ZapTown

Beastie Boys
Check Your Head
1992 – Capitol

Origin: New York City
Style: Hip Hop/Punk

The summer of 1992 was a period of transition. High school was becoming a distant memory, I was adjusting to university life, and the world was on a fast track away from the ideology of decadence to the practicality of non-practicality wrapped in flannel. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Northwest scene was exploding. Bands like Sonic Youth and Fugazi were adapting in their own way.

The Hip Hop kids were also changing. Disappearing from the limelight were Public Enemy and Run DMC, while new kids like Cypress Hill and Snoop Doggy Dogg were taking their place on top. It would not be long before a band like Rage Against The Machine would rebel against being told what to do. But as times changed, the Beastie Boys always seemed comfortable in a constant state of evolvement, as well as involvement.

Even though nothing could top the scope of Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head was a welcomed change in their career, especially one coming from a punk background and those that knew what their early New York days were like (Pollywog Stew).

Growing up alongside the Beastie Boys, it felt like they were growing up right along with you. With this album, the members pick back up their instruments and dive deeper into pop culture without sacrificing a lick of talent.

Unlike any of their other albums, Check Your Head gives us an aural history of a time in New York City when Bronx Hip Hop was fresh, and you could see punk rockers and b-boys hanging out side by side. Gone was the drinking and partying persona that shined like a metallic beer can on License To Ill. Gone was the recreational drug references on Paul’s Boutique. All of that paved the way for a more sobering release and the drive to get back to the basics of pure musicianship. When their friend Dave Scilken died in 1991 of a drug overdose, it shocked the band and gave them a wake-up call that made the three closer and stronger than ever.

Even at the release of this album Paul’s Boutique hadn’t completely sunk in to pop culture’s subconscious as “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” was still invading airwaves and various nightclubs. As with Paul’s Boutique and even more so with Check Your Head, change was imminent, and it appeared that the band did not care if the public kept up. And as most people had no clue of their punk past by being stuck in a License To Ill trapping, it was a refreshing surprise to hear the elements of Funk, Soul, Punk, and Hip Hop all come together.

Check Your Head did something to me no other album did. It made me want to explore beyond my immediate musical boundaries of Punk, Alternative, and Hip Hop culture. Continuing on this album, there is a maze of musical references that make the sampling as much a guessing game as it was trying to determine what Glenn Danzig was actually saying on a Misfits song. Sampling for this band was an homage to their influences. Fab Five Freddy, Ohio Players, Jimmie Walker, Kool and the Gang, Jimmie Smith — all were powerful forces that further accentuated the band’s roots. The way they incorporated them into the songs only breathed new life into the how obscure and not-so-obscure their taste was. It brought soul back to the white kid, it provided a hip hop history lesson, and it allowed people to accept Bob Dylan alongside Bad Brains or Ted Nugent with Venom.

Much like listening to The Clash’ London Calling and their immigration of reggae into white culture, Check Your Head was truly about change in a way that no other album could provide at the time.  Looking back, it was equally as much about a reaction from the album as it was the music.

Opening up new avenues in sound, it also opened up my vinyl collection, searching out new styles of music and trying to understand them. A trip to the record store would not be about rounding out a Black Flag collection, or picking up Minutemen albums or looking for some obscure Euro-alternative band, it was about checking out what Miles Davis was doing to jazz in the ‘70s or learning who The Jazz Messengers were, as well as getting your hands on a Lonnie Smith release or The Meters. It was exploring the rebels and diving into the essence of music history.

Instrumentals like “Groove Holmes” and “Pow” put things into perspective that explored the gritty essence of funk and soul that could be traced back to the black exploitation influence on film culture. The band has a light-hearted spirit when it comes to lyrics that almost border on absurd, but the deeper you look into it, the real meaning of their purpose becomes clear like when they blast into a punk frenzy of “Time For Livin’” and the pre- “Sabatoge” chart topper “Gratitude.”

New York hardcore had dissipated by 1992.  Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, Disco Biscuits – gone. So for the Beastie Boys to come out with these kinds of songs was a flip of the coin. The influenced became the influential.

I always felt that the album should have started with “The Blue Nun” as “Stand Together” is a more pungent statement about the album than “Jimmy James,” an overall feel-good song that only demonstrates the Beastie Boys are back and ready to show off on the mic, which is what “Pass The Mic” was all about, a better stand-out song than “Gratitude.” However, even “Pass The Mic” has its fault with Mike D making the mistake of rhyming the word “commercial” with, wait for it … “commercial.”

To round all of this up, fans of the band also got to experience their aura through their Grand Royal magazine, which helped in understanding where the band came from, and what they were musically thinking at the time as they wrote about people like Lee “Scratch” Perry or looked at things like graffiti culture. The band simply made the itch of finding impossible urban artifacts in suburban culture easier to find.

And more importantly, the Beastie Boys demonstrated that their fight was now heading toward a more positive direction, as further experienced in Ill Communication.

Check Your Head was not as bold as that of Paul’s Boutique, but it was a celebration of music and Hip Hop integration. At this point, the Beastie Boys could officially do anything they wanted.

Cross-Reference: Bad Brains, Afrika Bambaataa, Lonnie Smith