So why is Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
I realized recently that I associate Beastie Boys records with specific neighborhoods, each tied to a different splice of my life.
For example, Licensed to Ill (#41 of best 1,000 albums ever) ties to my introduction to hip-hop growing up on Long Island – and throw Run-D.M.C.’s Tougher Than Leather (#132)into that mix as well. Paul’s Boutique is my Queens album, my outer boroughs album, while To the 5 Boroughs (#378) is my post-9/11 healing heart album from sunny Southern California.
It took me a little bit longer to figure out where the brilliantly loose, funky, and shaggy Check Your Head belonged, and then it hit me: it’s my East Village record.
When I lived in Astoria, Queens post-college, I actually wore a tie to work every day. I use the word “actually” because I can hardly believe it myself these days.
I worked near Astor Place and Broadway in downtown Manhattan, right on the East Village’s door. After work, I’d ditch the tie and explore a neighborhood that was in that ideal pocket for me during the late ‘90s: far less dangerous than it was during the ‘80s, and far less touristy and trendy than it would soon become.
My man Adam introduced me to spots like Coney Island High, a venue and bar that attracted the ideal mix of what we call normies these days (read = me) and legit local scenesters, musicians, artists, and some splice of people of some ill-defined rough-and-tumble sort. In other words: the perfect blend of light local grittiness for post-collegiate moi.
One night, a few friends and I were wandering around the East Village, and we discovered a small crowd gathered outside of Coney Island High. People were whispering, and soon we figured out why: the Beastie Boys were rumored to be playing a secret show – a warmup show for their Hello Nasty (#86)tour would have aligned quite well, timeline-wise.
However, there was no secret show. The rumors turned out to be just that. So I never did get to see the Beasties perform live, but in a weird way I don’t mind as I know seeing them at some large arena would have paled in comparison to the experience had I actually lucked into seeing them playing a secret show at an ideal East Village venue.
Of the large number of well-known Beastie Boys tracks, “Live At P.J.s” is a pretty deep cut, but I absolutely adore it because it represents my late ‘90s New York City and East Village days exquisitely. That feeling that you could throw a rock and find your new favorite dive bar or stumble into a world-class band that no one has heard of.
Like all of Check Your Head, “Live at P.J.s” feels casual, nearly improvised while going hard and even fiercely in its musical ambition to mesh hip-hop, funk, hardcore punk, cheese lounge, and soul – all with a hugely infectious DIY vibe. A more straightforward way to explain it is that Check Your Head grooves unlike any other album I’ve heard – by the Beastie Boys or anyone else.
Part of the reason everything works so well is that the fellas – Ad-Rock, Mike D, and Adam Yauch – played their own instruments on this one. Another is that coming off the supreme achievement but relative commercial failure of Paul’s Boutique, the Beasties felt fully free to let their art and their freak flags fly for all to salute.
By way of the outstanding Beastie Boys Book, a hilarious and insightful memoir written by Ad-Rock and Mike D (which also serves as a loving tribute to their late compadre Yauch), it was also fascinating to learn that the boys had figured out a living and working environment that maximized their creativity. For each of a series of albums, they’d hang out all day in a studio and production space that allowed them to hop on their instruments or spin some obscure vinyl and record their wild improvisations in real time.
That’s why Check Your Head has the opposite feel of an air-locked, miserable band obsessing over the same song after the 860th take.
“The Maestro” embodies this spirit, while also representing the boys at their hard funk, aggressive hip-hop-meets-glorious party music mode.
It’s also extremely important to note that the Beastie Boys are genuinely funny dudes who enjoy joking around, and that spirit infuses the record as well.
I never get tired of the little party shout out in the middle:
Who is this?
Is it Mannix?
Barnaby Jones?
Somebody say Columbo
I’m also a lifelong sucker for the endless clever concoctions of playful boastful bars draped in pop culture references and overall tomfoolery.
I feel like Rufus Thomas, the crown prince of dance
I’m Mike D, and I’m known for romance
I’m the crazy baldhead with the part on the side
And I’m riding down the block, like I’m on a water slide
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the electric, relentless, and yet somehow impossibly loose “Jimmy James,” as good an album opener as I can imagine.
Speaking of remiss, I’ve gotten this far and haven’t yet referenced the album’s smash hit, “So What’Cha Want.” There’s a reason every other dude in the dorms at Binghamton University during my freshman year had a Check Your Head poster on the wall, and it’s this brain stomping masterclass that’s akin to the fellas announcing don’t call it a comeback.
And if that’s all Check Your Head offered, it would be more than enough. But we also get tracks like the chilled down as all hell lounge instrumental, “Groove Holmes,” the straight-ahead hardcore thrash of “Time for Livin’” (which calls back to the Beasties pre-hip-hop roots), and the even further afield space jam “Namaste,” which points to Yauch’s interests in Buddhism and the boys’ growing maturity and interest in social causes and activism.
Maybe I never caught that secret show because I didn’t need to, as it turns out. Revisiting Check Your Head checks me back into the East Village of 1997 anytime I want.
Some stats & info about Beastie Boys – Check Your Head
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rap, Hip Hop, East Coast Rap, Underground Rap, Alternative Rap
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #261
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Check Your Head released? 1992
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #21 out of 1,000
Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
You think that you can front when revelation comes?
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.