3.12.13

On March 12th I listened to The Beastie Boys Check Your Head, Stone Temple Pilots Core, and Django Django Django Django.

In the spring of 1992, as the faithful waited patiently for the first Beastie Boys album in almost three years, Capitol Records threw us a bone. A three or four song sampler that had “Pass The Mic” “Pass The Mic (Part 2, Skills To Pay The Bills),” “Professor Booty,” and maybe “Time For Livin’.”

On April 10, 1992 I stuffed that CD into a garbage bag along with five pairs of underwear, five pairs of socks, five t-shirts, two pairs of shorts and a swimsuit… I was getting outta Buffalo, NY for a week and heading down to spring break in the Florida Keys with my best friend! (I don't care if that sounds gay.) 

We made it as far as Myrtle Beach and nobody wanted to drive anymore. It was Me, Joe Bagodonuts, his brother and his brother’s friend, Dicky. On the way down we got the news that Sam Kinison had passed and we listened to that Check Your Head sampler 800 times!

We were all a little concerned that Mike D. had rhymed the word commercial, with the word commercial, but just chalked it up to nothing really rhymes with commercial. Infomercial? I dunno, maybe? It didn’t matter, this sampler was a harbinger of good things to come and we knew it!

We floated through the week in Myrtle Beach, pickling our livers with cheap beer and living on Bojangles’ chicken. I almost got arrested for swimming out too far in the ocean. I dunno. That fucking Kris Kross song “Jump” was on a continuous loop the whole time we were there. (Did you know one of those puds, Kris or Kross, still wears his pants backwards to this day?) We struck out with the ladies pretty consistently until the last two days. We shacked up with some high school girls from Michigan. It would be the last time I have relations with a high school girl. Sniff.

When we got back to the beautiful Buffalo State College campus, a full length copy of Check Your Head was waiting for us and a Spanish mid-term was waiting for me. I gloriously failed! For the essay part I just wrote “tu hermana!” The instructor wrote “tu madre!” under it. Good times. 

Where License To Ill and Paul’s Boutique drifted along into the future and aren't mired down by a sound or time period, Check Your Head is almost stuck in the 90's and that's not a bad thing.  Because of a different approach to this album, Check Your Head has aged like a wine, and it's a great fucking vintage. 

License To Ill and Paul’s Boutique owe their timelessness to the fact that most of the songs are structured almost completely around a sample. Plus, for Licensed To Ill, it still enjoys a lot of spins on the radio continueing to perpetuat its youthful sound, while Paul's Boutique owes its freshness to the slickness of The Dust Brothers production.  

By picking up their instruments and taking the weight off the samples they used, the Beasties enjoyed a power and vitality that was absent from their first two records. This album is what the Beastie Boys sound like! Not what a bunch of kids singing over a Led Zeppelin sample sound like.

This album has its own heartbeat, it represents a time and place. It also marked almost the final evolution of the Boys lyrical style... they growed up a bit and will a little more. 

Let’s take a look at the tracks:

1. "Jimmy James"

2. "Funky Boss"

3. "Pass the Mic"

4. "Gratitude"

5. "Lighten Up"

6. "Finger Lickin' Good"

7. "So What'cha Want"

8. "The Biz vs. The Nuge"

9. "Time for Livin'"

10. "Something's Got to Give"

11. "The Blue Nun"

12. "Stand Together"

13. "POW"

14. "The Maestro"

15. "Groove Holmes"

16. "Live at P.J.'s"

17. "Mark on the Bus"

18. "Professor Booty"

19. "In 3's"

20. "Namasté"

Those are my favorites!
 

I had never heard all of this album up until this listen, but I can sing all the singles in my sleep. “Sex Type Thing,” “Wicked Garden,” “Creep,” “Plush,” and even “Dead & Bloated” and “Crackerman” will be with me forever. I’m kind of sick of most of them, but I will always love “Plush,” and “Dead & Bloated.”

When I got my first “real” job in radio, we only played songs right off of the full version of Core.

Before I finish this story, I have to give you a little insight into how radio stations operate. When I started my professional career in 1996, and for years before this, every song you hear on 99.99% of all radio stations is programmed the day before. I started my shift at 6 pm and the music log was in the studio waiting for me. EVERY song I played was on that list in the order I was to play them. The only thing I could do was drop a song if there were too many for an hour, or add one if the hour was short. It’s always been that way and it’s gonna stay that way. Oh, and radio stations have something called a “hotline.” It’s a phone that only people that work there have the number for.

So, for some reason the station I worked for was only playing “Creep,” and “Wicked Garden” in 1996. I have no idea why we didn't play at least “Sex Type Thing.” Every single time I had to play “Creep” and 50% of the time I had to play “Wicked Garden,” I would throw the copy of Core into the CD player and “accidentally” forget to cue up the CD to the right song. And then when I hit that button, there wasn't a pair of studio monitors that could play loud enough for “Dead & Bloated.”

“I am smelling like the rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed. I am smelling like the rose that somebody gave me cause I’m DEAD AND BLOATED!”

Fuckin’ A!

Now at this point the “hotline” would ring, and it would be the Program Director of the radio station. He usually fell for the “forgot to cue it up” bullshit, but after a while he got wise and put the singles for the songs in the studio and took out Core. Pfffffft. 

The only thing that I kind of liked other than most of this record that I already knew by heart was “Sin.” Solid track.

This album is awful bullshit that should not be heard by anybody. The Program Director of the Planet Earth should remove it from the studio of life.

Tomorrow is Radiohead day! 

Check out the whole March Playlist!