Beastie Boys: Classic or Dud?

oh fuck yeah, fIREHOSE used to totally rip it up on that tune, I saw them do it in maybe 1989

I was so pissed that I couldn't get anyone to drive me up to see that bill in Oakland - I think the Butthole Surfers were on it as well?

Hello Nasty is one of the few late 90's full CD runtime grab bag albums actually worth listening to from front to back

fIREHOSE used to totally rip it up on that tune, I saw them do it in maybe 1989

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIqxMYLEB84

As far as covers go that whole '92 live EP was pretty hip: PE, Buttholes, Wire, BOC, Superchunk. Really couldn't go wrong whichever way you went for further research after that.

Everybody rappin like it’s a documentary
Actin like life is a big documentary

imo the fact they left that flub in the final take instead of recording another take is pretty indicative of their ethos
it’s funny

Have they ever said what the real rhyme was supposed to be?

commercial/rehearsal iirc

I like the flubbed version better, it just sounds cool the way he repeats it. It's like he's too cool to rhyme.

tbh it’s pretty obvious what it’s supposed to be and I laugh and go “really, what!” when it’s
been a while since I’ve heard it

so it's like a screening with live commentary... or something?

the impression i got is, they asked spike to film one of the talk/q&as they did promoting the book, and then it spiralled from a straight 'concert movie' into an actual documentary, but with the talk/q&a still as the spine of the piece. but i don't know for sure, I just know I wanna watch it.

it took 26 years, but Spike Jonze finally has a Beastie Boys feature film. bless 'em all

all his prior efforts have been... sabotaged?

🥁

“Sure Shot” sure sounds good in this coffee shop.

something that really stuck with me from the book is how much it made it clear (and this is not a knock on them) that they were fans first and musicians second. Their enthusiasm as music nerds was what really put them over - they were like really goofy curators/gatekeepers that just could not WAIT to hip their core audience (suburban white kids) to all this super-cool stuff they were into. I dunno if that sort of role is even possible anymore in this day and age, their certainly aren't very many other bands that made a career out of it the way they did.

Absolutely. The book has such a joyous sense of fandom to it and underlines the fact that all those references were done in a genuine spirit of generosity to it. Getting into the Beasties in the late 90s totally changed my life and gave me a life-raft from all the nu-metal my mates were into.

listened to a long interview with mario caldato recently where he mentioned that several times as a compliment - that they were bad-to-mediocre musicians but that they loved to play, both for its own sake and as a way of exploring/taking apart the music they were into

Everybody rappin like it’s a documentary
Actin like life is a big documentary

just wanted to acknowledge this

which interview was that? (I feel like I saw him pop up on a podcast recently, but didn't listen to it)

I always loved the story of "Sabotage" - just one of the guys banging on a single chord, thinking it was the coolest shit ever, and turning it into a hit single

I like the story about how the working title for "Sabotage" was "Chris Rock", because when they were first working it out in the studio, their friend Chris ran in and went "this is the shit!!!! This shit rocks!!!!"

Jordan it was on YouTube, one of those Red Bull music academy things from a few years ago. I never heard him talk before, he seems like a really sweet guy.

Hello Nasty is a near-great album, my favorite after PB and LTI. The ideal 1998 album: like ...Endtroducing, Odelay, Dots and Loops, it embraces the most luminous part of late '90s capital-fueled musical tourism, yet HN, in its rhymes and attitudes, is also a throwback. In the Jay-Z era the Run-DMC approach was quaint AND refreshing. To work it depended on star power and good will; the Beasties had the former and projected the latter.

Not everything works, but the sinuousness of the first nine or ten tracks is impressive in itself, a helluva lot more than Ill Communication's boho mysticism.

The late summer of 1998 was seven or weight weeks of "Intergalactic" on at every bar I hit; to segue to "Doo Wop (That Thing)" was nice.

That star power and good will really did help, since it's otherwise so innately cornball. Hip to be square, and all that.

seven or weight weeks
Take the load off, AlfieAlfred

Done.

Hello Nasty still sounds convincingly futuristic/techy/spacy to me, even twenty years in the rear-view mirror. I think it’s the echoey production, but it might just be that it was my soundtrack during a summer of heavy psychadelics and forays into phone phreaking.

otm

the most amazing thing that the book revealed is that they'd write lyrics individually, come together to see how they fit together, and then assign them to one of the group

they didn't write their own parts, they wrote parts that probably targeted a voice, but then decided who was going to do what collectively

Hello Nasty is a near-great album, my favorite after PB and LTI. The ideal 1998 album: like ...Endtroducing, Odelay, Dots and Loops, it embraces the most luminous part of late '90s capital-fueled musical tourism, yet HN, in its rhymes and attitudes, is also a throwback. In the Jay-Z era the Run-DMC approach was quaint AND refreshing. To work it depended on star power and good will; the Beasties had the former and projected the latter.

i still prefer the boho mysticism of the previous two LPs but this is an excellent analysis of HN

I really recommend the audio version of the Beastie Boys book. It's read by the guys, plus a whole raft of famous people who were on the scene at the time from Kim Gordon to John C Reilly. It's all put together in the same collagey/cut-up spirit as an actual BBs album

Spike Jones’s chapter is all-time trolling in the audiobook

curators/gatekeepers that just could not WAIT to hip their core audience (suburban white kids) to all this super-cool stuff they were into. I dunno if that sort of role is even possible anymore in this day and age, their certainly aren't very many other bands that made a career out of it the way they did.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 29 January 2020 16:08 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

with reservations (much as i love em) and a difft and probably snootier core audience (partly where the reservations come in lol), sonic youth were also p committedly doing this i think

The Beatsie Boys, they are they coming home

oooh good call on Sonic Youth

xps

"Super Disco Breakin" is such an awesome way to open an album. I remember being 12 and cranking that on the Walkman and thinking it was just the coolest thing I'd ever heard

xpost Nirvana totally did that too, introduced kids to so much

well, it's
fifty cups of coffee and you know it's on

Nirvana totally did that too, introduced kids to so much

they did, but I don't think it was their primary appeal, or motivation, or what they were best at

"Super Disco Breakin" is such an awesome way to open an album. I remember being 12 and cranking that on the Walkman and thinking it was just the coolest thing I'd ever heard

― frogbs,

otm

like ime audience reaction wasn't "isn't it AWESOME to be introduced to so much cool stuff by this band!" as much as it was "this band is loud and angry and sad JUST LIKE ME"

xps

I would say from the outset the primary appeal of the Beastie Boys was that they fought for their right to party

I think you were too cool for Nirvana shakes

I think the primary appeal of the Beastie Boys was their music just like Nirvana

a few years ago I downloaded some fan-made comp of everything the Beasties sampled, organized by album. its a ton of music but definitely worth checking out. since I've heard Hello Nasty like a hundred times it was a trip going through all this. just to name a random example here's an awesome track that was briefly sampled on "Putting Shame in Your Game"

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

I think you were too cool for Nirvana shakes

idk if its worth it to run down my personal Nirvana history but at the time I was a serious die-hard fan. For ex. I was extremely pissed when I couldn't convince any of my high school friends to drive into LA to see Nirvana at the Palladium in 1990 because they all wanted to go to some stupid Senior class party thing instead. I didn't have a car, so I missed it.

I'm not really sure what Nirvana's tastemaker status is. Sure, they got people to get into the Meat Puppets. But Bowie didn't need the assist, and actually ripping off a song didn't draw much attention to Killing Joke (nor did Grohl playing on an album). Nirvana talked about the Pixies a bunch, but again, not sure they needed the assist.

Beastie Boys ... what did they hip people on to? Cibo Matto? Atari Teenage Riot? Mountain?