The Beastie Boys Re Released 4 Re-Mastered Albums in 2009.
Before we get to into my actual review, I’ve found that many people aren't sure what re-master even means. So to clear things up: here's a short description.
What the hell is re-mastering?
First, we should ask, “What is mastering?”
Usually, a band will record an album or song in a studio. Each vocal or instrument is recorded onto a separate track. Then, the producer or engineer will eq and mix those tracks together, basically making sure all the instruments can be heard well and improving the overall sound of the instrument mix. When all this is completed; its time for mastering.
Mastering is the final preparation stage in music production. This can include checking audio for acoustic inconsistencies of the studio it was recorded in. This is fixed with equalization. Often compression and limiting is used to make recordings overall sound louder and larger. Often mastering engineers are even left in charge of how much silence is inserted between songs.
Over time, mastering techniques and technology have greatly improved. So, bands re-master their albums to basically make them sound better than a previous release of the same material.
The Beastie Boys have gone re-mastering crazy, but they’ve gone above and beyond what re-mastering, or at least repackaging an album is usually all about. Sure, all the original material sounds quite a bit better. There is more clarity on the high end, and the bass is meatier and thumpier than the old cds. The tragedy of this, is you’re probably gonna compress the sh_ _ out of the songs, turning them into mp3s to be played through a pair of cheap head phones connected to your Ipod, and you won’t really notice a huge improvement in the sound quality. But if you’ve got a half decent stereo system at home (read; at least a few hundred bucks), you should hear a giant improvement over the old cds.
I have been a Beastie Boys fan for as long as I can remember listening to music. I think "Fight for Your Right to Party" came out when I was in first grade. I probably heard it from my older brother and his friends. I think I must have liked the simplistic snotty lyrics and the cartoonish personalities of the Beastie Boys. I missed out on Paul’s Boutique until later on, but from even my earliest music listening days, I was heavily into hip hop. What can I say? It was the punk music of my time. I lost track of the Beasties for a few years until about 7th grade, when someone played me "So Whatcha’ Want" off Check Your Head. I immediately needed to own the album and, just by chance, it was the first CD I ever owned. It was officially my transition from cassette tapes into the compact disc world. From then on, I was hooked. I bought all the albums, but also went nuts trying to score singles (they often contained rare tracks and remixes). Check Your Head was late middle school, Ill Communication about half way through high school, and Hello Nasty dropped the year I took off between high school and college and sold massive amounts of weed. I’m not 100% sure on this, but it seems these albums always dropped just before summer started.
I’ve always considered Paul’s Boutique (1989) the band's best album. If you never bought it over the last 20 years, now would be the time. This is definitely in my top 10 albums of all time and if I had invented some gay rating system it would receive 5 stars or 2 thumbs up or 10 cool points or whatever. This album was recorded during the brief period when sampling technology was becoming available, but before anyone realized you could make money by sampling old songs. Because of this rare opportunity in time, and the genius of the producers, The Dust Brothers, Paul’s Boutique has literally hundreds and hundreds of different music samples on it. To make that album today would bankrupt any record company that had to pay the modern royalty rates for sampling. The only comparable album in history, as far a sample use is concerned, is 3 Feet High and Rising by De La Soul.
There are 23 songs in all, no extra material is included, but the last 9 songs used to be one long track. They are now separated for easier selection. And, like I said before, the overall sound is vastly improved. Feel that dope bass mang. Stand out tracks are "Hey Ladies," "High Plains Drifter" and "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," but the first 11 songs are pure hip hop perfection.
The other 3 albums; Check Your Head, Ill Communication and Hello Nasty all come with a ton of extra tracks included on a bonus cd. You get remixes, live stuff, b sides and some unreleased tracks. If my friend from high school, Shawn DeReamer, ever reads this, he’ll be extremely happy to know, that "Netty’s Girl" (previously only available in video format) has been included as a bonus track on Check Your Head.
Check Your Head (1992) is pretty much when The Beastie Boys became the kings of cool. Fashion wise, they wore a mix of the 90’s grunge thing and some funky disco type golf outfits. Because the group could no longer sample whatever they wanted, as they had with Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties invented a new technique. They would jam out on live instruments, and then go back through the jams, and sample and loop their own playing. They would also use cheaply made Sony Variety microphones from Radioshack for recording vocals. This added a very distinct distortion to the vocal tracks and is why you can’t understand any of the lyrics on "So Watcha’ Want," but somehow, it was still the first single and is one of the best songs on the album. Other highlights include "Pass the Mic," "Gratitude," "Finger Lickin’ Good" and "Professor Booty."
Okay, so you got all of this and now, a disc full of bonus tracks. I’m talking 16 songs that most folks have never heard before. Mostly remixes, a few live tracks, but also some straight up unreleased stuff. The big, big stand out song is "The Skills to Pay the Bills."
Check Your Head is a groovy, grungy party start to finish. The hip hop is still all there, but some punk and funk songs are now thrown into the mix for good measure. This album also had a lot to do with how I went from a hip hop fan to more of rock and roller. This album isn’t as unique as Paul’s Boutique, but because of the new recording techniques, this album was still a ground breaking milestone for the Beastie Boys and music in general.
By the time Ill Communication came out, The Beasties were full on rock stars...MTV, the cover of Rolling Stone, various award show appearances. (The VMA awards where the Beastie’s "Sabotage" video loses out to REM’s "Everybody Hurts" is without a doubt my favorite 90 seconds in the history of MTV. Search for it on Youtube or something). Ill Communication was like a more focused Check Your Head. The group had been honing the techniques and skills they had used for their last album. The group felt this was an improvement over, Check Your Head, but I never connected with it on as deep of a level.
"Sabotage," was the first single and quite possibly one the greatest videos of all time. If you can’t get into the groove and energy of this song, you might want to have your ears checked out by a doctor. This was one of the hardest, heaviest hit songs of the year. Not bad for a hip hop group. Other highlights include "Sure Shot," "Root Down" and the mostly freestyled favorite "Get It Together," which features Q-Tip from Tribe Called Quest.
As far as the bonus disc is concerned, there is some gold here, but it’s not solid all the way through (Sometimes that’s how it goes with bonus tracks). My favorite track would be the Free Zone Remix of "Root Down." It’s like hip hop in a haunted house type of groove. This was a great album for the summer time and definitely got a ton of play out of my cd player, but in my opinion, not quite as good as Check Your Head or Paul’s Boutique.
Lastly, we’ll take a look at Hello Nasty.
Hello Nasty was a return to the more traditional hip hop flavor of Paul's Boutique and even Licensed to Ill. "Intergalactic," the first big single has a robot voiced vocoder chorus. The song "3 MC’s and One DJ" is basically just what it sounds like. The sparse production of its dj only created beats and scratches is definitely homage to the back-in-the-day style of hip hop production. Robots and djs: if that’s not old school, I don’t know what is. The album contains some of the funk of the last two albums, but the hardcore punk stuff is missing. They even start experimenting with a groovy pop sound, that is pretty much all their own. Check out "Song for the Man" and especially "I Don’t Know" to see what I’m talking about.
This album has the Beasties getting silly and serious depending on the song. There is some goofy hip hop (ex. “Dog’s love me cause I’m crazy sniffable”) but some introspective stuff as well (“Deluded as the next guy, pretending and hoping to find that distant peace of mind”). Overall they achieve both moods pretty well.
As far as the bonus tracks are concerned, there is a bunch of remixes and some really great instrumental tracks. "Dirt Dog," "Switched On," "Peanut Butter and Jelly" and "Auntie Jackie Poom Poom Delicious" are all amazing instrumentals and it’s tough to understand why they weren’t released until now. This a really great album, and one of the B Boys best efforts to date. It will always remind me of selling weed and playing Twisted Metal 2 on my Playstation 1.
All four of these newly released editions of the albums are really great. Being a long time fan of the group, reviewing these albums was like a funky trip down Memory Avenue, with a few surprises along the way. If you’re an old Beastie fan, or just getting into them, any of these albums would be well worth the money (or the time it takes you to download the torrent). To quote a line from Mike on the Mic on Paul’s Boutique, “It’s a trip, it’s got a funky beat and I can bug out to it.”
