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

aw man, I still like 'Girls'

esp the 'with newwave hairdos'

I was 14 when LTI came out and it completely dominated my friends and my listening for a year. Absolutely mind blowing.

Similarly to Shakey and Johnny, I find Hello Nasty lacking in the rapping and, to my ears, it is far too long. There is a good 40-45 minute album, but that leaves 30 minutes of filler. I listened to it for the first time in ages this past weekend and it seemed even weaker than I remember.

xp Oh, I'm sure it was trolling, and seemed funny the first 40,000 times I heard it. But now I skip it.

LTI is so so so much more than a novelty record. If it didn't have Fight For Yr Right on it, no-one wld question it being a 1-2 punch w/ Raising Hell. Or Radio for that matter.

I generally listen to Hello Nasty one half at a time.

wow, all the license to ill dismissals are really surprising to me. i'm an old gen exxor, so maybe this is all too predictable, but it still sounds like their catchiest, punkest, and most pop-accessible album by a huge margin. genius beats and hooks for days. the simplicity of the tracks is one of LTI's greatest strengths, imo, puts the hairy-ass guitar and shrill vocals front and center. i'm surprised that the basic sound isn't more embraced by typically minimalist & electro friendly ILM. plus their funniest, dumbest and most memorable rapping. easily one of the best albums of the 80s. like up there with 1999, thriller, the B-52's debut and remain in light.

Voted! 4 LTI; 6 PB; 4 CYH; 2 IC; 1 HN; 2 TT5B; 1 AEEAHWSMAA.

If it didn't have Fight For Yr Right on it, no-one wld question it being a 1-2 punch w/ Raising Hell. Or Radio for that matter.

OTM

LET IT GO
LET YOURSELF GO
SLOW AND LOW
THAT IS THE TEMPO
(BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR)

OH
TEE
EM

It's a shame I can never truly love the blocky early Rubin sound of Licensed to Ill and Raising Hell. I love tracks in isolation, but the explosion in hip hop production and rhyme schemes immediately afterwards means I'm always left a bit undernourished by the albums. All my enjoyment of LTI happens on one level whereas Paul's Boutique is just this endless labyrinth of pleasure.

I love Girls. Whatever.

The correct answer to this poll is the entirety of Paul's Boutique which owns from start to finish in a way that few other albums do.

Also, Cooky Puss. Oh and some stuff off LTI too.

Fight For Your Right to Party didn't make my ballot cuz I'm sick of it, not even close to my favorite thing on the album. And while the production isn't as dense as what came afterwards, there are a lot of novel touches to it - sampling Creedence, War, Black Sabbath, plus the various old school bits (Schooly D, Trouble Funk etc) the proto-Miami bass parts - there's a lot in there.

xp

Girls is eh sorta funny but She's Crafty is funnier

I'm really tempted to set up a Hello Nasty v. LTI Gen Y/Gen X thing but I know its a false dichotomy. Completely different albums made by completely different people. Am curious if any solid Gen Y'er will rep for LTI as a stone-cold classic they still listen to/enjoy.

Yeah I love She's Crafty too.

got into the cab and the cab driver said he recognised my girlie from the back of her head

I have no fucking idea what Gen X/Gen Y means.

Yeah I was going to ask exactly where the divide is because iirc I'm sort of in the middle.

AHH you're a babby and would most def be Y, I think.

As I was born between LTI and PB, I guess I'm neither.

lol ok.

3ft High and Rising and It Takes A Nation Of Millions were my first hip hop records, really, and Rubin-era LTI / Run DMC just sound so weird and old and unsophisticated next to them.

I always identified with gen xers when reading newsweek articles about them.

It's a shame I can never truly love the blocky early Rubin sound of Licensed to Ill and Raising Hell. I love tracks in isolation, but the explosion in hip hop production and rhyme schemes immediately afterwards means I'm always left a bit undernourished by the albums. All my enjoyment of LTI happens on one level whereas Paul's Boutique is just this endless labyrinth of pleasure.

see, that's weird to me. i love early synthpop, electro and rap for, not despite, the astringent minimalism. there's something refreshing and weirdly mineral about those sounds. i don't think in listening to the pleasure principle, non-stop erotic cabaret or pleasure victim that i'd enjoy these songs with more density and layering. i get into the weird, rinky-dink, tinfoil tooth synth landscapes. same goes for rubin's production on license to ill and raising hell (which is relatively dense and colorful). shit sounds badass. and the simple rhyme schemes are like 50s rock riffs. super-basic, but they get the job done.

Roughly IMO:

Gen X = Born Late 1960s - 1980
Gen Y = Born Early 1980s - ~1990

Not rigorously defined.

3ft High and Rising and It Takes A Nation Of Millions were my first hip hop records, really, and Rubin-era LTI / Run DMC just sound so weird and old and unsophisticated next to them.

i can imagine a late beatles fan saying something similar about chuck berry

"weird and old and unsophisticated" vs "classic"

ha, yeah!

Gen X - "the term generally includes people born from the early 1960s through the early 1980s"
Gen Y - "there are no precise dates for when Generation Y starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s[6] or early 1980s to the late 1980s"

So, yeah, I'm right where the overlap occurs. They're pretty useless categories imo though so it doesn't really matter.

She's Crafty is a favorite - I didn't end up voting for it, which makes me mad at myself

This line forever: the cadence of it is just so great

Nooooooooooow I like nothin better than a pretty girl's smile
And I haven't seen a smile that pretty in a while

I pretty clearly remember when people started using the term Gen X but was too young to really get it or consider myself part of that group. On the other hand I think I was a little too old to be considered Gen Y. Meh.

They're pretty useless categories imo though so it doesn't really matter.

Yeah but we'll never know how you really feel about the Beastie Boys unless you align yourself with one of these arbitrary categories.

head over to the generation thread on ILE for lengthy dissertations on this

I put She's Crafty at #11 on my ballot

I was born in 1988.

I read Generation X. It wasn't much cop.

I'd vote LTI over Hello Nasty.

The only thing I got from that Coupland book was that he's way more hung up on nuclear war than I ever was. Which made me feel much much better.

when i was in 4th grade i had an hour plus bus ride to a school in a different neighborhood. one of my friends had an older brother with a LTI cassette and he wrote down all the words to paul revere, which we worked hard on memorizing. eventually he gave us a dubbed copy of LTI. took it home, put it on the stereo, and promptly got a beating from my dad. :-(

:(

i def remember being puzzled by this line: "the sheriff's after me for what I did to his daughter"

I did it like this, I did it like that, I did it with a wiffle ball bat...sooooooo

I'm on the run the cops got my gun

Roses are red the sky is blue
I got my barrel at your neck so what the fuck you gonna do
It's just two wheels and me the wind in my eyes
The engine is the music and my nine's by my side

^^ think he was having a flashback to paul revere here

I think I got into gen x culture after the fact, but adopted it as my own. I think if you came of age/got into pop culture after Kurt died you technically count as Y. I got into Nirvana the day he died, so...

Oh, that's actually a really good line of demarcation.

yeah, i think so too. kurt being the apotheosis/pieta of gen x culture.

as time has passed my favorite songs on LTI are the stripped-down, beat-and-a-rhyme stuff: hold it now hit it, posse in effect, the new style, paul revere. my least favorite songs on the album have always been fight for yr right and no sleep til.

rhymin and stealin is one of my all-time favorite album openers. it just hits like a ton of bricks

also: "pistol is loaded i shot betty crocker, deliver colonel sanders down to davy jones locker" = all-time

as time has passed my favorite songs on LTI are the stripped-down, beat-and-a-rhyme stuff... my least favorite songs on the album have always been fight for yr right and no sleep til.

it's all great. kerry king's guitar on "no sleep" is all-time. slayer!

also ppl complaining about the rapping on hello nasty are nuts, or maybe just don't appreciate the intricacy of their delivery. sure, it's old school licensed to ill style, but with all the bolts tightened and a deftness to match the rubbery shapeshifting tracks. tune in to 1:30 on "the move", where they round-robin the syllables of "insane mind games move quick like flame". is it because they make it sound so effortless that ppl dismiss it as facile? I dunno, maybe try getting 3 of yr buddies together to see which vocal routine you can work out first, "the move" or "professor booty".

and speaking of "the move", it's like a masterclass in sampling, there are dozens of perfectly interlocking rhythmic bits stitched together over its runtime. the more you pay attention to what's going on in that track, the more rewarding it is, but it also doesn't feel dense and overly engineered, there's a fluidity that allows you to forget all that and just be like aw cool bumping party track.

ps dogs love me cuz I'm crazy sniffable

and this, which is my favorite sequence on that song

I bet you never knew I got the ill peripheral
In your home I'm cloned I'm on your headphones
I love it when you spazz out all alone

"The Move" is all time.

Currently listening to LTI, might pick two from here in the end. But goddam this album is shrill.