It was the third CD I ever bought. I walked into the music store with 15 dollars and probably would’ve walked out with Eagle-Eye Cherry or something stupid like that had I not spotted it against the back wall. Right away I knew it had to be the one – there were so many tracks on it (great value!), a lot of which had funny names, plus I already knew I liked “Intergalactic”. And the cover made me laugh too. I still remember popping it in the Walkman and hearing “Super Disco Breakin’” for the first time. Right away it was like the greatest thing I’d ever heard. I was 13 years old and it just blew my head clean off. I even remember frantically looking around when the loud siren came on and realizing that whoa, that was actually in the recording. To be fair I think it should be illegal to do that now, but back then I thought it was incredibly badass.
And then; “The Move” with it’s broken bass groove and nursery rhyme chorus. “Remote Control” which was like Zeppelin in outer space. “Song for the Man”, a psychedelic organ showtune which sounded like something out of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. I don’t know what I expected but even for a scatterbrained newly-minted teenager this was pretty wild.
When people talk about the Beastie Boys career arc they usually mention how they started out as snotty, crass punk kids who suddenly became sophisticated, proper musicians, and much more likeable to boot. They became socially aware and even disavowed a lot of their old stuff, which was still wildly popular at the time. To me though this was the craziest part of the story; they way they just suddenly veered into sci-fi territory and stuffed their album with hockey rink organ and limericks. A band that previously had shown no real dorky tendencies whatsoever transforming into the hip-hop version of They Might be Giants overnight. Sure, their last two albums were eclectic, but not like this. I mean rock and punk were still popular and the groovy instrumental stuff they did mostly just sounded like the stuff they were sampling, so it didn’t feel all that out of place on a hip-hop album. But this stuff went way beyond that – songs like “I Don’t Know”, “Picture This”, “Song for the Man”, “And Me”, etc. – you’d never hear stuff like that on another album like this. I mean as ballsy as it was going all socially conscious after an album like Licensed to Ill it’s another thing doing lite cocktail jazz and earnest guitar ballads that don’t sound a thing like Beastie Boys.
But it worked. Hello Nasty immediately shot to #1 and “Intergalactic” became one of their biggest singles. The album just seemed to fit so well into MTV’s late 90s proto-Adult Swim vibe; of all the 80’s acts who were still scoring hits Beastie Boys were the one that still seemed current. You could talk about them without constantly bringing up the old stuff. Shots of the music video were used constantly in promo clips; even on TRL they couldn’t stop talking about how cool and “eccentric” it was. Not only that but, in my view, Hello Nasty represents the peak of the CD era. For one, it’s the only CD I had which hid stuff between the negative space of the tracks* – so there were bits you could only hear if you were playing the CD in full rather than skipping around. For two, I think it handled the “problem” of late 90s CDs being too long really well. Yes, it was nearly 70 minutes long, but unlike other lengthy CDs it wasn’t long in a way that felt repetitive or boring. It’s not even like Check Your Head where perhaps there’s one too many funk instrumentals in the 2nd half – all the eclectic stuff here really is different. Regardless of what you think of tracks like “Picture This” or “I Don’t Know” or “Dr. Lee, PhD” they sure as hell aren’t like anything else on the album. It’s 70 minutes long because they had 70 minutes worth of ideas.
Personally I can’t hate on any of it. Sure some of it is maybe a little undercooked (“Electrify”) but I really do respect their dedication to making all this stuff sound good. They’re not doing it just to do it. When they do elevator jazz they make damn sure it’s funky (“Song for Junior”). “I Don’t Know” really does come straight from the heart. “Dedication” is a treasure trove of crazy noises and production tricks. The finale “Instant Death” switches from gorgeous to terrifying on a dime – they damn near go all Chemical Brothers at the end there. “Dr. Lee, PhD” is the one everyone points to as filler but even that track amuses me greatly – I mean you’ve got Lee Perry rambling on while the guys make dinosaur noises in the background, what’s not to like?
Because there was so much stuff on it, I wound up listening to this CD all the time. I really liked how you could decide between the first half where a lot of the killer stuff was or the second where things got weird. Or you could just hit the shuffle button and leave it up to the cosmos. That is how every little thing about this album – all the strange sonic details (and there are many), all the clever rhymes and references, all the various hooks and samples – became engrained in my brain forever. It’s held up remarkably well, too – perhaps a side effect of being so out there, since being “of its time” would imply there are other albums like this. But there were so few groups out there with the confidence and the contacts to pull off such a thing. In retrospect it was pretty lucky that this was the CD I happened to buy that day – at the time I was just really hoping I was getting my money’s worth. It wound up more or less reshaping my personality from the ground up. Not a bad way to spend 15 bucks.
*Yes, I know there were a few CDs which hid a song as “Track 0” – if I remember correctly most CD players couldn’t access it at all, but the Sony Playstation could.
Critter Jams 
Leave a comment