Beastie Boys: Classic or Dud?

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.

ah thx, wouldn't that be five?

Oops, yeah five

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhvv0WubJSs

xps The under-20 crowd seem to love that Olivia Rodrigo song that sounds just like Beck!

"I Don't Know" is the 'eye of the duck' of Hello Nasty. Take it out and the whole thing doesn't loom quite the same. I love it

Look

the only interesting thing about the post-HN records is how Mike D becomes by far the best rapper in the group in their old man phase

possibly in delivery! the thing I learned from interviews (or maybe the book) is that they always wrote collaboratively. so Adrock would show up to a session with some lines, and propose "I think Mike could do this part" and they generally had a consensus on any split

never any quibble about who wrote what or rapped what

anyone have the "original" version of Intergalactic stashed? the one that has lyrics about Spock and Uhuru and includes a line like "the spice is the worm and the worm is the spice"

seems apropos this week

never mind. of course it’s on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDKST8N3gSo

whoa, I remember hearing about an early version of the track but had no clue how different it was. I think it's mentioned in the Sounds of Science book somewhere, they were working on the album and didn't really have a single and one of the guys (maybe not even one of the Boys) was like "you still got that intergalactic, planetary thing? maybe do something with that"

hadn't heard that, seems p cool. so the orig uranus rhyme was 'i'm from uranus that shit is heinous.' *hunt3r ducks hides and chortles*

yeah, it was on the web in the 90s but I can't remember if it was on their official site or "leaked"