Category: Beastie Boys

Beastie Boys Reveal Ill Communication Reissue Details, Bonus Tracks
The Beastie Boys’ 1994 LP Ill Communication has sort of an ignominious place in history: It’s the first Beastie Boys album to sound a whole lot like the previous Beastie Boys album (Check Your Head, in this case). By the time the Beasties recorded their fourth long-player, their building blocks were all fully in place. They’d built an aesthetic out of near-randomness, but this album was fairly predictable: The retro hardcore punk nostalgia trips, the instrumental funk vamps, the densely allusive snot-rap bangers. (Plus all those ill-advised joints with the chanting Buddhist monks.)
Regardless, even if Ill Communication didn’t achieve greatness as often as its predecessors, it still had some great moments: “Sabotage”, “Sure Shot”, “Get It Together”, the part from “B-Boys Makin’ With the Freak Freak” where the guy yells about sticking his dick in the mashed potatoes.
On July 14, Capitol will reissue Ill Communication in the same deluxe multi-format style that they gave Paul’s Boutique and Check Your Head. The original album has been augmented with a 12-track bonus disc of rarities and B-sides.
Awesome!!

Beastie Boys’ ‘Hot Sauce’ Due Sept. 15
The Beastie Boys have confirmed that their eighth studio album, ” Hot Sauce Committee Part 1,” will be released Sept. 15 by Capitol. The set will include 17 tracks, including “Donít Play No Game That I Canít Win” featuring Santigold and “Too Many Rappers” featuring Nas, which the artists performed together at the Bonnaroo festival in Manchester, Tenn. on June 12. The album will be available in multiple configurations, including a 5.1 surround mix.
The first Beastie Boys headline date confirmed to follow the album’s release, Sept. 24 at Hollywood Bowl, has sold out. Further dates will be announced as they are confirmed.
Meanwhile, the band has a busy summer ahead on the U.S. festival circuit, with headlining slots at events including Lollapalooza, All Points West, Outside Lands, and Austin City Limits. Prior to the Lollapalooza appearance, the Beastie Boys will perform at Chicagoís Congress Theater on August 6.
The Beasties have also announced they will release a remastered and expanded version of 1998 album “Hello Nasty,” available as a 2-CD/vinyl box set beginning with an August 17 pre-order/digital release. The set will be in stores August 25.
A deluxe edition of 1994ís “Ill Communication” will be available for pre-order on July 6, with physical release on July 14.
Here is the “Hot Sauce Committee Part 1” track list:
1. Tadlock’s Glasses
2. B-Boys In The Cut
3. Make Some Noise
4. Nonstop Disco Powerpack
5. OK
6. Too Many Rappers (featuring NAS)
7. Say It
8. The Bill Harper Collection
9. Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win (featuring Santigold)
10. Long Burn The Fire
11. Bundt Cake
12. Funky Donkey
13. Lee Majors Come Again
14. Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament
15. Pop Your Balloon
16. Crazy Ass Shit
17. Here’s A Little Something For Ya

Beastie Boys Complete ‘Hot Sauce Committee’ Album
The Beastie Boys revealed the title of their forthcoming album in an email message delivered to fans today (May 25).
“Our new record that is coming out that we finished the other day is called HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE,” the group’s note reads. The band will appear on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” tonight, and promise “to offer insights into how it was crafted” during an interview on the show.
The Beastie Boys have a busy summer ahead, with headlining slots scheduled at many of the large festivals in the U.S., including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, All Points West, Outside Lands, and Austin City Limits. As previously reported, rapper Santigold has recorded a guest spot for “Hot Sauce Committee.”
Last October, Beastie Boys member Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz told Billboard that the group was “in the middle” of recording the then-untitled record, the group’s first since 2007’s instrumental album “The Mix-Up.”
“It’s a lot of vocals, a lot of words — very wordy,” he said. “And it’s political, depending on what you call political. You know, if toilet talk and fart jokes are political, which they can be, in that sense yeah, very.”
The group was very active during the 2008 presidential election, organizing and headlining the 7-city “Get Out and Vote” tour with other activist musicians like Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones, Jack Johnson and Ben Harper. The Beastie Boys also played the “Hey, America Feels Kinda Cool Again” event on Jan. 19 at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. during the inauguration celebrations.

The Beastie Boys Ready ìCheck Your Headî Reissue
Fast on the heels of the Paulís Boutique reissue, March 30th will find the Beastie Boys re-releasing the album that followed Paulís, 1992ís Check Your Head. The Check Collectorís Edition will come in various formats, from digital to CD to vinyl, along with the B-sides and other bonus tracks from the era.
Buying the Digital Deluxe version will also score you the music videos ó complete with band commentary ó from Checkís singles. The digital reissues will be released March 30th, while their physical counterpart hits stores April 7th.
For the hardcore fans, an ultra-deluxe 4 LP 180HQ vinyl version packaged in a fabric-wrapped hardcover coffee table book case will be released with a limited run of 2,000 copies, according to a press release.
The Beastiesí Website has been updated to celebrate the Check Your Head reissue, with the bandís performance on the Arsenio Hall Show embedded on the site. Additionally, the Beasties announced today that theyíll headline Los Angelesí storied Hollywood Bowl on September 24th in anticipation of their new album, due out later this year. The group will also perform at this yearís Bonnaroo, and are among those rumored to being playing Lollapalooza in August.
In addition to the Paulís and Check packages and the new album due out later this year, the band is also expected to reissue 1994ís Ill Communication at some point before the summer. Some online retailers are listing an April 21st release date for that album. As Rock Daily recently reported, the Boys are hard at work on their first album since 2007ís instrumental The Mix-Up. For more on the new LP, which currently sports the title Tadlockís Glasses, check out Beastie Boys Finishing Up ìWeirdî New Album.

Beastie Boys Paul’s Boutique Reissue Out Now
If you’re me, the Beastie Boys’ sampledelic spazz-rap sophomore LP Paul’s Boutique is easily the group’s best album ever, made when the Beasties were at the ideal middle ground between the hilariously asshole-ish prankster brats of the License to Ill days and the self-consciously eclectic downtown boho aesthetes they first became on Check Your Head. Paul’s Boutique is coming up on its 20th anniversary, and we reported last month that the Boys would be giving the album the reissue treatment it deserves.
Well, they’ve done it. Physical copies of the Paul’s Boutique 20th Anniversary Edition won’t be out until February 10, but if you cruise over to the Beasties’ site, you can already buy yourself a download or decide how much money you feel like dropping on the various multi-tiered options the group is offering.
If you’re seriously balling, you can drop $129.99 on the Commemorative Package, which includes a limited edition eight-foot-long panoramic poster of the fold-out cover art, a limited edition T-shirt, and both vinyl and CD copies of the remastered album, as well as an immediate download.
Broke folks can pay $11.99 for the download itself, which comes in DRM-free 320 kbps and includes “interactive, 3D digital album art” (Which will be what? The Google Earth street-view of the corner on the cover?). For $15.99, there’s also a Deluxe Digital Download package, which includes five music videos and (this is actually awesome) a full-album commentary by the boys themselves. Still more options: $18.99 for the CD, $23.99 for the 180-gram vinyl, both of which come with a download of the album. They’re also selling T-shirts and stuff like that on the site.
Even if you don’t plan on parting with any money over an album you already own, it’s worth checking out the Boys’ site, which now features all manner of Paul’s Boutique-related sillness: videos, photos, stories from fans, a truly difficult and low-tech ping-pong game, and a free download of that audio commentary track. Go nuts.
In other Beastie Boys news, last night, it was announced that they would be playing Bonnaroo. This is their only scheduled show right now.

Beastie Boys In The ‘Middle’ Of New Album
As the Beastie Boys prepare to begin their barnstorming Get Out and Vote tour, the group is also at work on the follow-up to the 2007 instrumental album “The Mix-Up.”
“We’re actually in the middle of recording it right now,” group member Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz tells Billboard. “We hope to have it out sometime next year. It’s a lot of vocals, a lot of words — very wordy. And it’s political, depending on what you call political. You know, if toilet talk and fart jokes are political, which they can be, in that sense yeah, very.”
Any chance of new material getting played on the “Get Out and Vote 08” tour? “I don’t think so,” Horovitz laughs. “It’s always weird when you play the new songs that people don’t know. Anytime we play new songs, it always seems like a brick.”
Horovitz says the decision to stage Get Out and Vote came down to the simple fact that in the last presidential election, 70 million registered voters didn’t make to the polls.
“70 million people is a lot of people to not vote,” Horovitz says. “So this all happened really quick, like a month or so ago and within the past few weeks, literally. We were just stressing on what to do and then we were like, ‘We’re a band and we play shows, so let’s go to these swing states.’ We thought it would be a good idea to get people to vote.
“Basically, we just called a bunch of people and asked them if they wanted to play,” he says. “It’s literally like, whoever called us back (is on the tour).”
The seven-date trek begins Oct. in Charlotte, N.C., and runs through Nov. 2 in Denver. Sheryl Crow, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Crosby & Nash, Santogold and Tenacious D will play in different incarnations throughout. Horovitz says the Beasties also reached out to De La Soul, Nas, Nine Inch Nails and Moby, but those acts were unable to participate for scheduling reasons.

Beastie Boys In The ‘Middle’ Of New Album
As the Beastie Boys prepare to begin their barnstorming Get Out and Vote tour, the group is also at work on the follow-up to the 2007 instrumental album “The Mix-Up.”
“We’re actually in the middle of recording it right now,” group member Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz tells Billboard. “We hope to have it out sometime next year. It’s a lot of vocals, a lot of words — very wordy. And it’s political, depending on what you call political. You know, if toilet talk and fart jokes are political, which they can be, in that sense yeah, very.”
Any chance of new material getting played on the “Get Out and Vote 08” tour? “I don’t think so,” Horovitz laughs. “It’s always weird when you play the new songs that people don’t know. Anytime we play new songs, it always seems like a brick.”
Horovitz says the decision to stage Get Out and Vote came down to the simple fact that in the last presidential election, 70 million registered voters didn’t make to the polls.
“70 million people is a lot of people to not vote,” Horovitz says. “So this all happened really quick, like a month or so ago and within the past few weeks, literally. We were just stressing on what to do and then we were like, ‘We’re a band and we play shows, so let’s go to these swing states.’ We thought it would be a good idea to get people to vote.
“Basically, we just called a bunch of people and asked them if they wanted to play,” he says. “It’s literally like, whoever called us back (is on the tour).”
The seven-date trek begins Oct. in Charlotte, N.C., and runs through Nov. 2 in Denver. Sheryl Crow, Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Crosby & Nash, Santogold and Tenacious D will play in different incarnations throughout. Horovitz says the Beasties also reached out to De La Soul, Nas, Nine Inch Nails and Moby, but those acts were unable to participate for scheduling reasons.

Beastie Boys Plot Star-Studded Vote Shows
The Beastie Boys have drafted Sheryl Crow, Norah Jones, Jack Johnson and Ben Harper to join them on the Get Out and Vote tour, which will begin Oct. 28 in Richmond, Va. Shows are also set for Nov. 1 in St. Paul, Minn., and Nov. 2 in Milwaukee.
“This election is too important to stay at home,” the rap trio said this morning (Oct. 10), adding that it is endorsing Barack Obama for president. “We hope that you can come out, have a nice night, dance, sing, get your freak on, and then wake up the next morning and get everyone that you possibly can to get out and vote.”
Crow, Jones, Johnson and Santogold are on the bill for the Richmond show, while Harper and Tenacious D will support in St. Paul. Harper, Tenacious D and David Crosby and Graham Nash will join the Beasties in Milwaukee.
For ticket information, visit the Beasties’ Website.

Beastie Boy makes basketball documentary
NEW YORK – Some of college basketball’s brightest stars, including Kansas State’s Michael Beasley and UCLA’s Kevin Love, are featured in Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s new documentary, “Gunnin’ for That No. 1 Spot.”
And while it’s less than two years since he followed the then-high school players for a week, he still can’t get over how much they’ve changed.
“They already look different, and I think it will be really interesting to look at this doc five or 10 years from now and see these guys when they were high school students. There’s a good chance that several of them may be superstars in the NBA,” Yauch told The Associated Press in an interview this week. “They were like babies in this picture.”
Yauch took his camera to Harlem’s famed Rucker Park, made famous by streetballers, in September 2006 to document some of the nation’s top high school talent, who were playing in an event there.
Yauch said he was struck by how the players ó who also included Jerryd Bayless of Arizona, Donte Green of Syracuse and Kyle Singler of Duke ó could act like kids one minute, yet live in such an adult world.
“They have this infrastructure around them, and they are being groomed for stardom,” he said.
“When I was in high school I wasn’t getting the quantity of media that these guys are,” he said. “But it’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
Yauch, 43, said the documentary, which premieres April 28 at the Tribeca Film Festival, doesn’t make a judgment on the world where the precocious teens lived, but does give viewers a glimpse into it. He added: “The people around these kids really do care about them.”
“Gunnin’ for That No. 1 Spot” is slated for wide release June 27.

Beastie Boys switch gears with instrumental album
NEW YORK (Billboard) – Long known for their relatively epic waits between studio releases, the Beastie Boys surprised fans this spring with the announcement that their new record would arrive a scant three years after 2004’s “To the 5 Boroughs.”
But the Beastie Boys are also long known for sudden stylistic left turns, and shortly thereafter, they revealed that the album would consist solely of instrumentals.
As promised, “The Mix-Up,” due June 26 via Capitol, goes heavy on the groove, especially the splashing, crashing Meters-inflected funk the band has been consistently serving up since 1992’s “Check Your Head.” But there’s not a rhyme to be found.
“If we were trying to maximize our demographic or whatever, I’m not sure we’d come with an instrumental record right now,” says Michael “Mike D” Diamond, whose bad self runs things on the drum kit throughout the album. “But I think we have to give people who’ve been listening to us some credit. They’ve gone to different places with us already, in terms of the influences we bring to the music we make, so hopefully they’ll be able to hang with this curveball as well.”
The curveball began taking shape about a year or so after “To the 5 Boroughs” was released. “With ‘5 Boroughs,’ we were each working on beats, sitting in front of our laptops and samplers,” Diamond says. “This time, we thought, ‘Let’s do a 180 from that, and sit down and play some instrumentals and see what happens that way.’ We just didn’t really stop until we finished.”
The 12 tracks on “The Mix-Up” are all new and were never seriously considered for lyrics, although Diamond concedes that the band is mulling highly tentative plans to release a second version of the record with guest vocalists. “The more we kept working on these songs, the happier with them we became, and the more confused in terms of where there was room to put vocals on them,” he says.
The Beasties — whose last instrumental record was the 1996 compilation “The In Sound From Way Out!” — are turning their attention to getting the word out to their college-age fan base and beyond. In perhaps the most telling sign of a significant shift toward an older audience, “The Mix-Up” will be on sale at Starbucks.
Tour plans are still in the works — including some U.S. dates that haven’t been announced yet — and some shows will be instrumental-only. (Before their recent two-night stand at the Sasquatch Festival in George, Wash., the Beasties played a surprise show for several hundred fans at Seattle’s Crocodile Cafe.)
“We’ve got plenty more work ahead of us,” Diamond says. “We kind of have a pretty broad list (of songs) to pick and choose from.”