Beastie Boys: Licensed to Ill

Beastie Boys: Licensed to Ill

1986

Def Jam/Columbia

Format I Own it on: Vinyl & Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Rhymin & Stealin  2. The New Style 3. She's Crafty  4. Posse in Effect  5. Slow Ride  6. Girls 7. (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)  8. No Sleep till Brooklyn  9. Paul Revere  10. Hold It Now, Hit It  11. Brass Monkey  12. Slow and Low   13. Time to Get Ill

This album was really huge when I was in elementary school...Everywhere you looked there were kids in shades hanging out at the monkey bars with their big 80's boomboxes blasting "Brass Monkey." Which is an appropriate place to listen to it, I guess...

Rap was still a pretty new thing for most people...especially for folks like me who grew up in the sticks, but this was a perfect gateway into this world...Hell, it took me awhile to even figure out that this was supposed to be rap...It sounded so rock...

And the Beasties were cool as hell...What kid in 1986 didn't want to be these guys...guzzling Budweiser and scoring chicks...

 At the time we had no idea this was just some sort of elaborate parody...The Beastie Boys really hit on a lyrical POV that I can't recall anyone ever exploring before...They wrote their songs through the drunken, bleary eyes of entitled jerks...It seems to exist in its own little jerk-world where they would  break into the locker room, smash your glasses, laugh about it at the White Castle and finish the night watching Ed Norton, Ted Knight and Mr. Ed...But for some reason you didn't t hate these jerks...Against all odds they came across as genuinely funny and oddly likeable...

The only other time in music history, that I know of,  where these concerns have been addressed was on  "Go Girl Crazy!" by the Dictators, but the public seemed to have missed out on that one, so here it is...Dressed up in hip hop gold chains and  aimed at the frat boys...And boy did it work...This is hip hop's first gold record and what child of the 80's didn't memorize all the words to "Paul Revere?"  I haven't met one yet...I think their place in the rock & roll hall of fame was sealed in the first couple minutes of the record when they rap ,"My pistol is loaded, I shot Betty Crocker! Deliver Colonel Sanders down to Davey Jones' locker!"   That's the type of sentiment that's going to live on forever...



On a personal note, I remember a particular time my friend JJ visited my house.  You see, when JJ really liked a song he would record a 90 minute tape containing  nothing but that one song...Nowadays that would be an easy thing to do...you could just drag the song in question into your play list 45 times...but back then, every time you wanted to tape a song you had to hear it the entire time...You could marginally expedite the process if you had high-speed dubbing...

 So yea..we  had to listen to the song "Girls" about 45 times in a row...and then I'm sure JJ probably played the tape back.. I'm certain I probably heard "Girls" a good 90 times that day...He's a bastard like that...

I think he also did this to "Under Her Black Wings" by Danzig and "Outshined" by Soundgarden...To this day whenever I hear "Outshined" I kind of want to puke...

But getting back to "Licensed to Ill," I think the key to its success (besides the fun lyrics) really was the fact it presented the then-burgeoning genre of rap in a way that even the most musically- unadventurous kid in the suburb could understand....With all the heavy metal guitars and anthemic party-hardy choruses this wasn't too far removed from the world of rock...I mean, check out the Tony Iommi guitar riff sample and the John Bonham drums on "Rhymin & Stealin."  What rock fan couldn't wrap their heads around  that? A lot of rap records at the tine were just guys doing their thing over a sparse drum machine or some sort of disco backing, but Producer Rick Rubin really refines the rock-guitars-over-rap thing he had pioneered with Run DMC and LL Cool J.  And to the credit of everyone involved, .the album still feels fresh, funny and classic...After all, what's more fun than getting blasted on cheap beer and rapping along with "No Sleep til' Brooklyn?"

The answer is nothing...

In January 2014, I finally found an original vinyl copy of this album at Eastside Records and I couldn't be more stoked. Getting to see that iconic airplane painting in its full 12x12 glory is a beautiful feeling...And the gate-fold "crash" joke comes across more clearly in its original context.

To celebrate the year 1986 (the year this record was released) I went back into my pile of comics and scanned in some old advertisements from '86...

 Fig Newtons used to come in all kinds of awesome-sounding flavors apparently...Blueberry? Cherry? Now all I see is fig and Strawberry... Looking at this ad now it struck me that "GIF" is now a word...

I'm still checking the mail in hopes of finally receiving the official notification that I won the complete set of Go-Bots...

Yes! I loved Mask! I really like the idea that if  you keep the doors of a Delorean open,  the car will fly...They should get Michael Bay to make a Mask movie, that would be the greatest ever...

By "Mask" I mean the 1985 movie with Eric Stolz and Cher... Except Eric Stolz should really be an alien from outer space...

I kind of forgot Jolly Ranchers used to come in this form...I would always buy the  cinnamon flavor...I wish they still made the sticks...

 

Same goes for Bonkers candy...I used to really like the old TV ads where the fruit falls on the people...

 It's getting late, time to put the comics away and check out "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)" by the Beastie Boys...3MTA3..