Beastie Boys - Check Your Head


It's time to Check Your Head. It's the third Beastie Boys album, and it's their return to being a band. It's not really hardcore like they started out, it's not alternative rock like everyone calls it, this is a specifically hip hop band. That's surprisingly unique, and there aren't any others i can think of off the top of my head. Lots of collaborations, but nothing so self contained.

Believe it or not, this is a golden age structured album. A mix of songs and interludes, a real back and forth between the sampling and band, silly and serious, all of it designed to get your head bobbing. The album is an audio block party, something for everybody to enjoy. 

Christgau called it a great concept with "half there execution," like they were Sexual Chocolate or p(nmi)t's Audiodetritus or something. I disagree for the simple reason that he is only comparing them to an idealized image of big business mainstream, and his judgement is based on the supposed idea that they aren't good at the New Orleans Jazz style they try to emulate. I've said it before and i'll say it now: who told you you aren't allowed to suck, and why can't i enjoy it? Beastie Boys being a band again was seen as a nod to their little coterie of die hard white fans instead of the first attempt at actually doing it. Like i said a long time ago, there's a lot of love/hate because on one hand they just straight up peaced out on Simmons and Rubin for Capitol's money machine, but on the other they didn't become anything radically different from what they had always been. He's essentially reading the band as a board meeting gimmick when they aren't. They were a punk band that liked hip hop and invented being both at the same time. It's like ragging on Uriah Heep for being near-prog, you're missing the obvious point that that's what they're doing on purpose.

What does that have to do with anything? Well 3/4 of the concept for this album is about the lunacy of Bush and Schwarzkopf and Desert Storm. I won't weigh in on that topic, other than to remind you that 10 year old Bottle watched the largest coalition of nations since WWII hurl depleted uranium at Iraq while Saddam Hussein threw the biological weapons we sold him back at us on live television. Yay, sports team!

Ok, i checked my head. Still pretty terrible in there. At least I have Biz Markie singing about the Beastie Boys coming home to cancel out the air raid sirens.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4 Seasons - The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette

Image
This might be my longest  album review ever. But i swear a couple times, so it's worth the read ;) How could i possibly mention Jefferson Airplane, The 4 Seasons, and Frank Zappa in the same context? Zappa said "this is rediculous" and a few years later The 4 Seasons said "you know what, Frank is right. This IS ridiculous." To which Jefferson Airplane said, "Oh. Ok. Got it." The real question is: which one is the most transgressive? Zappa said stop fighting, you look like idiots. Jefferson Airplane said i guess if love and community is a bad thing, then sure we're criminals and we'd be happy to move out into the fields and live peaceful lives without your garbage, let us go already. The 4 Seasons said hold my champagne for a moment. In 1969, The 4 Seasons released the single most ironic, acidic, extravagant, and downright befuddling album ever created, The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. Zappa was accused of writing "shitty doo-w
Read more

Welcome to my blog, and my record collection.

This is a blog about my love of listening to albums. It started off as a nightly perusal of my dad's record collection (which sadly became mine) on my personal facebook page. Over the last two months it has become quite an enjoyable process of simply ranting about what i think is a real art form, the album. It needs a more permanent home. Some of my reviews are positive, some negative. They might not be what you expect from album reviews, but i hope you at least find them entertaining. For the most part i do very little research, and they tend to be train of thought reactions rather than calculated essays. If nothing else, know that i'm really listening to them and whether they are amazing or abysmal i want you to go listen to them too.  I'll start migrating the 60+ i've written so far over here in the next few days, and hopefully get to the point where i just start writing them here. I'd probably even take suggestions if you're just dying to know my tho
Read more

Pat Benatar - Seven The Hard Way

Image
I don't know about you, but i love Pat Benatar. Yes, that's also her debut album with the single most underrated song in the universe (My Clone Sleeps Alone) in the background, but that's just a generic non-self-titled debut album. We're jumping ahead to her 6th album, Seven The Hard Way, because that, ladies and gentle germs, is how you kalaidescope a concept. Not one, not two, not three, but 4 protien-packed layers to this metaphor. You don't really need to know the overly complicated rules of Craps to know that A) it's gambling, B) "the hard way" refers to rolling doubles, so good luck rolling two 3.5s, and C) you're going to lose, one way or another. It's a joke, but more importantly, it's Pat Benatar and the roll out is Sex As A Weapon, so the innuendo is not intended to be subtle. Wait wait wait, that's only 3, Bottle, where's 4? You're right, last but not least, side B opens with Seven Rooms of Gloom, a Holland-Dozier-Hol
Read more