Welcome to Beastie Boys Month at Popwell! In honor of last week’s publication of the group’s official autobiography, we’ve decided to honor them with our first-ever theme month! It was supposed to be a theme week, but Popwell’s erratic publishing schedule makes a theme month a bit more likely.
The first entry in our month-long B-Boy Bouillabaisse is this tasty collection of live clips culled from about two decades’ worth of TV appearances and concerts. I chose this particular clip because it’s a great chance to see the band’s evolution over the course of their career. The video starts with footage of the shockingly young Beasties playing their sloppy hardcore ditty “Egg Raid on Mojo.” The clip is one of the few you’ll find that features their original drummer, Kate Schellenbach, who was unceremoniously dropped from the roster shortly after. (She ended up as the drummer for Luscious Jackson.) The song’s not very good, just rudimentary punk chords and some pretty screechy singing from Mike D, but it is insane seeing how young they were when they got started on their particular path.
The video progresses through a series of clips in (roughly) chronological order, showing the Beasties in a variety of venues and styles. There’s the young and snotty Beasties doing “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” in Montreux, a visibly stoned Ad-Rock leading a sloppy run-through of “Live at PJ’s” on David Letterman, and a crazy version of “So Whatcha Want” that features DMC and Cypress Hill drop-ins.
Other highlights include a goofy romp through “Body Movin’” from The Chris Rock Show, a high-energy take on “Super Disco Breakin’” from Glasgow in 1999, and a couple of tunes from the 1999 Tibetan Freedom Concert. The collection ends with a 2006 appearance on Conan O’Brien, where the band rips through “Root Down.”
Not all of the clips are the greatest quality, but taken as a whole, the collection serves as a pretty stunning reminder of how far the Beasties ended up from where they started. Who could have possibly guessed that the snot-nosed punks riffing about egging a bouncer would be headlining a Tibetan Freedom Concert fifteen years later? It’s also a reminder of how f-ing great they were, and of exactly what the world lost when MCA passed away.
If you don’t like this, I really can’t help you.
Note: For some reason that I don’t feel like tracking down, I am unable to embed the video in the page. Clicking on the link will take you to the YouTube video, though, I swear!
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