Yauch twelve years gone.

Three very solid albums. Paul’s, Check and Ill… plenty of okay and a little crap.

I grew up on Check Your Head and Ill Communication as much as Songs about Fucking and Spiderland. New Zealand in the 1990s was basically Beastie Land. Beasties, Palace Bros and Helmet were the general soundtrack for the skater crowd I was in during my formative years. The band meant a lot to me, I actually cried in public when I read Yauch died.

It would be easy to comment on the Frat Boy of License to Ill but that vibe was dropped pretty fast and all expressed embarrassment and apologised for the sexism.

A not crap from me. But I’m incredibly biased.

Awful. One of the worst.

Crap

I only ever listen to the three FM Gramsci listed but they are 100% not crap. Paul's Boutique especially was a really big influence for me.

I really liked the book the surviving members wrote, and I envy how they lucked into a career based on fucking around with their best friends. Their apologies for the frat era still seem a little insincere—the frat persona clearly wasn’t just a put-on, even if it had started as one—but their actual *improvement as people* while in the public eye was remarkable. Fame didn’t make them worse!

But after reading the book, I went back to their music, and it’s still mostly not for me. A couple tracks rule, but a best-of comp would, for me, be done after 20 minutes, and even that would still have some filler. The classic 90s records have a ton of dead weight. The best things on Paul’s Boutique are the songs they sampled.

The pop-culture blender thing never bothered me.

So crap, I guess, with waffles? Or not crap with waffles?

Never understood how they got so big. Crap, no waffles.

Wood Goblin wrote: Sun May 05, 2024 9:47 am Their apologies for the frat era still seem a little insincere—the frat persona clearly wasn’t just a put-on, even if it had started as one

I think this was much less a "frat" thing than it was a continuation of the willfully obnoxious / offensive element of the various underground scenes that they were a part of in NYC - think S.O.D's Speak English or Die, Carnivore, Murphy's Law - but Licensed to Ill was such a huge success that they had to deal with the real world ramifications of that behaviour much more abruptly.

They were going to call the debut album "Don't Be a Faggot" until Colombia refused to release it and forced them to change the name. That's where they were at.

I hate all of their music. Absolute dogshit band.

Wood Goblin wrote: Sun May 05, 2024 9:47 am The best things on Paul’s Boutique are the songs they sampled.

IIRC the entire record is samples, like they were the first to use that many samples on an album.

enframed wrote: Sun May 05, 2024 10:16 am

Wood Goblin wrote: Sun May 05, 2024 9:47 am The best things on Paul’s Boutique are the songs they sampled.

IIRC the entire record is samples, like they were the first to use that many samples on an album.

Sure, but what I meant is that the song that samples The Commodores’ “Machine Gun” (“Hey, Ladies,” I think?) makes me want to turn it off and put on “Machine Gun” instead.

Hadn’t really thought about the Culture of Obnoxiousness/SOD, but that’s a good point.

I can't fault anyone for being unable to tolerate, let alone explore music from the band that released License to Ill with it's horrific rap-rock misogyny. But the aforementioned good albums are great. The track record of the band members growing up and publicly calling out their mistakes is pretty solid. They are definitely not crap and I'd be curious to see another band that released such offensively bad and also imaginatively good music in their discography.

Can't deny they've had a significant influence on others, but they've never interested me to the point where I felt I needed to buy one of their albums. Perhaps I have had a negative bias towards them since I first heard songs off of Licensed to Ill, but I can't say that I've really liked any of their songs after that either. I guess I don't hate "Intergalactic". And some of their videos were cool. That being said..

CRAP

I'm also listening to the first Black Sabbath album right now, a high bar, so I might be judging a little too harshly at the moment.