Bassling blog: Beastie Boys

Showing posts with label Beastie Boys. Show all posts

The Beastie Boys are releasing

Naviar haiku 068 In midst of the dark

The haiku this week shared by Naviar Records grabbed my interest.

I'd been covering the Beastie Boys earlier in the week and 'Lighten Up' is one of my favourites. I was stoked to see them play it live.

The haiku reminded me of the line about looking up at the night sky when you are troubled and imagine one star as your problem, then looking widely at the sky and adjusting your perspective. So 'lighten up' seemed appropriate but I took some liberties as my vocals were boring..

Beasties on Pixies

Today is the birthday of Check Your Head, so I recorded this mash-up of the Beastie Boys' Gratitude and The Pixies Where Is My Mind.

On a related note, I had a chuckle while nearing the end of Ed Piskor's Wizzywig when I spotted this quote from a sample on Check Your Head -- my favourite of their albums for the way it mixes up their interests in punk, hiphop, Buddhism, etc.

Visual companion to Paul's Boutique

Here's a video to accompany the Beastie Boys' album and, while it uses the film clips that exist, it's clever elsewhere in showing imagery to match the pop cultural references in the lyrics.

I'm fascinated by this trend for providing visuals for music, like the Boards of Canada album movie previously mentioned. Part of me admires the work that goes into their production, while another part wonders if some people don't have too much time on their hands.

'Sabotage' cover by Korn and Slipknot

Too many rappers

A previously unreleased video for the Beastie Boys' track Too Many Rappers has surfaced online and it reminds me how eerie it is to hear MCA rap "MCing even after you're gone":

Strange thought, I know, but my skills still grow
The 80s, the 90s, 2000s, and so
On and on until the crack of dawn
Until the year 3000 and beyond
Stay up all night, and I MC and never die
Cause death is the cousin of sleep

I've written elsewhere how Adam Yauch has inspired me.

P.S. The video seems to have been taken down, which is a shame. So I've embedded a live version of the song above. Apparently this was the only time they performed the track.

Beastie Boys circa 1987

Madonna and the Beastie Boys toured together in 1985 and then Australian Penthouse reunited them in print in 1987, with the former's nude photographs and the latter also at a point in their career they tend to gloss over.

I was a fan of the Boys in '87 and have written about their Beastie influence on my other blog.

Mario Caldato on recording

Sometimes mistakes can sound really good. Instead of putting the mics where everyone else puts it, put it somewhere else and face it in the wrong direction, run it through something and see what it does. Start hitting buttons, you might surprise yourself. Shit, run it through Tapco EQs, run it through some garbage. Run it through some Radio Shack stuff, just be open. There's no rules, nobody says you have to do this or that. You know what? You got a Yamaha compressor? You got an Alesis? They all sound good, they're all different. Don't be afraid. Try dumb stuff, put the mic in the refrigerator, put it in the closet - try weird spots. If you're gonna do drums, set up your usual mics, kick, snare, overheads. Then tack one on the wall or facing the other way, go as far as you can in the room, try to get some depth on it. Open up the door and put it in the next room. Put it outside, get some ambience. We set up a mic and I did vocals in a tree on a still night, and it sounded great. We were pullin' in some helicopters - they came in at just the right time in the song. The little bugs and birds and bees added so much life and texture to the song. It was really amazing.

More Beasties

Another fascinating tidbit from the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head album that I've read in Brian Coleman's book Check The Technique concerns the recording of their single 'So What'cha Want':

Mario Caldato Jr.: That was the last song, the one that sealed the deal and let us know the album was ready. The original of that song is underneath, and the Beasties just replayed it over the top of it [Mario plays original song over the phone but makes author promise not to reveal what it is].

It might've been Rick Rubin who said something about how the best singles come together near the end of the process of writing or recording an album, so it was interesting to learn that was the case with this track -- which I listened to a lot in '94.

I'd like to know what the track the Beastie's covered was. I've heard of this technique of building a song on top of another, then removing the foundation described as scaffolding. Here's a live version of the track featuring DJ Hurricane and Cypress Hill:

More Maestro

A few months ago I shared a post about the Maestro drum machine used by the Beastie Boys on their Check Your Head album. Recently I read Brain Coleman's interviews in Check The Technique with those involved in producing that album and there's a bit more information about the band's use of Maestro:

Adrock: The main story about that song is about the effects pedal called the Maestro. There was an old used-gear spot in LA on Larchmont, and we used to go there, and that's where I first learned about Maestro gear. It was a brand of sixties adn seventies guitar pedals.

MCA: Maestro pedals are crazy because they're kind of shitty, but they're also really unique and intense. You could set it so that it sounds like the guitar is playing percusion -- or with the one we used on that song, it's playing the guitar effect but it's also playing that bass line. A lot of jazz guys used that effect, running saxophones through it.

Money Mark: There's a Maestro box on the cover of Eddie Harris' Plug Me In album, so that always gave it some extra weight to us. I think I had the first Maestro of all of us. There are different models -- for percussion, for woodwinds, and for guitar.

Mario Caldato Jr.: The original concept of that song was about the Gibson Maestro effects box, but then we started applying it to people who acted like they were the shit. "The Maestro" is just about the attitude, like that kid on the phone message at the beginning of the song.

Here's some photos of Maestro gear I found on Matrix Synth:

The Maestro gear designed by Bob Moog is quite amazing too

Beastie drum machine

Joe Mansfield's forthcoming book Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession has been on a few sites this week. This pic was on The Wire's website. It makes me feel a lot better about owning five drum machines!

The Maestro Rhythm N Sound for Guitar G2 shown here featured on the Beastie Boys' underrated Check Your Head album and I wonder if it inspired the track below.

PS -- Really like this idea of retrofitting MIDI. It's beyond me but tickles my recent obsession with circuit bent gear. Cheers Techdef!

Great mixes of 2012

Here are some of the mixes I've enjoyed this year:

A late contender is Old Apparatus' PlayGround mix, which is pretty great too. And I also like Jamie XX's Boiler Room mix.

And I've been enjoying revisiting a bunch of great artists via the mixes at http://hurroooooooo.blogspot.jp/ -- particularly the Plaid, Aphex Twin and Luke Vibert.

Happy listening in 2013!

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