"You're gonna get smacked with my gold finger knuckle."I love it when people leave well enough alone and just make the fucking album sound better.
The Beasties set the bar pretty high with this year's Paul's Boutique 20th Anniversary Edition. I can't remember a party in college that didn't feature this record at some point in the night. It's 20 years later, the parties are less frequent but this entire album ( not just Hey Ladies) still ends up getting played all the time.
First off, the sound is as good as you could ever want it to be. I thought i knew this album inside and out ... but I'm hearing all sorts of new things in the mix that you could never really make out before. Lots of people are going back and jacking around with their original mixes these days for their re-issues. Fortunately the Beasties knew not to go fucking with a good thing, just some added punch and a lot more detail that comes from having modern mastering doodads and software to work with.
Aside form the music itself, there are two cool changes to the album. One is that they separated "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" into separate tracks. (which rocks when you want to crank up "A Year and a Day" all by itself) Also, for the package design they ditched the jewel case and recreated the original vinyl gatefold cover. Great move, I'm starting to see more and more people ditch jewel cases and I hope that continues. You really can't bitch about anything here, except maybe the lack of b-sides/bonus tracks or "An Evening At Home With Shadrach, Meshach And Abednego". The guys took time to record a full audio commentary, grab it here to learn all about Johnny Ryall, ping pong, and catch a spot-on impression of Russell Simmons.
All in all this is about as good a job as anybody could ever have done on one of the most innovative hip-hop albums in the last 20 years.
"I'm bad ass move your fat ass 'cause you're wack son Dancin' around like you think you're Janet Jackson."
I've worn out a handful of copies of "Check Your Head" over the years, the first couple were on cassette and rarely left the deck in whatever crappy car I was driving back then. I don't plan on taking these new disks out for a long time.
When it was released people were blown away by the fact that the Beasties were playing instruments, something they actually started on Paul's Boutique. They're playing on pretty much every track, which really wasn't done at all in '92, something that tends to get overlooked these days when bands like The Roots are doing it every night on network TV.
So what's new? The sound is as good as you've ever heard it along with some bonus b-sides & remixes. Like "Paul's Boutique", no crazy re-mixing of the actual album but you definitely notice the big difference in the overall sound. This album had a lot of distorted vocals and other fidelity-crushing production techniques, the re-mastering really helps in these spots.
The extras aren't anything new that you haven't heard before, but you get some golden nuggets like "Boomin' Granny", which sounded pretty sweet cranked up to 11 out of my crappy car stereo. "The Skills to Pay the Bills" is one of their best non-album tracks ever. Again, they ditch the jewel case for a gatefold cover, fucking awesome. You get a commentary track here as well.
Give me the same treatment on "Ill Communication" and "Licenced to Ill" and I'll be a happy dude indeed.
- Coop
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