Not me. I’ve heard The Mix-Up, and I missed my favorite MC’s.

—–

SPECIAL BONUS! A LOOK FORWARD AT THE BEASTIE BOYS: THE HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE PT. 1!

In 2009, The Beastie Boys debuted a new song at a Tennessee music festival. “Too Many Rappers,” featuring guest vocals by Nas, quickly leaked to the web, and it’s pretty damn good, an old school lament about the current state of rap music. In other words, something I can agree with them on. “Too Many Rappers” was nominated for a Grammy, Best Rap Duo or Group, but lost out to Jay-Z (who is also awesome). The band announced that they would be touring in late-2009, in support of a forthcoming album called “The Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 1,” which was scheduled for release on September 15, 2009. My wife and I bought tickets to see them at The Hollywood Bowl, and we were planning to take our son, who has become quite the fan.

But the tour didn’t materialize. On July 20, 2009, I and many other fans received an email with a video attachment. In the video, Adam “MCA” Yauch informed the world that he had been diagnosed with a form of cancer that I cannot pronounce. The tour and the album release were postponed, which I thought was very selfish of Yauch – I’m kidding.

Thank God, Yauch has made a full recovery, and he told Entertainment Weekly that the album will probably come out in September. He explained that he, Mike D. and Horovitz were giving the album another listen and that they might tweak some of the songs a bit before the release. If they tour, I’ll be there. I haven’t followed any band’s career like I have the Beastie Boys. If any other band had made a weird (weird to me, anyway) switch and become political, I would have just rolled my eyes and chalked it up to a phase, a sign of the times. Of course I shouldn’t have taken it as personally as I obviously did – as though my views should be the norm. They’re the one band I’ve followed from the moment they burst onto the scene. I put in any of their albums, except for “The Mix-Up”, and crank it up to full volume (“All the way up, daddy!” my kid delightedly screams from the back seat).

You can call this series self-indulgent. Indeed, I would agree. Maybe you don’t like the Beastie Boys. But even a non-fan would have to admit that the band had amassed a career that’s also a great story. They were no-name bratty punks who inexplicably crossed over into hip hop…and it somehow worked. Roundly dismissed and forgotten after their debut album, they come back with an album that makes Time Magazine’s list of greatest albums ever, but no one cared. Urban radio would no longer play them, pop radio thought they were a joke, and Alternative radio was still Alternative. So, they retool, and a third album makes some noise, but not much…at least at first. Their dismissed second album gains popularity, and their fourth album is the first in their career to be anticipated at all.

Riding a wave of clever videos and the mainstreaming of Alternative Rock, they achieve new heights of success, culminating in “Hello Nasty,” their fifth studio album. Riding the success of “Hello Nasty,” they release “To the Five Boroughs” in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, which itself led to America’s involvement in two wars. From the very beginning, they were the unlikeliest of success stories. I remain convinced they overreached their grasp in becoming critics of politics, but it ultimately illustrates the cultural and political divide in the good old US OF A. They had, after all, built up a lot of artistic goodwill over the years.

Will “The Hot Sauce Committee Pt. 1” be any good? Bush is gone…can the Beastie Boys let it go and move on and just go back to making fun music? Man, I really hope so. My wife says “The Hot Sauce Committee” is a stupid title, just like the rest of their albums (except “To the Five Boroughs,” hmmm?), so it will probably be good. She’s smarter than me. When they got political, she just hit next on the CD player, and shrugged.

It. Was. Awesome.

Prior to the album’s release, they pulled another prank worthy of Andy Kaufman when they booked time on cheesy public access stations and ran a series of infomercials in which they hawked the album. Donning so-stupid-they-were-clever disguises, they marketed the album as a six-pack inducing exercise tool, a get-rich-quick money maker, and a juicer. Oh, they’re was also a psychic thrown in for good measure. It was an inspired bit, hardly well-advertised, which in concept and execution showcased their absolute strength as entertainers: they’re just fun. Good, stupid, irreverent, ridiculous fun.

I waited in line to buy the subsequent album, “Hello Nasty” at Tower Records in Atlanta, my dutiful wife by my side. From the very first line (“Well, it’s fifty cups of coffee and you know it’s on!”), “Hello Nasty” was amazing, and it felt like the Beasties had honed the formula, begun with “Check Your Head,” to a fine point. Rock songs mixed with instrumentals, all topped with delicious and hilarious hip-hop. They had gone delightfully old school, embracing their roots, and their lyrics remained very funny, especially when the Beasties tweaked existing classic rap lines to fit their quirks of the moment. Like this one, partially lifted from Run DMC’s “King of Rock”: “I’m the king of Boggle. There is none higher. I gets eleven points off the word quagmire.”

Sure, I was annoyed that they spoke out against multinational corporations from the safe and cozy confines of a multi-million dollar deal with a huge record label, but I had loved it when this same attitude kept them from contributing a song to “Reality Bites,” the silliest definition of my generation ever put on film. The whole album felt effortless, as though with nothing to prove they could just have fun, which translated for the listener. Even the instrumentals were bearable, though my wife would disagree.

Gone was DJ Hurricane, replaced by Mix Master Mike. Mix Master Mike is the kind of DJ that makes people who say Djing takes no talent say, “Damn, that boy good.” Not that Hurricane was no slouch, but if Mix Master Mike played guitar, he’d be Jimmy Page.

“Hello Nasty” remains a great album, if not their greatest, then certainly their least uneven. The subsequent tour was, in a word, sick. The Beasties with opening act Rancid at Atlanta’s Lakewood Amphitheater. It was in-the-round arena tour, but the Omni was gone, but that being said, this remains my favorite Beastie Boys concert. They were at the height of their popularity and creativity. Speech from Arrested Development was one section from me and my wife and our friends, rapping along with everyone else.

After “Hello Nasty,” rumors surfaced that the band had recorded and would soon release an album of country music. Somewhere, Andy Kaufman was smiling. The double-disc compilation, “The Sounds of Science,” released in 1999, contained a couple of almost country songs, performed by Mike D. as his alter ego, Country Mike. Yauch would explain in the liner notes:

“At some point after Ill Communication came out, Mike got hit in the head by a large foreign object and lost all of his memory. As it started coming back he believed he was a country singer named Country Mike. The psychologists told us that if we didn’t play along with Mike’s fantasy, he would be in grave danger. Finally he came back to his senses. These songs are just a few of many we made during that tragic period of time.”

While the Country Mike stuff was a fun goof, the previously unreleased track “Alive” officially made me worry about the band’s new direction. Peppered in between their usual pop culture references were juvenile rhymes about class warfare and immature rants about tax dollars funding defense instead of health care. With only a few lines, the Beastie Boys confirmed the oh-so-obvious: they were ill-equipped to meaningfully dissect socio-political issues. Of course, being a rabid, irrational fan, I convinced myself it was only a lark; but sadly, “Alive” revealed a coming political streak that would threaten to alienate some fans, and by “some” I mean me and my wife, who by this time had relocated from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Ch-ch-Check out my semi-coherent ramblings about the Beasties foray into political commentary, “To the Five Borroughs.”

Hello Nasty, 1998

Best Songs: Intergalactic, Shame In Your Game, Disco Breakin’, 3 MC’s and One DJ, The Negotiation Limerick File, The Move

Cool Samples: Sergei Rachmaninoff, Run DMC, Iron Butterfly, De La Soul

Political references: None, I think, but there’s a decent song about sexual harassment, a subject that has been unfairly and sometimes nauseatingly politicized by both sides of the political spectrum.

Cam’s rating: In 1998, 4 stars. In 2010, 5 stars

[Ed. Note: Previous chapters can be found here.]

 I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever heard. 

The Eagles, The Supremes, The Commodores – no one was safe from the Beastie Boys; Mike D. was ecstatic that the Beatles threatened to sue over the use of three of their songs in one Beastie Boys song, “Sounds of Science”  (Best. Song. Ever.). Lyrically, the album was, again, the height of hilarity. Mike D. rapped, “I’m Mike D. and I’m back from the dead. Chillin’ at the beach. Down at Club Med.” This in itself is not funny, but the line shows how in tune to the pop culture zeitgeist the Beastie Boys were. Again, this is pre-Internet, but a rumor had circulated in, oh, 1987 or 1988 that Mike D. had died. My first college roommate was from DC, and he refused to believe it was in fact Mike D. on “Paul’s Boutique”: “That dude’s dead, man.” Their pop culture references grew more varied. They are uniquely conscious of pop culture bits that the rest of us have forgotten about, as demonstrated with the line from “Hey Ladies”: “I’m not James at 15, or Chachi in Charge”. Who in their right mind had any recollection of “James at 15”, a 1970s dramedy about a boy who was, well, 15 years old (It was called “James at 16” once James had a birthday)? But the line that made me declare them to be hip hop geniuses was: “Make another record ‘cause the people they want more of this, suckers they be saying they can take out Adam Horovitz.” Dude rhymed Horovitz. Damn. 

This was now the era of the aforementioned Chuck D.’s Public Enemy, and N.W.A. was also big about this time. So Rap music was evolving, and one of the evolutionary branches included the wonderfully weird De La Soul. So the Beastie Boys’ first foray into such weirdness should have been a hit. It, of course, was not. Sure, Rolling Stone magazine, in a bafflingly ahead of its time review, gave the album four stars. Capitol asked the Beasties not to tour until the album had sold a million copies. 

The Beastie Boys never toured in support of “Paul’s Boutique,” and thus I was denied another chance to see them perform live. Poor me, I know. They only released a couple of videos in support of the album, including the 70’s disco themed “Hey Ladies!”, which features a great shot they lifted right from “Mean Streets” (It occurs to me that Ben Shapiro would really think I’m nuts because I love hip hop and Scorsese). 

Even though the album bombed, insiders knew it was the shit. Years later in an interview with Vibe Magazine, Chuck D. said as much, and Russell Simmons never moved forward on his plan to repackage previously produced Beastie tracks (someone tell me if this was, in fact, just a rumor along the lines of Mike D. is dead. Anyone?). Within the mainstream, they were largely seen as a joke. Now, of course, the album is seen as a landmark achievement, landing on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 greatest albums of all time. The problem at the time wasn’t that it was ahead of its time, it’s that the masses refused to give it a chance. Or maybe they did. I defer to Chris Rock on the subject of “Paul’s Boutique”: 

It’s one of those records that you buy every time you’re in a rental car. It’s also one of those records that you thought sucked the day you bought it. You were mad because it sounded nothing like Licensed to Ill. Then a month later, you’re like, “This is the best shit ever. High Plains Drifter is the best song ever made.” 

He’s probably expressing the opinion of many, many people. “High Plains Drifter”, a slow, beat-heavy tale of a crime spree in which Ad Rock name-checks Travis Bickle, is perhaps the best song ever. Despite the sophomoric streak that continued to pulse through their music, The Beasties had a little bit more on their mind this time around. They just dealt with it humorously. On “What Comes Around”, they mock skinheads with the witty line, “You’re all mixed up. Like pasta primavera. Yo, Why’d you throw that chair at Geraldo Rivera?” The song “Car Thief” marks the first time, to my knowledge, that they came remotely close to being political, with the line, “All the wife beaters. And all the tax cheaters. Sitting in the White House pulling their peters.” It’s a funny line, in a seventh grade sense of humor kinda way, and for my money more effective than the specific nature of their later political lyrics. 

Twenty years after its release, “Paul’s Boutique” is considered a classic in the genre, and rightfully so. Everybody claims to have loved it from the get go, most of them are lying. You’ll have to trust me on this (maybe I get leeway for admitting I had never heard Led Zeppelin?), it’s a sincere promise: I considered it an instant classic that expanded on the possibilities of a relatively young musical genre. On my first date with my wife (Waffle House and a movie, “Cape Fear”), I blared “Sounds of Science” in my Hyundai, and we’ve been fanatics together ever since. Immediately after its release, it struggled to get a foothold in the marketplace, and again, the Beasties seemed to disappear. 3rd Bass, a racially mixed rap group, signed with Def Jam, and their debut album was filled with anti-Beastie Boys lyrics, some of them aimed directly at the commercial failure of Paul’s Boutique. 3rd Bass was a good group, they would go on to release the popular “Pop Goes the Weasel”, which took out another easy target, Vanilla Ice. But they broke up a couple of years later. The Beastie Boys would rise again, and MC Serch of 3rd Base once intimated to Spin Magazine that if he and his partners Pete Nice and Daddy Rich ever recorded another album, they would take back some of the verbal punches leveled at the Beastie Boys. 

With two albums and two reinventions down, the Beastie Boys again went into hiding in Los Angeles, and their third album “Check Your Head” was only marginally anticipated. I’ll cover “Check Your Head” right right here, next next week. 

PAUL’S BOUTIQUE, 1989

Best Songs: High Plains Drifter, Lookin’ Down the Barrel of a Gun, Egg Man, Sounds of Science, Hey Ladies, Shadrach
Cool samples: The Eagles, The Beatles, Sly and the Family Stone, The Steve Miller Band
Political references: A scant few
Cam’s Rating: In 1989: 5 Stars, In 2010: 5 Stars

When they win, hell, it was a fair fight. They never, while basking in the glow of a victory, say, “Whew. Thank God the unfairness worked out in our favor this time!” or “The voting machines finally worked!”

They also hedge their bets before a contest, positioning themselves as the enlightened open-minded ones and their opposition as gun and religion loving inbreds before the actual contest has gone down, so in the event of a defeat, they’re prepared to act like victims rather than losers.

I’m referring, of course, to the phenomenal “American Idol” finale, an event that capped off an unbelievably good season of TV. From “Fringe” and “Idol,” to “Friday Night Lights” and “The Office” — and finally to “Lost,” I’ve loved the stuff on the tube this winter/spring. I treated last night’s “Idol” fantastically cheesy finale as a season ending celebration of great TV.

Leave it to a bunch of activist reality TV voters to crap on the whole thing.

It started Wednesday morning with screaming headlines, coyly and dishonestly put in the form of a question: “Will Idol finale be Red State vs. Blue State?”

The answer, of course, is “That’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard!” But by putting the question out there, the New York Daily News and others have legitimized debating the outcome along these lines. Gracious in defeat was glam rocker Adam Lambert, but not so his allegedly blue state fanbase.

They secretly love that he lost, because it gives them a chance to viciously rip into “homophobic middle and Southern America”, you know – those drooling mouth breathing red-staters. Homophobia is the best excuse running. According the Nikki “Toldya!” Finke and others, “Brokeback Mountain” lost the Oscar to “Crash” because of homophobia. Lambert lost to Allen because of homophobia. It’s laughable how married they are to this idea (gay marriage?). It can’t be that people just liked “Crash” better, and according to Jim David over at Huffington Post Hucanwhinethe Most, homophobia is the only reason THE ONLY REASON that “the better singer” didn’t win.

I happen to agree with their opinion that “Brokeback” is better than “Crash,” but here’s the thing: they don’t think it’s an opinion. It’s fact.

You cannot possibly prefer “Crash” to “Brokeback” or Kris Allen to Adam Lambert, except of course, if you’re a raging homophobe. This is the only explanation. And David has since clarified his position, defended himself as not liberal but moderate. Fine, but dude, you also said you wish the music professionals would have the final say on the show. What’s the point of a show, then? The premise of the show is that America votes! It’s like replacing Jake Gyllenhall with Maggie Gyllenhall in “Brokeback Mountain.”

You know how many rednecks I heard blaring “Judas Priest” and “Queen” while growing up in Powder Springs, Georgia? The notion that a person living in a red state not embracing an artist, particularly a singer, because the singer is gay or liberal is absurd. Eminem is from a blue state, and has repeatedly come under fire for being homophobic. My favorite bands are liberal (Beastie Boys, Public Enemy) and in one case fronted by a man who’s at least as sexually ambiguous as Glambert (R.E.M.), and guess what?

I DO NOT CARE. I remember reading when I was a teenager that R.E.M.’s “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” was about a dude. This was before homosexuality was the cause celebre, and while I will admit I found it strange, it never made me change the station when it came on, or fast-forward the cassette (we used to have these things called cassettes, kids, they predated CDs and – Oh, CD is short for compact disc…nevermind). No, I warbled along with Stipe, making up lyrics in the spots where he mumbled, which was let’s be honest, for most of the song.

The truth is, Southerners usually win “Idol,” usually against a runner-up who’s – guess what? – Southern. But the whackos have disingenuously decided to decry the outcome this year to further disparage the South specifically, and red state voters in general, because it gives them a chance to sound open-minded, when in fact they sound stupid.

They’re glad Lambert lost, because it gives them yet another chance to be victimized vicariously through someone else.