(THIS) POLL REVERE(S) — ILM Artist Poll #19 — Beastie Boys VOTING THREAD

SO PISSED that outloud is down atm, as i would love to continue this discussion in the proper musical context :(

pegs line is really what gets me, best christ imagery from a jewish guy since "white christmas"

does this help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKNmLMs7ugw

eh, not really, cuz i've got it on phones already. really likef the "everybody adds tunes while we chat" thing.

The guitar(?) sound on Stand Together is fucking rad and abrasive, almost Albini-esque. Also, MCA was ON FUCKING FIRE in that one.

yeah, it's guitar, at least sometimes (kicking in at about 1:00). never would have occurred to me to call it "albini-esque", but yeah, i get you. also OTM.

Excuse me young lady I don't mean ta troubleya
But you're looking so mighty fine inside your bee em doubleya

:)

I love 3 Minute Rule but alas, I could not find room to vote for it

so I am really having a difficult time narrowing this down to 20 tracks, & being actually honest w/ myself abt it, w/o basically stocking my ballot front to back w/ 80s/90s-era singles and obv album tracks. I really want to rep for some deep cuts and one-offs here, b/c there is a treasure trove to be had, for sure, but there's no way their biggest jams don't basically own this poll hands-down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA5-t5wOXaE

Sorry to get you guys all bothered with my opinion about the 5 of 23 tracks on Paul's that I don't like. FTR, the three Paul's tracks I had on my ballot were

3-minute Rule
Looking Down the Barrel
and
Car Thief

But that doesn't mean that cutting a lot of these tracks wasn't super difficult. I would have definitely voted for "Stop That Train" if B-Boy Bouillabaise hadn't been included as one long track. I guess I have my own personal hang-ups about Shadrach though.

Also, love that Stand Together - secret weapon track on CYH - is getting talked up. Hope it shows up in the results!

Ballot breakdown:

Lti - 1
Pb - 4
Cyh - 5
Ic - 4
Hn - 3
Tt5b - 1
Hscp2 - 1
Other - 1

I was on a beastie boys listserv just prior to hello nasty, that thing fucking exploded when the album dropped.

EIII! me and stevie too!

I hadn't heard To The 5 Boroughs before. I really like it, but it's not getting much love here.

i haven't listened to it since the day it came out, when I listened to it twice and then traded it in for something else. I would totally be open to re-examining it, but I wouldn't rebuy it (like I just had to for all the bboys records I only had on cassette).

more on Hello Nasty talk:

My boss at work really broke it down, like, that's really the album that made Gen Y get on board. Dudes would have been a Gen X phenomenon otherwise. I really had it driven home at Bonnaroo (lol), 2009 when I rapped along to "Paul's Revere" and no one around me knew a word; but EVERYONE rapped along to "Intergalactic"

Bonus Beats: I'm so embarrassed too because, I was 9 when Paul's came out, and loved Hey Ladies, and would love to tell you all that I was too smart for the backlash. But my mom BOUGHT me the tape and I made her return it because I was going through a hardcore Christian phase and it had a Parental Advisory sticker :(

haw, at 11 I remember agonizing over whether or not to buy the number of the beast, then I was all like stop frontin there is no god

Sorry to get you guys all bothered with my opinion about the 5 of 23 tracks on Paul's that I don't like.

you voted for car thief so all is forgiven

o hai sic! do we have a listserv reunion thread

But my mom BOUGHT me the tape and I made her return it because I was going through a hardcore Christian phase and it had a Parental Advisory sticker :(

irl lol! So I'm guessing there was no hidden cache of NWA & 2 Live Crew cassettes in yr bedroom, then?

I recall watching a lot of television in the summer of 1989 (I was 12), when Hey Ladies & Me, Myself & I were both in heavy rotation on Yo! MTV Raps. I dug both tunes quit a bit, but I was pretty curious as to why rappers were turning into hippies all of a sudden. A little later on, when I first heard Shadrach, I was sold on Paul's Boutique, but I still didn't actually buy it until around the time Check Your Head came out.

My group of friends rediscovered Paul's around the time Ill Communication came out. I remember taking a bong load and being like "what is this album?" and when my friend told me I was like "wasn't this the one that was supposed to suck?"

Was there ever a 'rediscovery' of Paul's Boutique though? I mean in critical terms - I remember it having a reputation as commercial suicide up until they made it back to the big time with Sure Shot etc; but never the reputation as a bad album, as such.

I dunno. I mean, this is just me from ages 10-15 in the Maryland suburbs.

Other 10 year olds were telling me not to bother.

I dunno, when I started reading music press about 10 years ago (around and maybe a year or two before TT5B) Paul's Boutique was still kinda seen as... at least the one you'd buy last, if that makes sense.

Oh, it's reputation had definitely turned around before then.

I remember selling stacks of it at Sam Goody in like 1998.

I dunno, when I started reading music press about 10 years ago (around and maybe a year or two before TT5B) Paul's Boutique was still kinda seen as... at least the one you'd buy last, if that makes sense.

Where was this? The VV-SPIN axis called it an uncommercial masterpiece from the get-go.

xp Not how I remember it at all. In the mid-90s it was the benchmark record for DJ Shadow, Mo'Wax, Chemical Brothers, etc - the Chems even originally called themselves the Dust Brothers because of it. Maybe there was a difference between dance and indie circles.

Where was this? The VV-SPIN axis called it an uncommercial masterpiece from the get-go.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 9 May 2012 14:57 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol british press

I dunno. I mean, this is just me from ages 10-15 in the Maryland suburbs.

^ymmv, but I noticed a similar pattern (& from an admittedly similar perspective). ime there were a bunch of kids who gravitated immediately toward Check Your Head b/c, on the surface at least, it seemed tailor made for punk/skater/indie/whatev circles. In general, alot of those folks had written the BBs off as a novelty act after Licensed to Ill, had basically ignored or were unaware of Paul's Boutique, and then listened retroactively from CYH to (re)discover the merits of both albums.

*'a lot' - goddam i hate missing the space bar on that..

lol British press

The first time I can definitely-definitely remember it having a particular reputation was in the Melody Maker 'Unknown Pleasures' book (1995) where it was mentioned in the Tusk section as commercial-suicide-but-nevertheless-amazing-because-utterly-uncompromising albums.

Its other notoriety was as the album which indirectly ruined De La Soul Is Dead.

Wait, what? Never heard of any De La beef.

PB definitely had big cult cache as the incredibly 'cool' BB album (even by their own standards) in the British music press in the mid-90s.

The theory was that Paul's Boutique was so sample-heavy that it forced the labels to take control over this anarchy; De La Soul Is Dead was the next similar album to appear, but got shelved for aeons while they had to seek clearance for every beat.

ha i was actually about to compare Paul's Boutique's slow turnaround from sophomore slump to arguably most revered album to De La Is Dead

xxp - I also seem to recall that, when Odelay became the toast of the town, there was a lot of buzz abt The Dust Brothers & thus a surge of renewed attention paid to PB - critically at least.

ha i was actually about to compare Paul's Boutique's slow turnaround from sophomore slump to arguably most revered album to De La Is Dead

― some dude, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 15:18 (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.rapzilla.com/rz/images/pictures/5mics540.jpg

i meant sophomore slump in commercial terms, obv both albums got good reviews right away

xxp - I also seem to recall that, when Odelay became the toast of the town, there was a lot of buzz abt The Dust Brothers & thus a surge of renewed attention paid to PB - critically at least.

yep – the RS Album Guide published in 2004 makes this point (some dude did too). I know I didn't get a copy of PB until my editor made a CD-R in early '97 ("It changed my life," he actually said lol; not sure he would've liked the Shins).

uh C-90

huh i guess the source didn't originally give out 'mics'.

http://pressrewind.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/delasoul_source591.jpg

yeah the RIAA certifications i posted upthread indicate that PB racked up as much as 75% of its sales to date post-Ill Communication

"Yo, it's like that Prego commercial"

COS I'VE BEEN DROPPING THE NEW SCIENCE AND IVE BEEN KICKING THE NEW KUH-NOWLEDGE

otm, "kicking the new kuh-nowledge" is one of those things I look forward to hearing every time that track comes on. "Sound of Science" is fighting for a top-3 placement on my ballot.

yeah after 4 years there was a lot of pent up demand for new beasties material from several successive waves of new fans in '98.

This really rings true for me - some of my friends caught onto Ill Communication in about 1995, then over time people started checking out the other albums (I wound up with Paul's Boutique and Check Your Head on a C90 that I played to death in summer 1997). Hello Nasty was definitely an event, we all loved it - I haven't heard it in years though, I'm not sure how well it holds up.

Wiki reckons it samples LOADS of Beatles:

"Back in the U.S.S.R." by The Beatles
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by The Beatles
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" by The Beatles
"When I'm Sixty-Four" by The Beatles
"The End" by The Beatles
"Walk from Regio's" by Isaac Hayes
"Don't Sniff Coke" by Pato Banton
"Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved" by James Brown
"My Philosophy" by Boogie Down Productions

Never noticed USSR or 64 in there!

64 is the backbone of the first half of the song.

I remember excitedly buying paul's boutique on its release date and, like a whole lot of other people, just not getting it. the fanzine I was writing for at the time was very pro-beasties, but we ended up giving it to lisa suckdog to pan since nobody else wanted to touch it. there were a lot of positive reviews in the mainstream press, but iirc they mostly exhibited a begrudging respect for its sprawl rather than actual passionate raving.

then a weird thing happened... in 1990 I got an inexplicable hankering to hear it again. there wasn't any impetus, like a song being in a commercial or a TV show appearance, just wanted to check it out again, so I went looking for it in record stores and couldn't find a copy *anywhere*. I phoned up one store and the guy on the line said, "you are the third person who's called looking for that album this week. no, we don't have it." some bizarre hive mind moment. when I finally did locate a copy it didn't leave my car stereo for months.

paul's boutique was one of those times when somebody gets so far out in front it takes a while to catch on, and nobody ever catches up.

Throughout most of the 90s, the Beasties were a good year ahead of everyone else in almost every respect. I don't think they were conscious about steering trends, but they were doing it.

the fanzine I was writing for at the time was very pro-beasties, but we ended up giving it to lisa suckdog to pan since nobody else wanted to touch it.

can i just say how much i love this sentence