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

i just kind of vaguely know Lisa Suckdog as an '80s underground rock person, since she wrote the liners for the reissue of Sonic Youth's Evol

I somehow ended up with a cassette copy of Licensed to Ill when I was about 15 - I don't remember buying it so I'm not sure how I ended up with it. But especially once I started driving, it was "the little cassette that could" for like, 10 years. Bored with new stuff, radio sucks? Throw on LTI. Crappy day, gonna drive to get some pizza? LTI.
Even when PB and CYH became the cool Beasties albums, there was something about LTI. And like someone mentioned upthread, it always settled those knock down, drag out, who-rules-the-stereo-arguments with your friends.

lisa never really rocked, except maybe back and forth

it's going to be hard not to do a 100% paul's boutique / ill communication ballot

dunno that there's such a thing as a bad ballot itt

I fucked up the order of my ballot because I was too impatient to get it out there, but I'm happy with my song selection.

i just remembered that LTI was the first non-Christian record I owned as a kid (mom was on the whole PMRC/satanic-panic tip), on cassette & given to me for my tenth birthday by my not-totally-ex-hippie uncle David. My folks let me keep it for some reason &, there then being no rationale for a continued household ban on the devil's music, I was free to pursue a life of music fandom and hedonic apostasy.

my ballot was pretty silly, I'm sure I would rank them differently on any given day. Resisted the urge to just submit the Paul's Boutique tracklisting.

when the re-appraisal of Paul's Boutique kicked in is hard to measure. I remember it being praised as similar to (and better than) "3 Feet High and Rising" when it came out while I was in high school, but I couldn't find a copy. I remember seeing the Hey Ladies video and being jealous of a classmate who had a cassette copy, but wasn't able to locate a copy of my own until 2 years later, at which point I was blown away. And then Check Your Head came out shortly afterwards.

I'm not sure reappraisal is the right word when the album got awesome reviews in '89. We discovered it many years later.

Pazz and Jop '89:

11. Tom Petty: Full Moon Fever (MCA) 381 (35)
12. Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique (Capitol) 347 (32)
13. Fine Young Cannibals: The Raw and The Cooked (I.R.S.)

interesting sandwich!

would gladly consume such a sandwich tbh

Really wish I had bought Paul's Boutique instead of Raw and the Cooked : (

Owning either (or both) makes life better, so don't beat yourself up.

I'm not sure reappraisal is the right word

sure - it's an album that had trouble finding it's audience, I guess. I'm not sure why. It's not like my tastes changed radically between '89 and '91, I just literally could not get my hands on the album.

I heard about it for a few years before I actually heard it. I remember reading excited reviews about it in various places, but unlike LTI -- which was much in evidence everywhere throughout my college years -- I don't remember knowing anyone who had a copy of Paul's Boutique. It went on my "I should check that out" list, and eventually I did.

just wanna vote for the second half of Ill Communication except that it's such a groove in itself that it's hard to separate things. probably perverse to vote "Transitions" #1 but I'm thinking about it

yeah i mean...a much higher percentage of Appetite For Destruction fans bought GNR Lies than Licensed To Ill fans bought Paul's Boutique. it was really kind of a huge initial dropoff in sales.

yeah and I don't get why that was, exactly? was there some kind of backlash to LTI that I'm forgetting? I guess Tougher Than Leather had a similar drop-off

Mr Veg remembers a lot people complaining that PB was 'too noisy', ie bc of so much sampling. And I think a lot of people took them literally with the tuff leather jackets partyboy stuff and got mad when they didn't do LTI Part II

The differences between Tougher Than Leather and Raising Hell are WAY less substantial than the differences between Paul's Boutique and Licensed to Ill. I think a ton of people who thought No Sleep Til Brooklyn and Fight for Your Right were like, "what? This is actual rap. I want some rock with rapping on it."

Lies had an enormous hit ballad.

but see that would require that people actually heard PB and didn't like it. which to my mind was not the case, people just didn't buy it or hear it (or even know about it)

xp

actually not as hard as i thought

my breakdown

LTI - two songs, quite low
PB - nine songs, def dominating the top 10
CYH - only four songs, even though i really like it as an album it's hard to pick individual songs off of it, everything seems to work better in context
IC - only two songs?!? i thought i liked this album!
HN - three songs, but two of them are quite high

didn't pick any instrumental tracks because it didn't seem to make sense but if i picked one it would probably be "butterfly"

The differences between Tougher Than Leather and Raising Hell are WAY less substantial than the differences between Paul's Boutique and Licensed to Ill.

right, I was just bringing it up because they were both on Def Jam and both previous records sounded similar - a sound which was (maybe? I don't remember) considered passe by '88.

xp

relistening to Ill Communication and DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!

not that PB sounded like LTI obviously, just that maybe people assumed it did and so didn't bother...?

xp

RUN DMC was never on Def Jam, though...right? Profile all the way!

i somehow forgot how FUNKY this album is. Crazy, especially considering the hardcore thrown in doesn't throw it off at all.

RUN DMC was never on Def Jam, though...right? Profile all the way!

― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 18:09 (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

understandable mistake to make, being brothers w/ Russell Simmons.

paul's boutique commercial failure was due to 1) no hit single and 2) it alienated almost all the existing fans who bought it unheard

with no word of mouth and nothing on radio/TV what was going to fuel sales?

when heard in the context of the album "hey ladies" makes sense, but as a single it sounded like a big mess. the chorus is non-existent, and those retro funk moves sounded kinda kitschy after years of 80s future shock and their own brief legacy of big drums and riffage. as a habitual MTV watcher at the time I can say honestly say I saw the "shake your rump" video once, and "hey ladies" 0 times.

I saw Hey Ladies every morning before school for a while.

haha I always forget that about Run DMC. I habitually associate Def Jam with that early Rick Rubin style, what can I say

def saw the Hey Ladies video a couple times when it came out

I remember the premiere of Hey Ladies being a huge deal on MTV, but I don't think I saw any of the other Paul's Boutique videos until well into the 90s.

with no word of mouth and nothing on radio/TV what was going to fuel sales?

Robert Hillburn!

of course!

Maybe if Hey Ladies hadn't had to compete with Love Shack for America's retro kitcsh dollars that fall.

regarding tougher than leather, it was weird how in '88 that run DMC style of rapping suddenly sounded so old and played out. eazy-e and NWA were huge at this point, I remember having a compilation w/ them and the world class wreckin' cru on it and the latter's "I did THIS then I did THAT" flow sounded so corny.

Shadrach got some nominal daytime rotation on MTV iirc. I didn't hear Shake Your Rump until I bought the album years later, tho - that just seems kinda frankly insane!

also I saw tougher than leather, in the theater, while tripping

I saw Hey Ladies every morning before school for a while.

― how's life, Wednesday, May 9, 2012 1:20 PM (13 minutes ago)

that explains it, I was in college, mornings did not agree with me

if I'm remembering this right, wasn't capitol expecting a huge LTI-style blockbuster, got handed this bizarre mishmash, and when it didn't take off immediately they just threw up their hands? frankly they needed some marketing ninjas to sell PB to middle america.

in hindsight PB prolly would've moved more units initially if "looking down the barrel of a gun" was the lead single.

Yeah, the Beasties getting out of the CBS/Def Jam contract was a hassle iirc and Capitol treated them to a huge contract as their reward...so then they were handed Paul's Boutique and had no clue what to do with it.

Yeah, Capitol record held a big shindig on the roof of their building with (no joke) a dixieland jazz band, skywriting, the Cap records president gushing about them ....they even flew the capitol records-style Beastie logo flag over the building. Captiol clearly thought this was going to be massive.

There's even video: http://vimeo.com/26077924

That video is nuts! It all came back to me as soon as I saw the flag being raised and the three of them interviewed on the roof (saw a bunch of that footage on MTV).

it's going to be hard not to do a 100% paul's boutique / ill communication ballot

― the late great, Wednesday, May 9, 2012 9:21 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

relistening to Ill Communication and DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!

― Thoughts? You must have loads. (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, May 9, 2012 10:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

on relistening i've warmed slightly to ill communication, but it's still clearly a weak sister to check your head. great up through "sabrosa", don't get me wrong, but it loses serious steam after that. i mean, i'm considering voting for five IC tracks, but they all occur within the album's first seven. it's got two short punk jams, neither a tenth as good as "time for livin'", and a bunch of smoked-out instrumentals, none as memorable or inviting as "something's got to give" and "in 3's". though it's only six minutes longer than check your head, the back half of the album feels like a trudge in comparison.

lol contenderizer that DAAAAetc. happened about a 1/3rd of the way through and i got kinda bored of the end.

Those instrumentals are pretty great, imo! "Eugene's Lament" , "Futterman's Rule", and "Rickey's Theme"? I cut them from my ballot, but if it had been a bigger ballot, I wouldn't have. Also, you got "Do It" and "The Scoop", which are fresh as fuck.