Episode 68: The Beastie Boys’ “Check Your Head” (1992) part one

Summary

Accelerated Culture Podcast
Episode 68: The Beastie Boys’ “Check Your Head” (1992) Part One
Release Date: June 21, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 68 of the Accelerated Culture Podcast, hosts Lori and Scott Free dive deep into the Beastie Boys' seminal 1992 album, "Check Your Head." This episode marks the first part of a two-part series dedicated to exploring the intricate layers, historical context, and enduring impact of this influential record. Recognized as a 2024 Webby Honoree for Best Indie Podcast, Accelerated Culture continues its mission to shed light on often-overlooked facets of music history, particularly the evolution from new wave in the 1980s to the rise of alternative music in the 1990s.

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Hosts' Updates and Personal Stories

The episode opens with Lori expressing her continued enthusiasm following a previous interview with David and Peter from The Ocean Blue, highlighting the positive feedback received from listeners. Scott shares a humorous anecdote about a recent gig his band participated in, recounting a less-than-ideal performance overshadowed by unexpected distractions like a semi-truck intrusion. Lori contrasts this by mentioning her recent bout with illness, which inadvertently provided her with uninterrupted time to engage with this episode's content.

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Introduction to "Check Your Head"

Scott introduces the focus of the episode: the Beastie Boys' 1992 album, Check Your Head. He emphasizes the album's pivotal role in shifting the trajectory of hip hop and alternative music, stating:

"It is a hugely important album that to some extent changed the trajectory of hip hop and also kind of changed the face of alternative in a really big way. And it was a massively influential album for me personally."
— Scott Free [04:32]

Lori admits her initial unfamiliarity with the album, recounting her journey from confusion to appreciation after multiple listens, illustrating the album's depth and complexity.

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History of the Beastie Boys

Scott provides a concise history of the Beastie Boys, detailing the origins of its members:

• Mike D (Michael Diamond): Initially part of the hardcore punk group Young Aborigines, Mike hails from a wealthy, artsy background in Manhattan.
• MCA (Adam Yauch): Self-taught bassist who joined the Young Aborigines in 1982, originally born in Brooklyn to an architect and a social worker.
• Ad Rock (Adam Horovitz): Born in Manhattan to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, Ad Rock transitioned from the punk scene to the Beastie Boys as they evolved into a hip hop group.

Scott elaborates on the band's early endeavors, including their foray into prank call music with the track "Cookie Puss," which garnered attention within New York City's hip hop circles despite its juvenile humor.

"It's weird. It's more comedy than actual rap. It's called Cookie Puss and it is essentially a drum machine, a big fuzzy bass line, and the male members of the Beastie Boys making prank calls to an ice cream shop in New York City."
— Scott Free [15:02]

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Transition to "Check Your Head"

The conversation shifts to the production challenges and creative processes behind Check Your Head. Lori credits her research sources, including Brian Coleman's book "Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies" and beastieboysannotated.com, a fan-maintained website by Lynn K. Teachy.

Scott mentions utilizing the Sounds of Science anthology's liner notes and a humorous YouTube commentary featuring the Beastie Boys discussing the album in a relaxed studio setting.

"How long we spent making this record. I don't quite know how we did it, but we spent three years making this record."
— MCA [26:14]

The hosts delve into the significant financial and logistical hurdles faced during the album's production, particularly the exorbitant costs of sample clearances, which led the band to invest in their own studio space in Los Angeles, affectionately dubbed GSON.

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Recording of "Check Your Head"

Scott details the innovative recording techniques employed in creating Check Your Head, highlighting the use of both traditional instrumentation and cutting-edge sampling technology of the early '90s. Key points include:

• Studio Setup: GSON was a unique space featuring a massive live room with an unusually small control room.

  "We somehow decided that it made sense to build the control room inside of a closet, thus creating a studio with the biggest live room and the smallest control room in world history."
  — Scott Free [26:09]

• Instrumentation: The album featured live instruments, including drums, guitar, bass, and keyboards, alongside samples from funk, soul, jazz, and rock records. Money Mark (Mark Nishida) contributed extensively on keyboards, adding depth to the Beastie Boys' soundscape.

• Creative Process: The band dedicated extensive time to jamming and experimenting, fostering a collaborative environment that emphasized musical exploration over commercial constraints.

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Track-by-Track Analysis (Part One)

1. Jimmy James

The album opens with "Jimmy James," a track that sets the tone with a blend of Beastie Boys' signature humor and musicality. Lori recounts her initial confusion upon recognizing a sample from Cheap Trick's "Live at Budokan," highlighting the band's playful sampling choices.

"It's a funny bit about that sample. T Creek's legal team pushed back on the use of this sample, and there was some question as to whether they were going to be able to clear it, although they did eventually come to an agreement."
— Scott Free [37:41]

Notable elements:

• Samples: Incorporates guitar riffs from Slayer's Kerry King, showcasing the band's seamless fusion of rock and hip hop.
• Cultural References: The song features numerous name drops, adding layers of intertextuality and cultural commentary.

2. Funky Boss

"Funky Boss" is a brief interlude that serves as a satirical take on authority figures, potentially referencing George H.W. Bush.

"As a result, there was almost no touring to promote Paul's Boutique."
— Lori [21:20]

Key insights:

• Musical Style: Combines samples from artists like Bob Marley and The Turtles, illustrating the band's eclectic influences.
• Lyrical Content: Plays with themes of authority and rebellion, delivered with the Beastie Boys' characteristic wit.

3. Pass the Mic

"Pass the Mic" stands out as a vocal showcase where each member takes turns rapping, literally passing the mic among themselves. This track exemplifies their lyrical prowess and ability to blend narrative with rhythmic experimentation.

"You think we'll ever meet, Stevie? One of these days, D."
— David [51:20]

Highlights:

• Sampling: Utilizes a minimal flute stab from James Newton's choir, later involved in a landmark sampling lawsuit (Newton vs. Diamond).
• Lyrical Playfulness: The song is rich with pop culture references, from Jimmy Walker to Clyde the Glide, demonstrating their deep-rooted connection to diverse cultural elements.

4. Gratitude

"Gratitude" introduces a shift towards a more melodic and experimental sound, blending rap with Ad Rock's scream-singing and fuzzy guitar riffs. This track showcases the band's versatility and willingness to explore new sonic territories.

"Adrock comes up with Gratitude," explaining the collaborative nature of the song's creation.
— Scott Free [60:47]

Notable Features:

• Instrumentation: Features Latin percussion by Juanito Vasquez, adding a vibrant layer to the composition.
• Collaborative Efforts: Highlights the band's integration of diverse musical influences and collaborative spirit.

5. Lighten Up

"Lighten Up" captures the essence of spontaneous creation, born out of a jam session that underscores the Beastie Boys' return to their hardcore punk roots. The track's raw energy and live instrumentation differentiate it from their previous works.

"This is clearly guys jamming together."
— Scott Free [64:00]

Key Points:

• Musical Roots: Reflects the band's early punk influences, offering a contrast to their more sample-heavy tracks.
• Length and Structure: A concise, high-energy piece that exemplifies their ability to create impactful music in a short span.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamp Attribution

• Scott Free [04:32]: "It is a hugely important album that to some extent changed the trajectory of hip hop and also kind of changed the face of alternative in a really big way."

• MCA [26:14]: "We spent three years making this record."

• David [51:20]: "You think we'll ever meet, Stevie? One of these days, D."

• Scott Free [37:41]: "They had to swap out all, almost all of the Jimi Hendrix samples."

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Insights and Conclusions

Check Your Head represents a pivotal moment in the Beastie Boys' evolution, where they adeptly merge live instrumentation with intricate sampling to create a hybrid sound that defies conventional genre boundaries. This album not only solidified their place in hip hop but also paved the way for future alternative and experimental acts.

Key Takeaways:

• Musical Innovation: The band's commitment to blending genres resulted in a rich, multifaceted album that continues to influence artists across various musical landscapes.

• Cultural Resonance: Through their lyrical content and sampling choices, the Beastie Boys engaged with a wide array of cultural references, embedding their music deeply within the social and political fabric of the time.

• Legacy and Influence: Check Your Head stands as a testament to the Beastie Boys' creative vision and their ability to adapt and innovate, ensuring their lasting impact on both hip hop and alternative music scenes.

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What's Next

As this episode concludes part one of the deep dive into Check Your Head, Lori and Scott tease the continuation in part two, where they will explore the remaining tracks, discuss favorite moments, and reflect on the album's lasting influence. Listeners can look forward to an equally engaging and insightful continuation in two weeks’ time.

"We wouldn't do it if it weren't so good an album that it warrants two full episodes, but that's what we're gonna do."
— Lori [89:51]

Stay tuned to Accelerated Culture Podcast for the next installment of this comprehensive exploration into one of hip hop's most innovative albums.

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Find us on the web at AcceleratedCulturePodcast.com. Follow us on social media to stay updated on future episodes and exclusive content!

Transcript

[Scott Free]

Foreign.

[Lori]

Welcome to the Accelerated Culture Podcast. A sonic journey through the vibrant and revolutionary sounds of the 1980s and 1990s. And now 2024 Webby Honoree for best indie podcast. I'm Lori, along with my co host, Scott Free. And in this podcast we explore how new waves stormed the airwaves in the early 80s and and gave way for the rise of alternative music in the 90s. Find us on the [e-mail] hello and welcome to the Accelerated Culture Podcast, episode 68.

[Scott Free]

I'm Lori and I am Scott Free.

[Lori]

Scott, how's it going?

[Scott Free]

It's going all right. I am pretty excited about this particular episode. We'll get to that in a bit.

[Lori]

Yeah, well, I am just still kind of on a bit of a high from our last episode. I want to say thank you again to David and Peter from the Ocean Blue. That was a fantastic interview. We've gotten a lot of compliments from our listeners.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, really great meeting you guys and such a great conversation. I said it when we saw them in concert. That David, skilled musician, good singer, but just so damn charming on stage. Turns out it's in real life too. Like, that guy is smart and low key, funny and just so earnest and happy to share the stories. Yeah, that was a great interview.

[Lori]

Good. Yeah. Well, I'm happy that we were finally able to do it. I'm happy you were able to be there with me.

[Scott Free]

Wouldn't miss it.

[Lori]

So, Scott, what have you been up to in the past two weeks?

[Scott Free]

You know, I have not seen a lot of shows, but I was actually in one show, one of the bands that I am in, a band that does alternative era hits and deep cuts, had a show at the company picnic of the work of three of the band members. And it was. It was not great. It was not great. We were competing with a bags tournament, carnival, if you will. So the crowd was sparse and at one point a semi truck backed in directly next to us down a loading dock ramp with the beep, beep, beep, beep. As my father likes to say when things don't go well. It was not a symphony. But that's showbiz, baby. Or something. Something like it.

[Lori]

All right, all right.

[Scott Free]

But, you know, every gig is a learning experience, I guess. And you, what have you been up to?

[Lori]

I have been sick in bed and miserable, so we're not even gonna go there. Okay.

[Scott Free]

Oh, dang. I think I might have traded places with you for that show at least.

[Lori]

But, you know, at least Scott, lying sick in bed this weekend at least it gave me the opportunity to listen to the album that you've chosen for this week's episode.

[Scott Free]

That is a very diplomatic way of saying forced you to do it.

[Lori]

Well, I mean, what else was I gonna do, right? So you chose the album for us to start off, 1992.

[Scott Free]

I did. It is a hugely important album that to some extent changed the trajectory of hip hop and also kind of changed the face of alternative in a really big way. And it was a massively influential album for me personally. Hotly anticipated, equal parts exciting and hilarious and baffling. And it has only gotten better with age, I think. Anyways, that album is The Beastie Boys 1992 album. Check your head.

[Lori]

Now, I'm not gonna lie, I only knew one song on this album. I was not familiar with it at all.

[Scott Free]

Insane to me. Oh. I mean, I get that we're different people and we've lived different lives, but I have heard this album. I have personally have played this album. It's gotta be 300 times at this point. Like, I know every note or so I thought. The deep dive that I had to do to do the research of this unearthed so much stuff in this album that I didn't even know about. Sounds that I didn't even realize were there and samples and. Man, yeah, yeah.

[Lori]

Well. So you've listened to it 300 times? I listened to it 3. The first time I listened to it, I was like, what the fuck is this? The second time I listened to it, I said, you know, I kind of dig this. And then by the third time, I was like, holy shit, this is good, right?

[Scott Free]

A more extreme version of what most fans experience of it was when it came out. This is as good a time as any to get into the history of the Beastie Boys.

[Lori]

Before we do, can I give a shout out to my sources?

[Scott Free]

Oh, yes, please.

[Lori]

Okay. Two of the sources that I'm using in this episode, one of them is a book called Check the Technique. Liner Notes for Hip Hop Junkies by Brian Coleman. He has one chapter that is entirely devoted to check your head. And then I came across a website, and this was like an older fan website. It looks like it hasn't been updated in about 14 years. The name of the site is beastieboysannotated.com and it's put together by a gentleman named Lynn K. Teachy. Definitely a labor of love from a fan. And I actually emailed Lynn to say thank you and let him know that we're giving the website a mention. So thanks, Lynn. You were A huge help on my research.

[Scott Free]

Nice. I drew from a few different sources. The first one is the liner note booklet that came with the Beastie Boys anthology the Sounds of Science released in 1999. And the other is a really fun video on YouTube. Beastie Boys, check your head video commentary that is literally Adrock, MCA and Mike D sitting around the studio listening to check your head and goofing on it, talking about how some of the music came to be, just making jokes and funny references. It's worth a listen in its own right. I'll be quoting heavily from it when you're done with this episode. Maybe you want to go give that one a watch too, because it's a lot of fun. And then there are other miscellaneous sources along the way that I'll be throwing in here and there.

[Lori]

I think one of your sources is probably your own head because, Scott, as long as I have known you, we're talking, what, 20, gosh, 23, 24 years at this point. I think that's one of the first things that I learned about you is that you were obsessed with the Beastie Boys. So I imagine you can probably rattle off facts about them much the way that I can about INXS or Duran Duran. That's why I texted you last night and I said, you know what? I'm going to let you be my Sherpa and kind of guide this episode since this is really your area of expertise. So.

[Scott Free]

Well, I mean, I'll take it. Although obsessed is a strong word in my younger days, probably accurate, a name keeps coming back in these episodes in Shouts out. In last week's errata and clarifications, lifelong buddy J Dog, JDOG and I go back to middle school even before that, I want to say, and we shared a love of the Beastie Boys for as long as we knew each other. And the Beastie Boys existed, at least in the national consciousness. In high school, I want to say, our senior year, we won mock rock lip syncing competition with our late friend Sweet Pete. Rest in peace, Sweet Pete. And our buddy Gatorade. Myself as Ad Rock, J Dog as Mike D, Sweet Pete as MCA and Gator as DJ Hurricane. And we won it. In our college years, we had our own hip hop group, White Collar Rhyme, which owed a significant debt of gratitude to the Beastie Boys in terms of style, particularly lyrically. And we've gone to Beastie Boys shows together. We love the Beastie Boys.

[Lori]

Just trying to picture baby Scott getting up there doing. You said you were Ad Rock.

[Scott Free]

Ad Rock. Yeah, he's my boy.

[Lori]

It's so perfect. It's. It suits you. I can totally picture that.

[Scott Free]

Oh, yeah. Anyway, J Dog and I were talking about music, and particularly the Beastie Boys and how we know every note of every album. But it's been a long time since we've sat down and and played a Beastie Boys record start to finish. However, having put it on and given it that hard listen, yeah, it is so rewarding a listen, generally speaking, with the Beastie Boys album. First time, put it on and okay, I think I like it, but I need to get a better feel for it. As you said, second time. Okay, I'm seeing some things happening. And on the third time, you're sold. And that was definitely the case for check your head. There were parts of it that immediately leapt out as fully awesome. There were parts that were perplexing but real good. And there are a few tracks that are clearly. Okay, they're clearly just kidding and that's hilarious and I'm all right with it.

[Lori]

Okay, so now I guess you can give us the history of the band.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, I mean, it's not going to be an exhaustive history. There's so much about them out there, but the basic gist of it, the broad strokes that pretty much everybody already knows. I think, again, not obsessed. Don't know everything about them by any stretch of the imagination. I always had just sort of bought into the general narrative in the media that this was white boy hip hop being made by three Jewish guys from New York City. And while all three of them have at least one Jewish parent, only Mike D really identifies as Jewish. The other two have a Jewish parent, but grew up with a non religious secular upbringing. Anyway, Mike D, born Michael Lewis diamond, was actually the first member of the band, having been in a New York City hardcore punk group called Young Aborigines. Mike D was born to wealthy artsy people. His father was an art dealer, his mother an interior designer and art collector, and he grew up on Manhattan's Upper west side. So, yeah, kind of a rich kid. MCA Adam Yop Born in Brooklyn to an architect and a social worker, Adam Yawk taught himself bass during high school and joined the young Aborigines, Mike D's hardcore punk band in 1982 when the bassist Jeremy Shattan left for the summer, he only left for the summer. But by the time he got back, Adam Yock had taken his place as the bass player in the band. And then Ad Rock Adam Horovitz Born in Manhattan to Doris Keefe and playwright Israel Horovitz. Raised on Park Avenue. His father was Jewish, his mother Catholic, but had a secular upbringing. As I said, he started in the punk band the Young and the Useless and then joined the former Young Aborigines, who had by this point changed their name to the beastie Boys in 1982 when guitarist John Barry quit the band for a while. They had claimed that the Beastie in Beastie Boys was an acronym for boys entering Anarchistic States Towards Inner Excellence.

[Lori]

That sounds like.

[Scott Free]

They later admitted, however, that this was made up after the fact. John Barry left the band and Adam Horovitz joined and the Beastie Boys as we know them were born. With one exception. There was at the time a fourth member of the Beastie Boys and. And that was a young woman named Kate Schellenbach. In 1983, the Beastie Boys pivot from their New York City hardcore punk roots and create a proto hip hop track that is. It's weird. It's more comedy than actual rap. It's called Cookie Puss and it is essentially a drum machine, a big fuzzy bass line, and the male members of the Beastie Boys making prank calls to an ice cream shop in New York City. It's bizarre. It's kind of funny in an incredibly juvenile way, but, you know, they're essentially juveniles. And it becomes a minor hit within New York City hip hop circles and radio stations and gets the Beastie Boys noticed.

[David]

What the shit with this bitch?

[Lori]

Yo?

[David]

I said I'm calling you B. Yo, B, answer the phone.

[Scott Free]

Yo, B.

[Lori]

May I help you?

[David]

Yes, and what's your name?

[Lori]

Hello?

[Scott Free]

Hello, man.

[David]

Man, you got Cookie Puss's number?

[Lori]

Here's my supervisor, he'll help you.

[David]

Yo, man, where's the supervisor at?

[Lori]

And this was prior to the Jerky Boys. They were known for like the whole prank calling thing, not. Not in a musical context, but they were like late 80s. So beasties kind of beat them to it, huh?

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, as I said, it's not great. Puerile, I believe is the word, but amusing in its way. Anyhow, they get noticed. They actually tour as a supporting act for Madonna in 1985 and then release their first full album, the now legendary License to ill, in 1986. You know, license to Ill is a classic piece of 1980s hip hop. It's a full on rap album. It maybe hasn't aged so well in certain respects. I'm looking in your direction, Girls, the single. Yeah, but if you were in junior high or high school in the 80s and you heard, you Gotta fight for your right to party, yeah, you were immediately sold. This was the song of teenagers in the 80s. And it's dumb and it's fun and it rocks.

[David]

You wake up late for school, man, you don't want to go. Yeah, your mom please, but she still says no. You missed two classes and with no homework. But you teach your br class like you're some kind of jerk. You gotta fight for your right to one day.

[Scott Free]

And this was actually kind of not entirely a new thing, but a pretty good symbol of the Beastie Boys connection to and reverence for Run the mc, who actually were among the first to really put rock into hip hop with Rockbox. And the Beastie Boys followed suit, embraced it and really ran with it. They released License to Ill on Def Jam Records. This is one of Rick Rubin's very earliest producing efforts. And this I didn't even realize. The lead guitar parts on Fight for your right to Party and no Sleep till Brooklyn, that is actually Kerry King from Slayer. Like, oh wow, legit rock here. Which they got because Rick Rubin got him, because Rick Rubin was also producing Slayer at the time. So all comes together. License to Ill is a huge hit. They tour extensively. They are the poster boys for white boy hip hop for the 1980s, much to the consternation of much of the black hip hop community. And fair really, but they did it just so damn well and with a sort of idiotic fun loving swagger that was difficult to resist, at least if you were a white boy in the Suburbs in 1986. Big fan. As I said, the Beast of Boys second album, Paul's Boutique, which came out in 1989, was a departure. It is sonically dense. So many samples. I want to say over 150 samples on that album. And at one point in the second half of the album, there's a hootin and hollerin bluegrass breakdown. There is a 12 minute multi song mega song that just medleys one into the next, but with radically different directions sonically and lyrically, one to the next. The lyrics for the album in general are not just the party rhymes and teenage braggadocio of License to Ill. It's a different direction entirely. And sonically. What's interesting about Paul's Boutique is production wise, they didn't have a lot to do with it. It is actually almost entirely sonically. The Dust Brothers, who actually recorded this sample based magnum opus intending to make a hit instrumental record or sample based non rap album. But the Beastie Boys essentially talked them in to having the Beasties rap Over it. And the result was Paul's Boutique. It was not a commercial hit, at least not compared to the mega hit that was licensed to Ill, much to the consternation of Capitol Records.

[Lori]

Yeah. So Adam Yock is quoted in that check the technique book that I mentioned.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

He said the president of Capitol Records told us that he wouldn't be able to focus on our album Paul's Boutique because he had a new Donny Osmond album coming out. Right. He told us that we should just move on, that we should just forget about Paul's Boutique and start on the next record.

[Scott Free]

What?

[Lori]

And as a result, there was almost no touring to promote Paul's Boutique.

[Scott Free]

There's so many levels of WTF on that.

[Lori]

Donny Osmond.

[Scott Free]

Donny Osmond.

[Lori]

In 1992, I think Capitol Records backed.

[Scott Free]

The wrong horse just a little. Like the Osmonds had not really been a thing worth paying attention to since 1980. 81.

[Lori]

I think that's being generous.

[Scott Free]

But, yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah, they were. They're a product of the 70s and, you know, the 70s lasted longer than we like to think. But fascinating. And while Paul's Boutique was not an immediate commercial success, it has, in the years that have followed, come to be regarded as a hip hop masterpiece. It is one of my two favorite albums, just period. And it's amazing. Like, it's an astoundingly good album. And so that it was ignored by the record company in favor of a Donny Osmond comeback vehicle that clearly went nowhere. That's baffling. One of the things people say about Paul's Boutique is that an album like that could never be produced again. As I mentioned earlier, 150 plus samples the dust Brothers put together into this dense sonic pastiche that is the instrumental aspect of Paul's Boutique. And those samples had to get cleared. Like, you need licensing to use samples. And by this point in hip hop, that was becoming the case. A lot of the early days of hip hop, people just got away with it, or tried to. And with something like this, this high profile and with this many samples, you gotta clear the samples, and that ain't cheap. Even though they did get the samples at an insanely cheap rate compared to what one would have to pay today.

[Lori]

Mario Caldotto Jr. He was the producer and engineer for Check youk Head. He estimated that the sample clearances for Paul's Boutique cost somewhere between $200,000 and $250,000 just for the samples. That's not including the time in the recording studio, the production, any of that other stuff. Apparently their accountant told them that they're not going to make any money this way. So they decided to take the money that otherwise they might have spent on all of these samples and they invested in a studio in la.

[Scott Free]

Built out their own studio in la.

[Lori]

Correct?

[Scott Free]

Correct. And like, literally built it out.

[Lori]

And that became known as Gsong G dash S O N. And it was originally a ballroom. And there was a sign outside that said Gilson, but the I and the L had fallen off. So that's where they got the name of the studio. So the Beasties went from New York to la, and basically GSON kind of became their clubhouse. They hung out there. They built like, a skateboard ramp and a bunch of other crazy shit. But that's where they camped out for the next few years and started working on what would become check your head.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. From the liner notes to the Sounds of Science anthology, Adam Yock talks a little bit about this. Our logic was that we could spend our recording budget building something that we could have endless time to experiment in instead of spending a zillion dollars an hour and rushing to finish our records. Mark and Mario were the perfect team to do it with because Mark was a carpenter and Mario an engineer. Mario had put together the little studio over at Matt's house. After a bit of searching, Mike found this big open ballroom with a stage built at one end of it. We got the lease, went in, and began to set up shop. The strangest part about it was that we somehow decided that it made sense to build the control room inside of a closet, thus creating a studio with the biggest live room and. And the smallest control room in world history. Check the Guinness Book if you don't believe me.

[Lori]

Is it really in the Guinness Book?

[Scott Free]

I don't know.

[Lori]

I didn't know. Okay. All right, all right.

[Scott Free]

It should be noted, though, the aforementioned Mark Nishida, the carpenter who helped build out the studio, was also a keyboard player who plays extensively on Check youk Head and the entire rest of the Beastie Boys catalog as Money Mark.

[Lori]

And he actually gets name checked in a couple of the songs he does. So the thing that really kind of fascinated me is the realization that these three guys were actually very, very talented musicians. I think a lot of us just kind of thought that they were a novelty act. Oh, yeah. A couple of white Jewish kids from New York, you know, rapping, kind of. Ha ha. It was almost like it was a.

[Scott Free]

Joke, a flash in the pan.

[Lori]

Yes. But then coming to find out in my research on this album and Listening to this album. Holy crap. They are three very, very accomplished musicians. Right. We've got Mike D on drums, Correct.

[Scott Free]

Usually.

[Lori]

Okay. And Adrock on guitar and MCA on bass.

[Scott Free]

Generally speaking, yes.

[Lori]

Okay. And then we have Money Mark on keyboards.

[Scott Free]

Yep. And in the previous albums, DJ Hurricane had been their dj. He is not really present on this album, although he does get a co writing credit on one track. But each of the guys performs other duties. Ad Rock also does a fair amount of turntablism, the cutting and the scratching and if you will. And yeah, they also bring in some other musicians, particularly percussionists, to take up some of the slack.

[Lori]

So the thing that I found very interesting is I was reading, especially in that Check the Technique book. Adrock actually says in that book that their original goal was to make an all instrumental album. That's what they started off doing. Do you have any info, Scott, on the pause tapes?

[Scott Free]

The pause tapes.

[Lori]

Pause tapes. Okay.

[Scott Free]

Don't know anything about that.

[Lori]

Okay, again, this is from Check the Technique liner notes for hip hop junkies. Back then we had a kind of a battle with different pause tapes. Now the author then inserts here homemade DJ mixes made without an actual DJ mixer using the pause and record buttons on a tape deck to simulate a cut and paste style DJ mix.

[Scott Free]

Haven't heard of them referred to by that name. By that metric, I am a pause dj, although I was a pause dj. It's been a few years since I've made a mixtape, but not nearly as many years as you would think.

[Lori]

Okay. So yeah, MCA said back then we had a kind of a battle with different pause tapes we were making and playing for each other. The tapes we were making would jump around with different styles, just quick parts of different songs. Hip hop to jazz to funk and whatever else. And in a way, check your head ended up being like one of those pause tapes. Keep in mind this was 92 Pro Tools software, came out in 1991. So everything on this album is still the old traditional slice up the tape and splice it together.

[Scott Free]

Not entirely. They add a couple advanced pieces of gear, notably an Akai MPC 60 sampler with pads that would allow them to trigger things, as well as a Yamaha DX7 programmable synthesizer that would record digitally on, get this, floppy disks.

[Lori]

Oh wow.

[Scott Free]

Two floppy disks per track that they were creating.

[Lori]

So I'm surprised it was only two.

[Scott Free]

This is some old school technology. So it wasn't just that they were playing their instruments, they were doing plenty of sampling still. But interestingly, because they had their own studio and they had both a DAT player and a, I want to say, 24 track recorder in the studio. They would do a lot of jamming. They would just be noodling with ideas and playing extensively.

[Lori]

Mario Caldado, Mario C. Mario C. He actually followed them around and just randomly recorded them. It was like a full time thing for him. He said, let's see, I was just following them around, recording. Before you know it, the basis for Something's gotta give and pow are taking shape. By then I had gotten my old eight track board from delicious vinyl and would set it up wherever they were. So it was kind of almost like a mobile recording studio.

[Scott Free]

For sure. Yeah. And if Mario C heard anything that he thought had promise, he would be recording it on the dat. And if they're like, okay, no, this one's for real, then they would jump over to the big guns and record it on the 24 track. And so they had a lot of material to choose from. And then they could sample themselves and then play that. So sort of Ouroboros snake eating its own tail thing. But it made for some really, really cool music that they owned a lot more of. So while there are still plenty of samples of funk and soul and jazz and rock records, there was a lot more of their own playing, which. Well, they owned it because they played it exactly in the check your head commentary where it's just the Beastie Boys sitting around the studio listening to the album and goofing. MCA says about the recording of Check your head. You know, the interesting thing about this album is how long we spent making this record. I don't quite know how we did it, but we spent three years making this record. To which Mike D replies, yeah, well, but look, two years of that were spent playing basketball. To which MCA replies, and probably like half a year playing dominoes. But like the first year and a half at least, we just came in and played instruments every day and didn't even mess with vocals for a long time. There was talk of making it an instrumental record for a while. And then at some point, Mario was trying to talk us into doing vocals on it.

[Lori]

That leads me to this quote from Mike D. We were playing around and Biz came by the studio. Biz being Biz Markey? Yes. We were playing around and Biz came by the studio and he just rhymed for hours over what we were doing. I think that got us inspired to start rhyming again. We just got back into that mode.

[Scott Free]

Nice.

[Lori]

Yeah. And that was also from Check your.

[Scott Free]

Technique point on Bismar and to your earlier point that you and your contemporaries may have thought that the Beastie Boys were just a flash in the pan, a novelty, that fight for your right to party was just a, you know, novelty hit. Bismarck he most people who are not hardcore hip hop heads just think of Bismarckie as that kind of dumb sounding guy who did. Oh baby, you. You got what I need. Just a friend passed away in July of 2021. Rest in peace biz. But yeah, actual hip hop artists freaking love biz. So that he was just dropping by the Beastie Boys studio tells you that they were legit. Luckily, Biz Marquee did drop by the studio, did inspire them to start rhyming again. And the result is the album that we are about to do the deep dive on. Check your head.

[Lori]

Scott.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

Did you know how did you know the story of how they got the name for the album Check your head?

[Scott Free]

I do not know that story.

[Lori]

Remember 1992, that was still Operation Desert Storm.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

And they had put out, they meaning the US Government, a deck of playing cards, or maybe they were trading cards, one of the two with like different heroes from Desert Storm. And there was one of General Norman Schwarzkopf.

[Scott Free]

Storm and Norman Schwarzkopf. Yes.

[Lori]

So according to Moneymark, Adrock had bought some of those Desert Storm trading cards with the pictures of the different generals and whatever. And there was one card of the main General something cough. We were looking at the cards and I took a Magic Marker and put a big check mark on the General's head. Yop said check your head. And that is where the album title came from.

[Scott Free]

I had heard that it was from a Norman Schwarzkopf trading card. The missing piece was the check mark on the head, which makes it make so much more sense now.

[Lori]

Right, I understand. Although I wasn't able to find it. I guess if you look very closely at the album cover, you know, it's a collage of different cutouts from different photographs. Supposedly there is a picture of Rick Rubin, the producer that you mentioned earlier, with a check on his head.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, they had had a falling out with Rick Rubin and with Def Jam over. Over money. Of course, that Def Jam had stopped paying the Beastie Boys money that they were owed from License to Ill, which was part of the reason for their departure from Def Jam to capital.

[Lori]

Gotcha.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Enough of the history. Let's get into the record. This is as good a time as any to start the track by track. And where better to start than with track one? Jimmy James. So from the very first Sounds I on this album, the Beastie Boys, a deep love of music that came before them, and B, their sense of humor both come through.

[Lori]

Okay, so the first thing I gotta tell you, Scott, when I downloaded this album and I listened to it for the first time, I literally thought that I had downloaded the wrong album because I recognized the introduction where he's saying, the next one is the first song on our new album. And that's from Cheap Trick Live at Buddha Can. Yeah, I like, literally thought, did I somehow end up with a duplicate of the Cheap Trick album?

[Scott Free]

Yeah, no. That's how Cheap Trick introduced I want you to want me on Live at Budokan. And that's freaking hilarious way to start your album. It was with somebody else introducing the first track on your new album, which is what you're listening to right now. That's just freaking funny. A funny bit about that sample. T Creek's legal team pushed back on the use of this sample, and there was some question as to whether they were going to be able to clear it, although they did eventually come to an agreement. But MCA tells a story in the check your head video commentary that I've been talking about, wherein he ran into Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick fame. You know the one, the tall guy with the tiny hat and the sunglasses and the huge guitars with the multiple necks. And the crazy Rick Nielsen, Chicago icon ran into MCA in Tuscany, of all places. And Rick Nielsen actually apologized to Adam Yock for having given him a hard time legally, about them using the Cheap track Live at Budokan sample as the album opener. MCA in this interview. And all three of the Beastie Boys, for that matter, were actually unaware that they had been given a hard time and almost didn't get that sample. So. Oh, speaking of samples, then the song immediately dives into this amazing groove. Oh, my God, this track is so good. And this was, you know, the first time listening to it, it's like, okay, I see where this is going and is not necessarily indicative of where the rest of the album goes. And then when the vocals come in, it's kind of a little bit distorted. It feels kind of lo fi. And it's just such a reversal from the absolute slickness of Paul's Boutique that it, yeah, kind of gives you a little. A little of the whiplash.

[Lori]

A lot of the samples they were trying to use on this song were Jimi Hendrix samples. According to that website. Beastieboysannotated.com before the Jimi Hendrix Experience, James Marshall Hendrix had another band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames. And from what I understand, the original version that they recorded is nothing like the one that's on the album because they had so much trouble from Hendrix's estate trying to get clearance for the samples. So according to mca, the original version is on the B side of the 12 inch single. When they finally were able to get.

[Scott Free]

The clearance right when they actually released Check your head, they had to swap out all, almost all of the Jimi Hendrix samples. They did get to keep Happy Birthday by Jimi Hendrix and Curtis Knight, which gave them the main hook, baseline hook that I've already sung once and won't subject you to again. But yeah, it was going to be an all Jimi Hendrix track and ended up not being, as you said, they did in short order, get the samples cleared. And so we're able to release it, as you said, as a bside. And then also in the Sounds of Science anthology, that is the version that appears there. Also, though, one other Jimi Hendrix sample that they did get into this track at the 16 second mark, there's like a very subtle guitar shimmer that comes in and that is actually the opening strains of Foxy Lady.

[Lori]

Yeah, I recognize that one. Really?

[Scott Free]

That is deep.

[Lori]

Well, I've seen Wayne's World enough times, so that one I recognize.

[Scott Free]

One other sample that's super important. Obviously the bass line is the huge hook here, but then there is the actual beat. And I did not know this at all is actually from the Turtles, who you may know from such songs as Happy together from the 60s. Yeah, the beat. And that comes from. I am Chief Kamana waa We're the Royal Macadamia Nuts Kamana waa I'm Chief Kamana Wanalea we're the Macadamia Nuts. Yeah, I. I mentioned that one of the pieces of gear that they were playing with to make this album was the AAI MPC 60. It's a sequencer sampler situation that lets you have 99 tracks. It's a powerful piece of gear. And apparently MCA was just holed up in his little retreat log cabin that he was hanging out at in the Hollywood Hills, I want to say. And he had the Happy Birthday bass line and he had the Turtles beat. And he realized that, as he says in the interview that I've been quoting, the two beats sound good together. And Ad Rock throws in I'm going to leave them on until Wednesday. And he was just playing this for days at a time, trying to figure out what to do with it. And the result was Jimmy James back.

[Lori]

To the beastyboys annotated.com There's a reference towards the end of the song. Eight bazookas is what I'm using.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, I just thought he was, you know, overkilling.

[Lori]

You know, I thought that too. But According to the beastieboysannotated.com, the Bazooka Speaker Company specializes in building subwoofers. They get their name from their cylindrical casings.

[Scott Free]

All right. Yeah, cool.

[Lori]

Worth noting is there's 20 tracks on this album. Only eight of them are actually what you would consider hip hop tracks, this being one of them. But even then, those eight tracks are unusual in that the boys are still playing live instruments, generally speaking.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah.

[Lori]

That's why I think this album was such a departure. And I think that's why it was very unexpected for a lot of fans. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Oh, yeah. And this is taking place during the golden age of hip hop. Like, obviously gangster rap is huge at this point, but DRE also drops. The Chronic Arrested Development was ascending with their more socially conscious and positive brand of mid Southern fried hip hop. Public Enemy had just the year before released Apocalypse 91 with its again this dense sonic collage pastiche by the Bomb Squad, their production team. So hip hop was at its hip hoppyist, but in a few different directions. And the Beastie Boys, who had been for a second there, the poster children for hip hop, are actually going away from it into rock, which nobody saw coming for the most part. Not a lot of people were doing this hybrid of rock and rap and particularly kind of hardcore punk rock and rap. Except a few years prior, a Dutch group by the name of Urban Dance Squad had released an album, 1989, called Mental Floss for the Globe. It had one big single that had made the rounds on alternative radio and particularly on MTV called A deeper shade of Soul. But the rest of the album kind of rocked and was deeply weird and also had this kind of lo fi, fuzzy sound at times. MCA had been particularly enamored of that album and it helped create a direction for him sonically on this album. I did not know that, but I freaking love that album. And now that I've heard it, it's like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. If you don't know uds, listen to Mental Floss for the Globe and you'll see the connections.

[Lori]

Cool.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, it is cool.

[Lori]

All right.

[Scott Free]

This was the third single from Check your Head. It was released as a single on August 28th of 1992, and the Beastie Boys and Mario C are co credited as writers for the track. Also, there was A video for this particular track and it was co directed by Adam Yock under the pseudonym that he used when he was directing Nathaniel Hornblower. And it's co directed by Lisa Ann Cabasa, who was then MCA's girlfriend. It's really 90s in its visual style, but very New York City gritty and lo fi, which makes sense for this track.

[Lori]

Heck of an album opener though.

[Scott Free]

Oh, right. Yeah. Lets you know what you're dealing with here, but really only one of the aspects of what you're dealing with because this album takes some turns.

[Lori]

Yes.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Okay, so the next track is a very short one. It is called Funky Boss.

[David]

Get Off My Back. Get Off My Back.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, like this one. It's like I have not seen them specifically reference it, but I hear it. I'm like, oh, they were listening to a lot of Eric Burden's Ra War.

[Lori]

I don't know it.

[Scott Free]

Oh man. War was a group in the 70s. You may know such tr.

[Lori]

Oh, okay. All right. I know War. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Free]

It later just War. I don't think he stayed with the. You know, Eric Burden, formerly of the Animals and then of War.

[Lori]

Anyway, I was going to say they are saying Funky Boss, right?

[Scott Free]

They are. They are.

[Lori]

Okay. Because it kind of could go Boss. According to Money Mark, this song was written about George H.W. bush.

[Scott Free]

Oh, interesting.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Because. All right, so the check your head commentary that I've been referencing, there's a very funny bit of back and forth between three of them. Mike D. This is a very important song for the group. Funky Boss. I don't know why it's important. Mca. It's a hot cut. I always liked the music, but I had a weird beef with the lyrics. Adrock. I mean, the song kind of sucks in a lot of ways it sucks, but it's a nice little ditty. Mike D. In a weird way, we were listening to a lot of the Ohio players a lot. And we were trying to make something like that. And we made something that doesn't sound like that at all. The other weird thing and they kind of touch on it is these guys never had a boss in their adult lives. Like they. They had been rock stars since their late teenage years. So yeah, what are they talking about? But that it would be about George Bush. That makes more sense. Although Funky bald ass Boss, I guess he was mostly bald.

[Lori]

Back to beastieboysannotated.com he thinks that there is a sample in the song that is Richard Pryor. It says the sample is most certainly Richard Pryor, but I Don't know from whence it came. Did you know the sample that he's talking about?

[Scott Free]

You know, there are actually quite a few samples in this track. The drum fill that opens the song is actually from a Bob Marley track, Duppy Conqueror. There is, as you said, a Richard Pryor sample in there, but hell if I know what it is. From Acid, Big Youth, Solomon A. Gundy, the Ohio Players, Funky Worm, Barrington Levy, Under Me Sensei. Yeah, for an album where they're not making it completely of samples and they're playing their own instruments, they're still throwing a lot of samples at this one.

[Lori]

It's a fun one, and it's very short at 1 minute, 35 seconds.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, that's the beauty. If you agree with Ad Rock that the song kind of sucks. Don't worry about it. It'll be over soon. And then you get to track three, Pass the mic.

[David]

Feeling, and it's a musical masterpiece. Hear what I'm dealing with in that school at least what's running through my mind comes through in my warmth Two feelings are shown from the way that I talk and this is me, y'.

[Scott Free]

All.

[David]

And I still do what I please and I would like to introduce.

[Lori]

What's up?

[David]

I pop the mic today for a fistful of you My point till your head turns gray See what you're saying I explode our sight I like Jimmy Walker.

[Scott Free]

I like Dino Br.

[Lori]

Okay, before you get into anything about this song, Scott, I got to start out by saying, anybody that samples Jimmy Walker is okay in my book.

[Scott Free]

Not just Jimmy Walker, but Jimmy Walker saying what Jimmy Walker said more than anything else. Dynamite. So good.

[Lori]

From the 70s sitcom Good Times. For those of you who don't recall.

[Scott Free]

Oh, come now.

[Lori]

Well, you know, like you said, we have a new generation that are now listening.

[Scott Free]

So we got old. How did it happen?

[Lori]

Well, yeah, and the Jimmy Walker is now doing commercials for. For insurance, like, towards, you know, retirees. I'm like, oh, my God, what happened?

[Scott Free]

Wait, Jimmy Walker's still alive?

[Lori]

Yeah, he's still alive.

[Scott Free]

Good for him. Good for him. Right? From the Sounds of Science booklet, Adam Yock says this was the first hip hop song we did for check your head. We had been experimenting with other styles of music for some time, maybe a year or two. One memorable thing about recording this song was the drums. We had heard that John Bonham had used a really long kick drum on something and thought it would be interesting to put his technique to the test. Taking full advantage of the size of gsun's live room, basketball Court. We wrapped a long piece of cardboard from a refrigerator box around the kick drum and then put a mic at the far end of it. Mike played the beat and we looped it sample wise. You had some stuff.

[Lori]

Yeah. Okay. Bad Brains guitar sample, right? Big, big takeover, huh?

[Scott Free]

Yeah. It's just that huge crunching guitar riff, right?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

So good. Like that's the backbone of the song, right?

[Lori]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Scott Free]

And then the Ron Carter bass line.

[Lori]

You said the bass was from a Ron Carter solo on Johnny Hammond's Big Sur Suite. And coincidentally, you mentioned earlier, Dr. Dre the Chronic.

[Scott Free]

I did.

[Lori]

Dre also sampled that same song on a track on the Chronic.

[Scott Free]

Oh, interesting. There's two different bass lines. So there's the Ron Carter bass line and then Jon Hamm Big Sir Suite is the other bass line. That comes later in the song. Again from the liner notes. The upright bass line was part of a Ron Carter improvisation that Mario had sampled. I played a little Terminator fuzz bass on the end of the song. But the thing I always liked best about this cut was the sample of the intro to the Bad Brains song. I There's something cool about sampling a hardcore record to make a hip hop record, especially when the record happens to be the Bad Brains. A couple other sounds that they sampled, but they sampled live in the Gsun Studios. MCA's car alarm makes an appearance, as do the guys hitting cups with a spoon to make some of the high pitched sounds that you hear later in the song. So they were taking sounds wherever they could find them and making gold out of it.

[Lori]

Okay, so in the lyrics there, there's a couple things that I want to note. First of all, the song is called Pass the Mic. And that's actually literally what they're doing. It starts off with what? Mike? No, mca. And then the next verse is Mike D. And then the next verse is Ad Rock. Like they're literally passing the mic.

[Scott Free]

Oh. And they introduce each other as the last line of their verse, they introduce the next guy coming up. It's beautiful.

[Lori]

Yeah, it's cute. Yeah, I like it. So I'd mentioned the Jimmy Walker sample, but they actually name checked Jimmy in the song. And like Jimmy Walker, I'm dynamite. And they also name check. It says I'm like Clyde and I'm rockin study.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

According to beastieboysannotated.com, walt Clyde Frazier played for the New York Knicks.

[Scott Free]

Clyde the Glide.

[Lori]

Is that his name? Clyde the Glide?

[Scott Free]

Oh, that's. That's Clyde Drexler. Oh, sorry. Carry on without Me.

[Lori]

Okay, Walt. Clyde Frazier played for the New York Knicks from 1967 to 1977.

[Scott Free]

Oh, that is Clyde the Glide. Yeah.

[Lori]

Okay. All right. He published a book in 1974 titled Rock and Study. Hence I'm like Clyde and I'm rock and Study.

[Scott Free]

I did not know that. Awesome. Well, I'm on on till the crack of Dawn Mowing down MCs like I'm mowing a lawn I go off like nothing can faze me. You think we'll ever meet, Stevie? One of these days, D. Interesting. You've got to be talking about Stevie Wonder, right?

[Lori]

That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Interesting. Pass the Mic was the first single from the album released on April 7th of 92. Interesting.

[Lori]

What?

[Scott Free]

What's interesting in the Wikipedia for this? Apparently there was a sampling lawsuit that resulted. Yeah. So this is worth just reading. And it goes like this. In 2003, Beastie Boys were involved in the landmark sampling decision, Newton vs Diamond. In that case, a federal judge ruled that the band was not liable for sampling James Newton's choir in their track past the mic. The sample used is the six second flute stab. In short, Beastie Boys cleared the sample, but obtained only the rights to use the sound recording and not the composition rights to the song choir. In the decision, the judge found that when viewed in relation to Newton's composition as a whole, the portion is neither quantitatively nor qualitatively significant because Beastie Boys use of the sound recording was authorized to. The sole basis of Newton's infringement action is his remaining copyright interest in the choir composition. We hold today that Beastie Boys use of a brief segment of that composition consisting of three notes separated by a half step over a background C note is not sufficient to sustain a claim for copyright infringement.

[Lori]

Sounds like the plaintiff was splitting hairs. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

And it's such a small sample that as a composition, it's three notes. Can you really copyright three notes? In this case, no.

[Lori]

So you mentioned it was the first single.

[Scott Free]

I did.

[Lori]

Also was the first video that they released. And there's a scene in the video where there's skateboard ramps. Right. And I mentioned earlier that they'd actually built skateboard ramps in GSON Studios. That's what you're looking at?

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I mean, that's always been the dream.

[Lori]

Skateboard ramp.

[Scott Free]

A place, a huge old industrial loft space so big that you could put a skateboard ramp in it.

[Lori]

That's the dream, huh?

[Scott Free]

It may not be your dream, but it is a dream I've had since I don't know, probably mid-80s.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

Not a dream for me. Because I'm thinking, who the hell would clean it?

[Scott Free]

Nobody. Nobody. It's not a tech thing you clean.

[Lori]

Yeah. Okay, are we ready to move on to Gratitude?

[Scott Free]

I guess we are.

[Lori]

All right, so the next track is quite called Gratitude.

[Scott Free]

All right, so talk about a tonal shift, a musical complete change of direction. It's sort of a rap song, but really not. It's mostly ad rock kind of scream singing. And it's a rocker, right?

[Lori]

Oh, yeah. With that kind of fuzzy guitar that leads it off and.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, well, all right, I have something about that.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

A lot of people think that that is a fuzzy bass line and you know it's low. But you are right, that is actually guitar put through a fuzz box. Related note Writing credits for this song are given to the Beastie Boys and Tom Kushman. And now I saw that and I was like, tom Kushman. I know that name. And it goes back to Paul's Boutique. Hey, ladies. One of the big singles from Paul's Boutique has a line. Tom Thumb, Tom Kushman or Tom Foolery. I date women on TV with the help of Chuck Woolery and I've always been like Tom Thumb. Okay, Tom Foolery. Who doesn't love that? Who the hell is Tom Kushman? He's the co writer of this song. Gratitude and Digging Deep Found the bass line is from an Adam Yawk side project called Brooklyn that happened during the period immediately after the License to Ill tour. Tom Kushman was a longtime friend of Adam Yock and was a member of Brooklyn.

[Lori]

MCA said, that was a bass line that I had written a long time before and it had been made into a song by my friend Tom for another band. But the lyrics we had never worked very well with it. So one day we recorded it in the studio and Adrock had the idea to put different vocals on it.

[Scott Free]

They went on a road trip and went to Northern California and started working on lyrics. And Adrock, as you said, came up with what would become Gratitude. Just one other thing. The Latin percussion that you hear was actually by a guy named Juanito Vasquez, Cuban percussionist, who actually owned a music store that the Beastie Boys frequented in la. And they would go in and buy instruments and he'd be like, here, let me show you how to play that. And just start jamming out and going bonkers on these drums. And eventually they're just like, yeah, we're just going to put him on. The album ended nice with nothing More on gratitude. That brings us to track five. Lighten up. Unsurprisingly, this song came out of a jam session.

[Lori]

Oh, yeah.

[Scott Free]

I mean, you can just hear it. This is clearly guys jamming together and.

[Lori]

Well, yeah, it's very unexpected. This was, I think, the first time I did a double take on this album where I'm like, this is the Beastie Boys, really? Right. Who's that on vocals? Do you know?

[Scott Free]

I think all three of them singing, they gotta lighten up. Gotta lighten up. Gotta lighten up right now. But I think they shine like the sun. I think that's mca, but I cannot say that with certainty.

[Lori]

Okay, well, it's definitely a kindler, gentler Beastie Boys. That one sound effect in this, though. Do you remember when you were a kid and you went to McDonald's and you had your cup of coke and you pooped the straw in and out to make that laughing noise? That's like the entire song sounds like that to me.

[Scott Free]

You basically picked up on exactly that. It's called a kawika and there's a dowel rod, like thing going through a membrane. And. Yeah, that. That's exactly the same principle as the straw through the soda lid. So, yeah, nailed that.

[Lori]

Oh, and I here I thought I was just being a smart ass, but.

[Scott Free]

Both things can be trailered.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

Yes, it is a radically different tone for the Beastie Boys than you would have been used to in their previous two albums.

[Lori]

And.

[Scott Free]

And there's a reason why this track and the other sort of cool, jazzy, loungey songs on this record have become staples for public radio show interstitials. I want to say this American Life in particular, loves to use several tracks from this album for the In Between Stories Ira Glass talking segments.

[Lori]

I didn't realize, but I could totally see it.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, right?

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

At least that's all I got to say.

[Lori]

All right, well, then the next track is called Finger Licking Good.

[Scott Free]

To. Yeah.

[Lori]

He'S.

[Scott Free]

Going on.

[Lori]

A lot of name checks in this one. Again.

[Scott Free]

Oh, man, it should be noted. Vocals. This one is only MCA and Mike D. No Ad Rock appearing on vocals here, which is not unheard of, but unusual in the Beastie Boys, check your head commentary that I've been referencing. Adrock actually addresses this. He's like, you know, I like this song. And I kind of always wondered, where was I? I'm not on this song. And I'm like, what was I doing? And as it turns out, the turntable scratching that you hear, that is eventually how he contributed to the song, but that and a couple rhymes in particular. Mike D's out back and he's growing onions. I got bigger buns than my man Paul Bunyan. Adrock gave that to the other two guys.

[Lori]

Nice. And then there's another line. Keyboard. Money Mark, you know he's not having it. Just give him some wood and he'll build you a cabinet.

[Scott Free]

Freaking love that so much. And when I first heard, it cracked up.

[Lori]

Yeah. And you had mentioned that Money Mark was a carpenter, so. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. At the time I first heard it did not have that context. Just thought it was hilarious. Now I think it's hilarious and also true.

[Lori]

A couple other name checks in the song. I'll be in the paper. The news with Ernie Ernesto. I guess that was a New York City area television news anchor. According to beastieboysannotated.com.

[Scott Free]

Okay.

[Lori]

They'll even print my recipe for pasta with pesto. Italian girl who loves food. I appreciate that line, but I guess Adam Yock actually had a recipe for pasta with pesto that was printed in the first issue of a zine called Grand Royal.

[Scott Free]

Oh, interesting. Which would become their record company.

[Lori]

Oh, okay. Then he references. I've got more spice than the Frugal Gourmet.

[Scott Free]

Oh, good.

[Lori]

I remember the Frugal Gourmet. I think it. He might have been on pbs, but I remember there were some recipe books because my mom had some. I think the guy's name was Jeff Smith and he was known as the Frugal Gourmet. So. Yeah. What else we got? We got Pete the Puma. Pete the Puma was Warner Brothers character.

[Scott Free]

A whole lot of lumps. How many lumps do you take, presumably with your tea? Three or four. And then Bugs Bunny would whip out a giant mallet and just beat Pete the Puma in the head of lumps.

[Lori]

That sounds about right.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Good stuff. Minnie the Moocher, Minnie the Butcher.

[Lori]

And of course, that's a Cab Calloway reference. Right. Now, as far as samples go, there.

[Scott Free]

Are so many in this one. Oh, man.

[Lori]

Right. Well, one of the things that I noticed immediately, I just kind of honed in on. There is an. I don't even know what instrument it is. It sounds like a reed instrument of some kind. But at first I thought, is this a sample from the ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove? Do you know the sample that I'm talking about?

[Scott Free]

I do know what you're talking about. And if I had to guess, I would say, that is a hurdy gurdy.

[Lori]

Okay. That's the Name of it. I couldn't think of it. So that's not a reed instrument. That.

[Scott Free]

It's weirder than that.

[Lori]

Weirder than.

[Scott Free]

It's, of course, instrument with a crank and a rotating plate and it. Strings. And Hurdy Gurdy is a really strange instrument.

[Lori]

Yeah. So I was thinking to myself, did they sample Dead Can Dance? But then I realized the ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove didn't come out till 93, so they couldn't have.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, no.

[Lori]

So I don't know. Maybe it's just. It's the same instrument and I'm just interpreting it that way.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, possible. Or they're time travelers, which would make.

[Lori]

Some kind of sense for the Beastie Boys. Or. Yeah, I guess I could see it. Or perhaps they both sampled a common source.

[Scott Free]

Also possible.

[Lori]

Yeah.

[Scott Free]

So many other samples and I can just rapid fire through some of those. Um, there's the low rumbling bass that it appears at like 23 seconds and throughout the song. That's another Johnny Hammond track breakout. Oh, one of my favorites. Both the sample and the source. There's the. Look at it. Look at it. That is actually Rasan Roland Kirk, who is, I believe we've referenced once before in a recent episode, an absolutely bonkers saxophone and flute player who would oftentimes play two saxes at once or play the flute and sing at the same time. Great stuff there. Just doing some verbal and non verbal utterances from his track Freaks for the festival.

[Lori]

Here's a sample of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues by Bob Dylan.

[Scott Free]

That's the. I'm going Back to New York City. I do believe I've Had Enough at the very end of the song. Yeah, there's. Let's see here. The actual drum sample is Shop Talk San Francisco Sampler edit by Cold Blood. The flute line is the California poppy pickers doing a really weak cover of Aquarius Slash Let the Sunshine In. But man, it makes for a good flute loop here in Finger Licking Good. Sly in the Family Stone. When there's this ride symbol line that ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, that comes in and that's Sly and the Family Stone.

[Lori]

Rest in peace.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, Rest in peace, Sly. He just passed away last week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Drag. And then the. Is from Maceo. Maceo and all the King's Men, the song Maceo.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

There's a lot there.

[Lori]

Okay. So again, for our younger listeners who maybe were not around in the 80s and 90s, finger licking good was the advertising slogan for KFC at the time. It was called Kentucky Fried Chicken.

[Scott Free]

Fried Chicken.

[Lori]

Yeah. I'm getting hungry. Should we take a break and get some chicken? That's all I got on that one though.

[Scott Free]

I think it is plenty. This is more in the classic Beastie Boys hip hop vein. Straight up rap track with a lot of really groovy samples. Still has a little bit of a lo fi edge to it, but this wouldn't be all that out of place on Paul's Boutique. Okay, that brings us to track seven. So what you want?

[David]

You know I get far, you think I get high you know that I'm going and I'm gonna tell you all why Tell me are you missing Maybe I'm missing the reason that you smile in the world and to listen in my head I just wanna take them down Imagination's head loose and I'm gonna shake em down Let it flow like a mudslide oh when I get on I like a violin God I got depth of perception and protection.

[Lori]

All right, so Scott, this is the song on the album that I already knew.

[Scott Free]

Oh, congratulations. This song is so good. Okay, right, so this was the second single from Check youk Head released on June 2 of 92. It was also the last song recorded for the album from the Sounds of Science liner notes. After two plus years of recording, we finally felt like Check your Head was done. But then upon listening a bit, it felt like something might be missing. We had been on a bit of a roll with rhyming and it felt like we needed just one more cut. Adam Horowitz had a couple of loops in his SP1200 in Studio G at GSUN, which we thought were cool. We put them on the two inch tape with Mario, but then ended up playing over the samples, eventually replacing them all together. Adam played some guitar parts, I played some beats on the kit. This is Mike D talking, and Mark Nishida did a few takes of some funky organ that we sampled as well. I remember driving around listening to a real rough arrangement of the song, trying to think up ideas for lyrics, and my wife Tamra turned to me, giving me a look like, you've worked all this time on this album and now instead of being finished, you're gonna work some more on this wack song. I admit the demo probably sounded pretty whack, but in a last minute flurry, the vocals came together and the biz was sampled from an earlier session he had done with us, making the song complete. In particular the yeah, you can't front on that, which is so good.

[Lori]

Okay, so I have a quote from Mario C, the engineer, slash producer yes. That was the last song, the one that sealed the deal and let us know that the album was ready.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

And then he also goes on to say that song was recorded on some really bullshit mics.

[Scott Free]

Oh, yeah.

[Lori]

Which is probably how we get that.

[Scott Free]

Kind of lo fi ultra lo fi distorted, distorted sound. Yeah. They were sung on Sony variety mics. Very important to the album, the guys said. And they're kind of crappy karaoke mics is what they are. Yeah.

[Lori]

And the keyboard that you mentioned, that Money Mark played a Corg CX3.

[Scott Free]

All right.

[Lori]

And it was run through a Leslie amplifier.

[Scott Free]

For you gearheads out there, you're welcome.

[Lori]

I'm not usually the one that plays to the gearheads. Right.

[Scott Free]

Lyrically, there's some really fun stuff in here, but one that really got me is the very first line, so just plug me in like I was Eddie Harris. It works on a couple levels. One, Eddie Harris was a sax player, but he played in electric sax. So plug me in. But also, Eddie Harris had an album of electric sax jazz called Plug it in. And it's such a good album. Was so happy when I heard them drop that reference. Also then, like Spoonie G, I'm the metropolitician. Spoonie G was an early hip hop pioneer. He was actually the guy who coined the phrase hip hop and one of his aliases was the Metropolitan, so. Oh, you know, paying homage to the roots of hip hop because the Beastie Boys are very well versed in hip hop history.

[Lori]

Definitely a lot of pop culture references in the song. Right. Chevy Impala. Ring around the collar. Ring around the Collar. Right. You remember those commercials for Whisk laundry detergent? Incidentally, I don't know about you, Scott. I haven't heard anything about Ring around the collar in the last 30 years or so.

[Scott Free]

So it is not nearly as big a problem as we thought it was going to be in our adult lives. It's true.

[Lori]

No, clearly we have vanquished that.

[Scott Free]

No more ring around the car. Use whisk around the collar for ring around the Collar every time.

[Lori]

Cherry pie with ready whip topping so good. Later on in the song, they're name checking Dr. Spock, right? Dr. Benjamin Spock, the guy that wrote all of the pediatric child care books.

[Scott Free]

It's not just that he's Dr. Spock. He's here to rock y' all. As in rock, you just leap.

[Lori]

Oh, see, I didn't even catch that. Oh, very clever. These lyrics are actually quite clever. My favorite reference, though, is Siam the long leaner. Victor the cleaner Who? Victor the cleaner was a character in a French film called Nikita. It was known here in the US as La Femme Nikita.

[Scott Free]

Sure.

[Lori]

And Victor the cleaner was the one that was called in to take care of the bodies. And I. I love that movie so much.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. You know, if you're looking for deep, philosophical, life changing lyrics, this is not where you want to be looking. This. While it has this hard, distorted, rocking new direction for hip hop that the Beastie wars are taking, it's still mostly old school hip hop lyrics, boasts and pop culture references. And you know, they don't all have to be deep, they just have to be fun. And this one is that.

[Lori]

Yeah, I agree.

[Scott Free]

This song had a video and it was a pretty popular one. It was directed by Nathaniel Hornblower, AKA Adam Yock, AKA mca. And. And it was a video that spawned a lot of imitators over the years and was notable for a couple new techniques. One wherein they had the guys in the video lip syncing to the lyrics to the song. But while they were doing lip syncing, they were playing the song in double time and then over cranking the film so that it came back played in slow motion. But only the motion of the guys walking through the video was slow. Their lip syncing was in real time to the actual normal speed lyrics of the song. So it has this kind of otherworldly feel. Cool technique. And then also the sky is in negative color key and was another MCA directorial call. And then it also had thermal vision cutaways that were a reference to Predator.

[Lori]

Okay, so this was the second single off the album. It only went to number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, it did go to number 18 on the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart. And for those of you that are thinking about writing in and complaining and saying this is not alternative, it went to number 22 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, which is the alternative chart.

[Scott Free]

And if you are thinking about writing in with that complaint, then write to Scott. Clearly did not live through the era because this was a huge alternative album. Whatever. I don't.

[Lori]

Okay, okay. So the next one is a very short like 33 second track. It's called the Biz versus the Nuge. Let's just listen to a teeny tiny bit of it. That one, guys, is a third of the track.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. So this one, I will let them sum it up from the sounds of Science liner notes. This is Mike diamond telling it. This one was perhaps the quickest song done on the check your head album. Although nothing with the biz Is ever that simple. I remember picking the Biz up at his hotel and listening to an advanced copy of A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory, which mysteriously disappeared from my car that same night. Biz later came clean and told me, if you can't find it, I've probably got it. We stopped at my house for a while to look through the records. After looking through the Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and James Brown section, I love the idea of Biz Markie looking through Billy Joel and Paul Simon in particular. The Biz pulled out a copy of Ted Nugent's Cat Scratch Fever album and said, yo, could we bring this down to the studio? I got something I want to do over this joint. After arriving at gsun, the Biz asked if there was a candy store near the studio. A sack of candy was brought over from across the street. Then he put the Nugent record on, and two takes later, it was done. The Biz then spent the rest of his evening making a mixtape for his flight back to New York, including singles by Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and Helen Reddy.

[Lori]

Oh, wow. All right, so you've. I actually talked longer about the song than the. The song actually lasts.

[Scott Free]

Accelerated Culture hitting the break.

[Lori]

Yes. I. And I just have one. One thing to say before we move on.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

Fuck Ted Nugent.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I'm from Detroit and I'm, you know, have deeply conflicted feelings about Ted Nugent, but you're not wrong.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

All right, what's next, Scott?

[Scott Free]

What's Next is track 8, time for living.

[David]

It.

[Scott Free]

So the Beastie Boys give in fully and regress to their NYC hardcore roots. And nobody's mad about it.

[Lori]

I freaking love it. I mean, this reminds me of, like, really early Fugazi or trying to think what other, like, early punk bands that I, I, I mean, this, this is them, I guess, getting back to their origins because they started off as a punk band, but I love it and.

[Scott Free]

You know, it's sort of a cover of a Sly in the Family Stone song, at least lyrically, the lyrics are so straight from Sly and the Family Stones, Time for Living, but the melody is very clearly not that. The melody of the song is borrowed from another song. Feel Like a King by another New York City hardcore band called Frontline, who never actually put out an album, but MCA really admired them. The band was friends with them, and they got permission and used the chord progression. The actual. The instrumental part of the song. It's a pretty straight cover of that Frontline song. So they had recorded the Frontline song, essentially, note for note, but they didn't have any lyrics for it, so they assigned it to Mike D. And he went to the record stacks and pulled out a record. It was Sly in the Family Stone. And he shouted Time for Living over it. And thus this version of Time for Living was born. And like a good hardcore punk song, it's all of a whopping 1 minute, 48 seconds long.

[Lori]

Now, something interesting that I read and I did not try this.

[Scott Free]

Yeah.

[Lori]

According to Mario Caldado, one interesting thing about that song is that if you play it in mono, the vocal disappearance hears. Our tape machine had one track that was out of fades, so it made it turn out that way.

[Scott Free]

Interesting.

[Lori]

Yeah, I did not actually try that. So your results may vary. All right, so then the next song is called Something's Got to Give.

[David]

This one is called.

[Scott Free]

This. A great quote from Mike D. This would be in the different category of the album.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

This is another one of those songs that would go on to become a mainstay of this American life's interstitial music. The music was recorded on DAT at a practice space in LA Cole, and then chopped up and sampled and put together at gsun. That's Mario C. Singing the. And Ad Rock doing the spoken word parts and the sung vocals.

[Lori]

Interestingly, in that. Check the technique. The liner notes for Hip Hop Junkies.

[Scott Free]

Yes.

[Lori]

They're quoting Ad Rock as saying, that's actually my favorite song on the record, now that I think about it.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, yeah. He said that in other spots as well.

[Lori]

Oh, interesting.

[Scott Free]

What's that?

[Lori]

James Bradley did some percussion on there. And not only did that guy play drums for Chuck Mangione on the album and song Feel so Good, but he was in the band called Mary's Danish.

[Scott Free]

Oh, Mary's. I remember Mary's Danish.

[Lori]

Don't crash the Car tonight. Oh, Remember that? Yeah, yeah. Interesting.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. I remember the name more than I remember the band, but yeah.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. Adrock also said there's no hidden message behind the lyrics. They're pretty direct. To me, this song just sounds funky, and I really like that. The main instrument making the music is a DX7, a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer.

[Lori]

I mean, it's really got a very psychedelic vibe to it. It's really got that kind of a. Yeah. 60s psychedelic vibe.

[Scott Free]

Yeah, I'll agree with you there.

[Lori]

Okay.

[Scott Free]

Footnote that Adam Horowitz also adds the smile with laughing, the sort of maniacal laughing happening at the end. He found in 1989 or so, I was in this predominantly white mall in la or Texas and this crowded camera store. There was this thing called the Smile Machine or something like that. I pushed the little button and the batteries were all dead. So it came out like the devil making fun of us all in the mall. It just stuck with me. Like the just say no campaign with how deep in America racism is. The image of the Smile Machine and the white mall fit nice in this song.

[Lori]

Oh, wow.

[Scott Free]

Yeah. In the year 2000.

[David]

In the year 2000.

[Lori]

Ah, Conan O' Brien. Yeah.

[Scott Free]

The Beasties released a new video for this song and it's predominantly made of stock footage. Military planes doing bombing runs, massive airplane graveyards, Adam Yawn smashing a handgun with a sledgehammer, and other various everyday atrocities ending with a nuclear test, then zooming out on the earth and a quote about our need to get our shit together basically as a species. Okay, Check your head. It's a longish album, but it's definitely in terms of number of tracks coming in at 20. A long album, and if we are to do it justice, we're really gonna need to break this one up into two episodes. We wouldn't do it if it weren't so good an album that it warrants two full episodes, but that's what we're gonna do. So this seems as good a time as any for us to take a break, regroup, and meet you back here in a couple weeks to cover the rest of the album as well as, you know, the usual end of episode stuff we do. Favorite tracks and lasting influence and where are they now and that whole bit. Right.

[Lori]

Yes. Yeah. So I think that's a good plan, Scott. So we're going to end this episode here. We'll be back in two weeks with the second half of Check your head. Thank you for listening. This is Lori.

[Scott Free]

Goodbye from me and from me, Scott free. We'll see you back here for check your head, part two in two weeks.