manhattan, you're from Secaucus" put down from "Rock Hard" in "The New Style."

I did once enjoy Ad-Rock doing his shtick whilst ordering lunch on line in front of me, but yeah.

I'm sure I've posted about it before, but my favorite BB story was when I went to see a history of hip-hop exhibit at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. My friend and I were freaking out that one of the only other people in there that day/time was Yauch. It must have been around sukkot, because outside the museum were all these Lubavitch Jews in wait, ready to hand out a lulav and etrog (palm frond and citrus fruit) and corner you about your beliefs. My friend and I think, aw man, we're as Jewish as they look, there's so way we can get through the gauntlet. So we prepare ourselves, but they zoom right past us and straight to Yauch. So thanks for taking the heat, Yauch.

My second favorite was seeing them right when "Check Your Head" came out, in '92, at close to the nadir of their coolness (but right before they became cooler than everybody else) at the Troc in Philly, with fIREHOSE and Basehead opening. That show ruuuuuuuuuuuled. They came out and did PE's "Sophisticated Bitch" with fIREHOSE.

oh fuck yeah, fIREHOSE used to totally rip it up on that tune, I saw them do it in maybe 1989

I was so pissed that I couldn't get anyone to drive me up to see that bill in Oakland - I think the Butthole Surfers were on it as well?

Hello Nasty is one of the few late 90's full CD runtime grab bag albums actually worth listening to from front to back

fIREHOSE used to totally rip it up on that tune, I saw them do it in maybe 1989

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIqxMYLEB84

As far as covers go that whole '92 live EP was pretty hip: PE, Buttholes, Wire, BOC, Superchunk. Really couldn't go wrong whichever way you went for further research after that.

Everybody rappin like it’s a documentary
Actin like life is a big documentary

imo the fact they left that flub in the final take instead of recording another take is pretty indicative of their ethos
it’s funny

Have they ever said what the real rhyme was supposed to be?

commercial/rehearsal iirc

I like the flubbed version better, it just sounds cool the way he repeats it. It's like he's too cool to rhyme.

tbh it’s pretty obvious what it’s supposed to be and I laugh and go “really, what!” when it’s
been a while since I’ve heard it

so it's like a screening with live commentary... or something?

the impression i got is, they asked spike to film one of the talk/q&as they did promoting the book, and then it spiralled from a straight 'concert movie' into an actual documentary, but with the talk/q&a still as the spine of the piece. but i don't know for sure, I just know I wanna watch it.

it took 26 years, but Spike Jonze finally has a Beastie Boys feature film. bless 'em all

all his prior efforts have been... sabotaged?

🥁

“Sure Shot” sure sounds good in this coffee shop.

something that really stuck with me from the book is how much it made it clear (and this is not a knock on them) that they were fans first and musicians second. Their enthusiasm as music nerds was what really put them over - they were like really goofy curators/gatekeepers that just could not WAIT to hip their core audience (suburban white kids) to all this super-cool stuff they were into. I dunno if that sort of role is even possible anymore in this day and age, their certainly aren't very many other bands that made a career out of it the way they did.

Absolutely. The book has such a joyous sense of fandom to it and underlines the fact that all those references were done in a genuine spirit of generosity to it. Getting into the Beasties in the late 90s totally changed my life and gave me a life-raft from all the nu-metal my mates were into.

listened to a long interview with mario caldato recently where he mentioned that several times as a compliment - that they were bad-to-mediocre musicians but that they loved to play, both for its own sake and as a way of exploring/taking apart the music they were into

Everybody rappin like it’s a documentary
Actin like life is a big documentary

just wanted to acknowledge this

which interview was that? (I feel like I saw him pop up on a podcast recently, but didn't listen to it)

I always loved the story of "Sabotage" - just one of the guys banging on a single chord, thinking it was the coolest shit ever, and turning it into a hit single

I like the story about how the working title for "Sabotage" was "Chris Rock", because when they were first working it out in the studio, their friend Chris ran in and went "this is the shit!!!! This shit rocks!!!!"

Jordan it was on YouTube, one of those Red Bull music academy things from a few years ago. I never heard him talk before, he seems like a really sweet guy.

Hello Nasty is a near-great album, my favorite after PB and LTI. The ideal 1998 album: like ...Endtroducing, Odelay, Dots and Loops, it embraces the most luminous part of late '90s capital-fueled musical tourism, yet HN, in its rhymes and attitudes, is also a throwback. In the Jay-Z era the Run-DMC approach was quaint AND refreshing. To work it depended on star power and good will; the Beasties had the former and projected the latter.

Not everything works, but the sinuousness of the first nine or ten tracks is impressive in itself, a helluva lot more than Ill Communication's boho mysticism.

The late summer of 1998 was seven or weight weeks of "Intergalactic" on at every bar I hit; to segue to "Doo Wop (That Thing)" was nice.

That star power and good will really did help, since it's otherwise so innately cornball. Hip to be square, and all that.

seven or weight weeks
Take the load off, AlfieAlfred

Done.

Hello Nasty still sounds convincingly futuristic/techy/spacy to me, even twenty years in the rear-view mirror. I think it’s the echoey production, but it might just be that it was my soundtrack during a summer of heavy psychadelics and forays into phone phreaking.

otm

the most amazing thing that the book revealed is that they'd write lyrics individually, come together to see how they fit together, and then assign them to one of the group

they didn't write their own parts, they wrote parts that probably targeted a voice, but then decided who was going to do what collectively

Hello Nasty is a near-great album, my favorite after PB and LTI. The ideal 1998 album: like ...Endtroducing, Odelay, Dots and Loops, it embraces the most luminous part of late '90s capital-fueled musical tourism, yet HN, in its rhymes and attitudes, is also a throwback. In the Jay-Z era the Run-DMC approach was quaint AND refreshing. To work it depended on star power and good will; the Beasties had the former and projected the latter.

i still prefer the boho mysticism of the previous two LPs but this is an excellent analysis of HN

I really recommend the audio version of the Beastie Boys book. It's read by the guys, plus a whole raft of famous people who were on the scene at the time from Kim Gordon to John C Reilly. It's all put together in the same collagey/cut-up spirit as an actual BBs album

Spike Jones’s chapter is all-time trolling in the audiobook

curators/gatekeepers that just could not WAIT to hip their core audience (suburban white kids) to all this super-cool stuff they were into. I dunno if that sort of role is even possible anymore in this day and age, their certainly aren't very many other bands that made a career out of it the way they did.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 29 January 2020 16:08 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

with reservations (much as i love em) and a difft and probably snootier core audience (partly where the reservations come in lol), sonic youth were also p committedly doing this i think

The Beatsie Boys, they are they coming home

oooh good call on Sonic Youth

xps

"Super Disco Breakin" is such an awesome way to open an album. I remember being 12 and cranking that on the Walkman and thinking it was just the coolest thing I'd ever heard

xpost Nirvana totally did that too, introduced kids to so much

well, it's
fifty cups of coffee and you know it's on

Nirvana totally did that too, introduced kids to so much

they did, but I don't think it was their primary appeal, or motivation, or what they were best at

"Super Disco Breakin" is such an awesome way to open an album. I remember being 12 and cranking that on the Walkman and thinking it was just the coolest thing I'd ever heard

― frogbs,

otm

like ime audience reaction wasn't "isn't it AWESOME to be introduced to so much cool stuff by this band!" as much as it was "this band is loud and angry and sad JUST LIKE ME"

xps

I would say from the outset the primary appeal of the Beastie Boys was that they fought for their right to party

I think you were too cool for Nirvana shakes

I think the primary appeal of the Beastie Boys was their music just like Nirvana

a few years ago I downloaded some fan-made comp of everything the Beasties sampled, organized by album. its a ton of music but definitely worth checking out. since I've heard Hello Nasty like a hundred times it was a trip going through all this. just to name a random example here's an awesome track that was briefly sampled on "Putting Shame in Your Game"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTLgfZukICI

I think you were too cool for Nirvana shakes

idk if its worth it to run down my personal Nirvana history but at the time I was a serious die-hard fan. For ex. I was extremely pissed when I couldn't convince any of my high school friends to drive into LA to see Nirvana at the Palladium in 1990 because they all wanted to go to some stupid Senior class party thing instead. I didn't have a car, so I missed it.

I'm not really sure what Nirvana's tastemaker status is. Sure, they got people to get into the Meat Puppets. But Bowie didn't need the assist, and actually ripping off a song didn't draw much attention to Killing Joke (nor did Grohl playing on an album). Nirvana talked about the Pixies a bunch, but again, not sure they needed the assist.

Beastie Boys ... what did they hip people on to? Cibo Matto? Atari Teenage Riot? Mountain?

Vaselines
Slits

Daniel Johnston

(Nirvana)

Oh, re: Nirvana? Good calls.

The Wipers?

Raincoats

Killing Joke

I get a vibe from Cobain’s promotion of obscure artists that it was more of a reaction to success, the feeling that he did not deserve this level of fame and had an obligation to offload some of that attention and acclaim onto the musicians he loved.

Cobain’s liner notes for the Raincoats reissue are so sweet and charming.

uh other hip hop
xp

this is from same song:
I’m like "Sweetie Pie" by the Stone Alliance
Everybody know I'm known for dropping science
‘Cause I'm electric like Dick Hyman

Well, I'm not coming out goofy like the fruit of the loom guys
Just strutting like The Meters with the “Look-ka Py Py"

Jimmy Smith is my man, I want to give him a pound

It's like Harlem World Battles on the Zulu Beat Show
It's Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee

Bob Marley was a prophet for the freedom fight
"If dancin' prays to the lord then I will feel alright"

Beastie Boys ... what did they hip people on to?

off the top of my head for me personally:
Eddie Harris
Jimmy Smith
the Car Wash soundtrack
Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee
Slayer
Lee "Scratch" Perry
Lee Dorsey
Chuck Chillout
Boogie Down Productions
Groove Merchant
The Turtles
Idris Muhammad

lots more

xps

They were real enthusiastic about Kid Rock before he was famous, so thanks?

kiss!

https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/zry8qhcow37avdj/images/1-b88438ca88.jpg

They were real enthusiastic about Kid Rock before he was famous, so thanks?

agree that this was their most unfortunate endorsement

Too Short is to blame for Kid Rock

I think I still have the Grand Royal issues with Miami Bass and the Moog synth on the covers

one of the first music websites I went to a bunch was someone's breakdown of all the samples on Paul's Boutique. lots of gems!

i have a copy on a high shelf somewhere i think -- but my labyrinthitis makes me dizzy if i look upwards so i can't check sad lol

one of my prized possessions is a framed, unfolded poster from GR with all kinds of different turntable models

I hung that same poster in many apartments until one day it got destroyed. I wish I had the foresight to save it / preserve it for later in life than just thowing it up on the wall in the shitholes I rented.

Leaving aside writers, as a gateway into pop culture minutiae probably only MST3K did more for me than Beastie Boys.

I get a vibe from Cobain’s promotion of obscure artists that it was more of a reaction to success

this is otm. Cobain gave off a strong sense of "ive got to make the most of my time as a celebrity to direct attention to my favorite obscure stuff" almost as a means of apology or penance. Beasties seemed like exploring & discovering different music and introducing it to people was one of their animating reasons for doing the band in the first place. Nirvana did not strike me as 'enthusiasts' in the same way, it almost felt transactional, like "while you're picking up our album make sure to buy a Vaselines or Half Japanese record to balance out the sin of us being on a major."

Are we talking about fleeting samples and references as gateways? I mean, I guess.

Though I suppose people who bother to seek out sources of those dozens or hundreds of samples might be more prone to finding music on their own anyway.

pre-internet hunting down sample sources was a very time-consuming and hit-and-miss endeavor

but yeah I noticed when the Beastie Boys namedropped, and then if I happened to be able to find a record by one of those guys, I would buy it

what more did you want them to do? personally take you record shopping?

xp

"my two sealed copies of "Expansions"" for example (what Expansions was he referring to? McCoy Tyner? Lonnie Liston Smith? sometimes I discovered things by mistake!)

xps

create a magazine or something that promoted things aligned with their tastes???

Ad Rock sent me a care package full of Meters records and Godzilla toys when I moved into the dorms freshman year 🙂

Mike D once knocked on my front door and when I answered, all he said was "make sure you listen to some records by Curtis Mayfield!" before spinning around and walking away

Ad-Rock randomly appears on a few Japanese hip-hop records I have which is pretty amusing since I have no clue how their paths would cross. as far as I know they just called him up and asked him to do it

xpost Good advice, tbh.

I'm guessing Miho Hatori is the link there

They were real enthusiastic about Kid Rock before he was famous, so thanks?

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Friday, January 31, 2020 4:06 AM (four hours ago)

agree that this was their most unfortunate endorsement

― Οὖτις, Friday, January 31, 2020 4:08 AM (four hours ago)

Some people who were Beastie Boys at some point:

Mike Diamond
Adam Yauch
Kate Schellenbach
John Berry
Adrock
DJ Double R
The Hurra
Money Mark
Bobo
AWOL
Fredo
Mario C, m/l

Some people who were never Beastie Boys:

icr

(iirc Mike in particular was "you sure about this?" to Ian about running the piece)

ian criese-romaine?

a single dad who went from dorm-room DIY to music biz millionaire, Kid Rock obviously an unalloyed good influence

no idea who icr is

the dude that wrote the Kid Rock article in Grand Royal, in the face of the Beastie Boys complete absence of enthusiasm for Mr Ritchie's music

https://www.beastiemania.com/whois/rogers_ian_c/

my memory is that Mike D was the only Beastie that paid much (if any) attention to the magazine

He's had a few jobs since that fansite bio was written

Just noticed that the e-version of the Beastie Boys Book is $1.99 on Amazon/Apple/etc.

the extended trailer giving me so many feels
v excited for the doc

I bought the ebook for cheap, I can't imagine it will be the same since I got the impression a lot of what was cool was the layout/pix etc but for $2 figured I'm gonna need stuff to read

it's a great read too, tho. i totally swear by the audiobook btw, am gonna listen to the whole thing again someday.

The "Pass the Mic" video came up in my Youtube recommendations yesterday. Listened to it and was blown away by the beat. I've heard the song hundreds of times but I'd never really appreciated it before. Not only does it make excellent use of a Bad Brains sample, the whole arrangement is just masterful. The instrumental alone is thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end.

was blown away by the beat

Mike never sounded bigger on any record. IIRC from the box set notes they rolled a giant tube of cardboard to extend the bass drum to two metres long for that dusty boom.

I'm surprised how underrated Check Your Head seems these days. The whole record has tons of great beats like that.

It’s a little strange how taken for granted it is maybe? It’s kind of in the centre of that 1986-1994 run so you might assume it would be talked about now a little more but I think it’s maybe a case of another good BB album amid a glut of amazing hip hop albums released 90-92

I always thought there were some surprising production similarities to the second Urban Dance Squad record, "Life 'n Perspectives of a Genuine Crossover" (which came out first). Thinking of stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu3bJ1-4aHQ

Or esp. this, which beat them to the Hendrix sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv8gsSc4n20

it's really weird to me that I'll Communication seems more well regarded now than Check Your Head

lol Urban Dance Squad that's a name I haven't thought of in a long time

Check Your Head is far better than Ill Communication

yeah to me it's not close

Sabotage effect maybe

Check Your Head was the record that really sold me on them, I thought the 1st was fun snotty party music and I hadn't really figured out Paul's Boutique yet. I took one listen to those hardcore tracks, "Lighten Up," and the hits and I was hooked.

Mike never sounded bigger on any record. IIRC from the box set notes they rolled a giant tube of cardboard to extend the bass drum to two metres long for that dusty boom.

― Dollarmite Is My Name (sic), Sunday, March 15, 2020 9:09 PM (yesterday)

I figured that had to be Mike D on the drums. I'm surprised WhoSampled.com only has one record of those drums being sampled (by Autechre).

when I interviewed them around the book, Mike and Adam were very clear the tube of cardboard was just one of a series of great wacky ideas Yauch would come up with.

CYH>IC for me, but I really, really love the chaotic flow of side one, and the buddhist suite on side four, and the proto-trip-hop of Update, and Futterman's Rule is about as heavy as their funk ever got, and Ricky's Theme is just deliriously lovely. It's Sabotage I never really wanna hear again.

Check your Head was a really big deal for me and my friends - we all loved Paul's Boutique because it got us all into disco and funk and samples and it was hip-hop that referenced the Ramones and Slayer and was everything we ever wanted.

It over three years between those records which was forever when we were 15 and when we read that there was a new Beastie Boys record coming out where they PLAYED THEIR OWN INSTRUMENTS we thought it was the most hilarious and bizzare thing we'd ever heard. It came out right before the LA Riots in my senior year of high school and was the soundtrack for the next few months; I saw them that summer and it was amazing.

Ill Communication was great in its own way but didn't have the impact on my life that the previous one did, and I felt kind of like a snob that all the bandwagon jumpers who ignored Paul's Boutique were getting back into them.

1992 and still no one to vote for!

I have no real idea how old many or most of you are, but as I remember it License to Ill was, of course, a huge smash, but Paul's Boutique was a huge bust. I don't remember that one getting any traction among my friends at all. It was 1989, so I would have been 14 or so, in 8th or 9th grade. By the time Check Your Head was imminent, Paul's Boutique was obscure enough that in early 1991 Spin did a charticle of the most underrated albums of all time, and it was on there with, like, Tusk and Lodger (which I'm sure is what had me listen to it). Check Your Head came out a year after that, and I remember it connecting with kids glomming on to the grunge trend more than it connected with fans of License to Ill, and in that sense it felt a little like a cult album from a new band, not a comeback. It stuck, though, and got traction in a way that Paul's Boutique (which was steadily becoming a hipster totem) hadn't, so that yeah, when Ill Communication came out that seemed like the real, ubiquitous "comeback." Obviously by the time "Odelay" came out people had caught up with "Paul's Boutique."

Beastie Boys fandom tends to break down to a series of waves imo, ie which ever album of the classic run (Licensed to Ill to IC) you heard when you were like 16-18 was the one that pulled you in. So kids who were too young for PB or Check Your Head didn't get on the bus til IC etc. I'm old enough to have been sorta first wave (I won a 7" of Fight for Your Right/Paul Revere during a limbo contest at a bar mitzvah lol) and then heard PB in high shool (but no one else liked it) and then CYH came out my first year of college and was just like a real OH SHIT moment. IC was a victory lap, CYH is def familiar.

CYH is def SUPERIOR I meant to say

CYH and IC have almost as many desultory jams and half-assed funk experiments. I'd say they cancel each other out.

I'd rather listen to Hello Nasty than either of them.

I remember being sorta disappointed with Ill Communication when it came out, was hoping for another left turn and it seemed kind of safe, same recipe but not nearly as exuberant and w/ none of CYH's track-to-track flow

CYH is all-time

That's basically how I saw it, Check Your Head redux

(I won a 7" of Fight for Your Right/Paul Revere during a limbo contest at a bar mitzvah lol)

super lol.

I used to have a dubbed cassette with License to Ill on on side and Invisible Touch on the other.

I rarely play any of them these days, but if I did I would reach for them in chronological order: License first, Boutique second, maybe if very very seldom (functionally never) CYH and Communication next, never for of the rest of them. I think when this thread revived recently I gave Hello Nasty another shot, but I lost interest pretty quickly.

And yeah, I never really liked Ill Communication that much, despite being heavily into Check Your Head. These days I mostly listen to In Sound From Way Out.

CYH is the fun dress-rehearsal, IC is the slightly more slick performance. I like both about equally.

CYH has a ton of great deep cuts, always loved "Live at PJs"

live at PJ's might be apex beasties

A mix that Cut Chemist did to accompany the Beastie Boys Book touring exhibition, name-your-price on Bandcamp.

I'm only seeing the option to get it if I subscribe to his bandcamp releases

Is the documentary tonight?

I'm only seeing the option to get it if I subscribe to his bandcamp releases

you snozzed and lost I guess :(

I guess so!

documentary is the 24th, I believe

Yeah, 24th. But according to Pitchfork it's "no fun" and as subversive as a "bowl of soup" so I guess I can skip it. Kidding aside, genuinely curious if it's that bad or this is Pitchfork killing the two gen X idols (Beastie Boys and Spike Jonze) with one stone thing.

not sure how much stock i put 2020 pfork's judgments of 'fun' or 'subversive'

Was it Sam Pitchfork or Emily Pitchfork who said that?

Hope it streams somewhere other than Apple TV eventually

^^ yeah. I'm not signing up for another streaming service I won't watch otherwise.

just wait until someone you know buys an apple device and scam their account login

You gotta fight for your right, etc., etc.

The doc was ok I guess. Was hoping for more insight into their music making process.

they cover more of the music stuff in the book; i think they cherry picked what they thought would be more entertaining for a general audience?

i loved it

but i am at the point where i dont require anything from them, i just love seeing them talk & i love how much they still love each other & throw jabs and funny looks at each other & make each other laugh

that Yauch/Aerosmith story will never not be hilarious

i legit bawled over Adam’s talking about the last gig <3

he looked like he was about to break down toward the end

yeah def

reading the book now
really great

The audiobook is so good—I didn't see the actual book until after I listened, and glad I didn't

The book is really fun, even the captions & footnotes are great - and Roy Choi has a special segment of Beasties inspired recipes which is v cool

I agree, it’s cool looking and inventively laid out but I really dug all the contributors reading their own words and it just cohered really well... I was surprised when I saw the book how scrapbooky it was (not a bad thing)

they did a live AMA on reddit last night & it is a total mess & not exactly illuminating but still <3

technical snafus trying to facetime with jonah hill was like watching Dads use tech was so funny to me

but them facetiming w ~Biz Markie~ is 100% worth the whole thing

link here, it’s about an hour


https://youtu.be/CQh-F7sCoTo

Oh god, fuck bringing Jonah Hill into this.

My friend had the book on her coffee table and I spent a good two hours or so going through it. Maybe rudely.

ooh, thanks Veg

Enjoyed the doc, but unscripted Beastie content is always welcome. I’m a few minutes in and Mike has already started laughing so hard he’s fallen off camera. Excellent

oh god at Biz Markie calling them back and hollering about being called at 11pm

the best

I've got the book and have been meaning to dig in soon, is it worth holding off on the doc, and reading the book first? Thanks loves.

i think so

book is a legit wealth of riches - doc kinda skims the cream, as it were

Makes sense yeah, thanks!

it’s no biggie to watch the doc first though - honestly it’s a good advertisement for the book & is a good way to make you wanna read more

win win either way

I don't feel like any band ever truly copped to being shitheads and pigs as sincerely as the Beastie Boys. really loved that Kate Schellenbach got a chapter to tell the story of her being kicked out of the band, and call Rick Rubin an asshole

otm

man..."Year and a Day" is so fucking good

otm

YES

homeboy threw in the towel

Man. RIP Ricky Powell, my favorite hip hop photographer ever. A year and a half ago I bought a few photo prints of his for my crib. He signed everything and was so cool about it. He always had so much flavor. pic.twitter.com/DWy8CogUNN

— Kibbutzy Collins (@atrak) February 2, 2021

RIP Ricky Powell. pic.twitter.com/AT7njTDTAc

— ItsTheReal (@itsthereal) February 2, 2021

Photography Legend Ricky Powell #RestInPower 📸🕊 pic.twitter.com/zzl2lStPhK

— Mpressionism (@Mpressionism) February 1, 2021

aw man,RIP

that sucks. my local sandwich shop in bk where i like to shoot the shit with the guy behind the counter has a framed Powell of MCA hanging in the shop. RIP

Damn. I was just listening to PB this weekend and wondering if it was Ricky who took that snap of them underwater.

i am still waiting for the rerelease of licensed to ill with the rock hard ep and other extra material!

iirc AC/DC won't let them reissue Rock Hard, or at least they wouldn't last time they tried it

I always thought that was weird, because "Dope Beat" from BDP's "Criminal Minded" also samples "Back in Black." I guess the Beasties erred in asking.

Yeah, I'm not sure about any of their more recent comps, but iirc they really tried hard to get "Rock Hard" on that 1999 Sounds of Science anthology, but AC/DC was still saying no at that point.

yeah, here we go:

Later, when the group planned to include the out-of-print song on their 1999 compilation, Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science, AC/DC refused to allow the sample to be used. Mike D spoke to AC/DC's Malcolm Young personally on the phone when their lawyers refused to clear the sample, and later said that "AC/DC could not get with the sample concept. They were just like, 'Nothing against you guys, but we just don't endorse sampling.'" Ad-Rock then added "So we told them that we don't endorse people playing guitars."

lol Ad-Rock

"we, the members of ac/dc, are constantly striving for originality and pushing ourselves to the creative limits in crafting our musical compositions, and the idea of artists using previously-released music in a recording is anathema to our muse. we simply dont endorse sampling."

lol, but I'd imagine it's more just a case of old rockers just not even understanding what sampling is, especially back in 1999.

Malcolm Young no like your rap

I mean it's possible all these weren't cleared but I dunno, been sampled so many times

https://www.whosampled.com/ACDC/Back-in-Black/sampled/

Ad-Rock then added "So we told them that we don't endorse people playing guitars."

this is gold

There was an article in Pitchfork just the other day about how websites like WhoSampled - or even discussing samples on the internet in general? - is causing trouble for producers.

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/sample-snitching-how-online-fan-chatter-can-create-legal-trouble-for-rap-producers/

xp

I still feel sad that on a college road trip, for a school club no less, either a couple cd cases fell out of my car or were swiped. It was right after the anthology came out and I lost the case and one of the cds, along with a couple others.

Chris Read, the London-based company’s head of content, said that using the website as a fact-finding tool for potential lawsuits is a violation of its terms of service

"You're violating the TOS" is a big threat from a website that... doesn't even require you log in?

I was 13 when the anthology came out and I listened to it nonstop for like an entire year. I love how they tried to accomplish two goals - one: include all the best stuff, two: make them seem as weird and eclectic as possible. And it worked!!

otm, that Anthology is one of my all time favorite single artist comps, just so lovingly put together and really reflected how much they evolved and grew.

came out just as I started my senior year of high school and some classmates recreated the intergalactic music video dance, in costume, at a talent show

sorry, I screwed it up: anthology had just come out when I was in college, and thinking back to that prior year!

always really loved the track "Live Wire", at the time it was kind of the weirdest pop song I'd ever heard

I think I’m stuck on Mike D being third coolest now. Sorry, Mike

'twas ever thus

usually fourth at best, depending who else was in the group at the time

Blockhead's personal remembrance of Ricky Powell:

https://phatfriend.com/2021/02/03/the-complicated-death-of-an-iconic-scumbag/

https://i.imgur.com/l2aZJqV_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

PTSD from that time I had to review the Yeastie Girlz EP

Didn't like it?

hahaha, love them

(in small doses ofc)

Professor
What’s another name for pirate treasure?
Well I think it’s booty

sue sue sue your friends
sue your mom and dad

i had everything except their last couple few releases but i like their def jam material the best!

I’ve heard that track they did with qtip twice in the wild in the last week

shout out to being 13 and finally deciding the CD you want to buy is Hello Nasty. still haven't forgotten what it felt like to hear Super Disco Breakin' right out of the gate, was immediately like "this is obviously the best group on the planet"

awwww

I only saw it on a video clip later since I didn’t go to the high school talent show but three dudes I knew approximated the costumes from the intergalactic video and lip synched it while doing the dances

its a genuinely fascinating career arc like I know they were always goofballs but they did start playing this real hip and kinda jazzy music and suddenly just took a hard turn into sci-fi and started using a ton of really goofy noises and stuff like hockey rink organ. and writing rhymes about Boggle. and it turned out to sell really really well, in fact it fit in perfectly with what MTV was doing at the time which was this proto-Adult Swim thing. not only that but it's very much a defining "CD era" album - it's stuffed, but not like other CDs are where it's just the same thing forever. it's genuinely all over the place. also it does fun things with the negative space between tracks which I'd never seen before.

I believe I am on record here as calling it their best album, and I was super into the two before it

i remember hello nasty's release being a pretty big event for the radio station i listened to at the time. they played a lot of stuff from their back catalog in the weeks leading up to it and then played the entire album on its release day. and, yeah, being 13 was the perfect age for it to make maximum impact.

I think its their best too. I even love the stuff everyone says is filler. like how do you hate Dr. Lee, PhD? one of them is making pterodactyl noises in the background! and the record ends on a really tender song which suddenly transforms into really hard Big Beat. I mean who else was doing stuff like that? you can see the funky instrumental stuff landing on other hip-hop albums but stuff like "Song for the Man", "Picture This", "I Don't Know"...not a chance

i remember driving in my car when the local radio station debuted Intergalatic - it sounded so HUGE and cool, it was very thrilling

and that whole Hello Nasty record was such a fun shared experience with all my friends. we all had different favorites.

i remember being so disappointed in hello nasty, because that hipster rap/funk/punk/tibet vibe on the previous two LPs was absolutely my sweet spot. I need to revisit.

shout out to me feeling very lonely and isolated in sixth form college far away from my regular friendship group until the day I rented Ill Communication from the central library, and walked down the road with it on my CD walkman feeling like the coolest person in school

and then just a few months later, Hello Nasty came out and like many people here it was a huge event for me and my friends who had consequently become voracious BBs fans

i remember being so disappointed in hello nasty, because that hipster rap/funk/punk/tibet vibe on the previous two LPs was absolutely my sweet spot. I need to revisit.

If anything I thought they leaned even further into that vibe on Hello Nasty.

It was definitely my favourite one when it first came out. It felt so fresh and exciting. In retrospect it was so definitive in the sound and aesthetic of what was to come from other artists over the next few years that it's probably aged the worst out of all their preceding ones bar Licensed To Ill; a victim of its own success

Hello Nasty is incontrovertibly their best album after PB.

I loved their first 3 albums, each one had a huge impact on me. Ill Communication was good but felt like a bit of a step down, mostly because it was more of a continuation of the direction they took with Check Your Head rather than something new. Hello Nasty is where I completely lost interest.

Paul's Boutique > Ill Communication > Check Your Head > Licensed to Ill > Hello Nasty > the others is how I break it down to an extent

The reason I didn't rate CYH so much at the peak of my fandom is because I'd already heard The In Sound From Way Out, so it felt like I already knew a lot of the songs

CYH made me a college-age fan after the Beasties (briefly) stopped being cool, but it's not very good. I'd rate them:

PB
LTI
Hello Nasty
Ill Communication
Check Your Head

Hello Nasty sounds very, very good, and is an extremely fun record, but it's the album where their lyrics started to fall off a little for me.

I can't rank them, but Check Your Head is my favorite.

Check Your Head is maybe a bit of a shaggy dog album, but that's part of what makes it endearing. Ill Communication and Hello Nasty came off as more polished and refined versions of this, but it all started to feel a bit formulaic.

Each of the first five sound like the best to me when they’re spinning

I actually never liked Licensed to Ill much but yes to the other four

funny enough the version of Ill Communication I had I bought from WalMart which at the time sold censored versions of CDs without labeling them as such. I thought that was pretty dumb because of all their albums I think that's the one where you can't really understand the lyrics anyway. at least I couldn't when I got it at the age of 13 or 14 or whatever. all I heard was a lot of random backmasking. but that's the version I really came to memorize. "Get it Together" in particular was such a hilarious mess, they don't just censor the swears but also all the drug innuendo as well

Nah, I'm not into LTI much at all. It's not just the content, but the sound of those snares really hurt my brain

It's impressive, to me, that the BBs were some of the first to get into 70s revivalism as early as the late 80s, and they were doing it again talking-up 80s fashion aesthetics in 1998 well before anyone was really thinking of that

Paul's Boutique was wildly ahead of its time in that respect. As a young teen with only a vague memory of the late 70s at that point, my impression of the decade was that people generally wanted to forget it completely.

Jumping in here to say that I, too, bought Hello Nasty as a teenager and felt weirdly disappointed by it at the time, but after PB, it's the one I go back to the most in part because I feel like it captures this energy of dorkily enthusiastic guys who are starting to age but insist on continuing to try new things even when they're demonstrably just okay at them. I mean, I know that Check Your Head and IC were that, too, but they felt - and still feel - so incredibly cool to me even in their left turns (leaving New York, picking up the drums, etc.), where Hello Nasty verges on corny in ways I find inspiring, or at least that puts a little gas in my family-trip-planning / grocery-getting / householding tank.

xp Yep, I was still a kid but my recollection is that seventies culture and fashion were largely deemed a punchline at that point in time, all chest-wigs and nylon and pointing at things for no reason. BBs did play on all that a bit, but it was done with playfulness and love, not snark. I know I'm old now and time seems to go by a lot quicker and I find those Insta-reels about 2024 vs 2009 fashion perplexing, but imagine a young band today playing off late-2000s tropes and doing it well. The GAPDY Boys if you will

Hello Nasty is definitely corny in ways that CYH and IC are not. They were definitely Beastie Men by HN and the intervening four years between that and IC were palpable. Still, they knew how to work it on their own terms

I never listen to anything post-PB anymore (and have never heard Hello Nasty or To the 5 Boroughs in full; I may not have heard anything from the last album at all, in fact) but entire songs from PB will pop into my head unbidden at times. That album came out when I was 17, and is one of the greatest albums of the 80s for me, in any genre. Just life-defining.

Check Your Head is still it for me, it still sounds cool and raw and inspiring.

"Intergalactic" was for me THE Beasties single: I was 23, going out a lot, and this retronuevo rap track at the height of summer 1998 seemed to gather all related threads: lounge pop, post-Beck ramshackle, etc.

This old post really hit on something for me re: the 90s beastie albums

CYH and, to a lesser extent, IC both seemed like they were about joining the Beasties' gang; like by buying, listening, and getting into those records you became a Beastie Boy friend by proxy, one of the guys they were hanging out with on the back of IC, or one of the people in the photos in the sleeve of CYH.

Hello Nasty seemed like the gang had gone, and they were ready to be friendly with the whole world. Or something.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, 10 May 2012 14:54 (eleven years ago) link

I love the first half of check your head, but i find myself kind of getting bored by its second half. By ill communication they are so much better at crafting the instrumental interludes, and everything is just so much more noisy/dubby/jazzy to me, such that I kind of disagree with the idea that IC is basically "check your head, pt. 2"

which i feel was the conventional critical take back in the 90s

"Intergalactic" was for me THE Beasties single: I was 23, going out a lot, and this retronuevo rap track at the height of summer 1998 seemed to gather all related threads: lounge pop, post-Beck ramshackle, etc.

otm, this is the peak of the "recombinant pop" era, Hello Nasty is definitely on that train

Huh it's the opposite for me, IC has some indelible hits but the funk & instrumentals on CYH are much sharper and more distinct.

xp

IC was the first album where it felt like they weren't putting out something totally new and innovative. It's a strong album, but it's similarities to CYH was a sign that the creativity was starting to wane.

CYH > IC for the longest time until maybe 5 years ago when my opinion flipped. similar feeling of getting bored more at the halfway mark of CYH whereas IC ends on a real high note.

i would rank them PB>CYH>HN>IC>L2I

Licensed to Ill was such a massive album and nowadays PB is so ingrained in the cultural consciousness that it's sometimes easy to forget it was enough of a commercial disappointment that the B Boys felt like maybe they were an '80s thing, and the world of 1992 was vastly different. so for them to come back with something like CYH that sounded so fresh and cool was an eye-opener for many who slept on PB. i hadn't really paid attention to them after 1986 tbh, too busy listening to metal and hard rock, but at a time when everyone was listening to everything (maybe 1991-1993 was the peak era for this), they fit right in so well and suddenly everyone loved them again. they were so loose and funky and it was a sick sound. i think the first five are classics overall, i think IC only losing points for being a little less inspired than the top 3 and the funk instrumentals feeling like vv solid outtakes from CYH (though the peaks rank with their best), and L2I for being a little dated.

CYH has more edge and is just a great messy splattergun collage of ideas hitting you in the face whereas I agree that IC still has a bit of that feel but seems slightly more considered and fully-formed. They're both great

Also, did I ever tell you guys my annoying pet theory:

LTI : S+E
PB : CRCR
CYH : WZ
IC : BTC
HN : TT

This checks out for me in so many ways

otm, this is the peak of the "recombinant pop" era, Hello Nasty is definitely on that train

― intheblanks, Wednesday, February 28, 2024 11:06 AM (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what made that song so cool is that everyone seemed to have a different favorite part, just so much going on at once. I had one friend who wasn't really into the Beasties or hip-hop at all but still loved this song because of all the crazy noises on it. and yeah all of Hello Nasty is kind of like that, so many wild sounds and insane production effects, even the minor tracks like "Dedication" are a trip