Beastie Boys: Classic or Dud?

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]