Beastie Boys: Classic or Dud?

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?

Vaselines
Slits

Daniel Johnston

(Nirvana)

Oh, re: Nirvana? Good calls.

The Wipers?

Raincoats

Killing Joke

I get a vibe from Cobain’s promotion of obscure artists that it was more of a reaction to success, the feeling that he did not deserve this level of fame and had an obligation to offload some of that attention and acclaim onto the musicians he loved.

Cobain’s liner notes for the Raincoats reissue are so sweet and charming.

uh other hip hop
xp

this is from same song:
I’m like "Sweetie Pie" by the Stone Alliance
Everybody know I'm known for dropping science
‘Cause I'm electric like Dick Hyman

Well, I'm not coming out goofy like the fruit of the loom guys
Just strutting like The Meters with the “Look-ka Py Py"

Jimmy Smith is my man, I want to give him a pound

It's like Harlem World Battles on the Zulu Beat Show
It's Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee

Bob Marley was a prophet for the freedom fight
"If dancin' prays to the lord then I will feel alright"

Beastie Boys ... what did they hip people on to?

off the top of my head for me personally:
Eddie Harris
Jimmy Smith
the Car Wash soundtrack
Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee
Slayer
Lee "Scratch" Perry
Lee Dorsey
Chuck Chillout
Boogie Down Productions
Groove Merchant
The Turtles
Idris Muhammad

lots more

xps

They were real enthusiastic about Kid Rock before he was famous, so thanks?

kiss!

https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/zry8qhcow37avdj/images/1-b88438ca88.jpg

They were real enthusiastic about Kid Rock before he was famous, so thanks?

agree that this was their most unfortunate endorsement

Too Short is to blame for Kid Rock

I think I still have the Grand Royal issues with Miami Bass and the Moog synth on the covers

one of the first music websites I went to a bunch was someone's breakdown of all the samples on Paul's Boutique. lots of gems!

i have a copy on a high shelf somewhere i think -- but my labyrinthitis makes me dizzy if i look upwards so i can't check sad lol

one of my prized possessions is a framed, unfolded poster from GR with all kinds of different turntable models

I hung that same poster in many apartments until one day it got destroyed. I wish I had the foresight to save it / preserve it for later in life than just thowing it up on the wall in the shitholes I rented.

Leaving aside writers, as a gateway into pop culture minutiae probably only MST3K did more for me than Beastie Boys.

I get a vibe from Cobain’s promotion of obscure artists that it was more of a reaction to success

this is otm. Cobain gave off a strong sense of "ive got to make the most of my time as a celebrity to direct attention to my favorite obscure stuff" almost as a means of apology or penance. Beasties seemed like exploring & discovering different music and introducing it to people was one of their animating reasons for doing the band in the first place. Nirvana did not strike me as 'enthusiasts' in the same way, it almost felt transactional, like "while you're picking up our album make sure to buy a Vaselines or Half Japanese record to balance out the sin of us being on a major."

Are we talking about fleeting samples and references as gateways? I mean, I guess.

Though I suppose people who bother to seek out sources of those dozens or hundreds of samples might be more prone to finding music on their own anyway.