From The Vinyl Vault: Licensed To Ill

From The Vinyl Vault

Album: Licensed To Ill

Artist: The Beastie Boys

Original Release: November 1986

Label: Def Jam

Before shit jewellery, shit cars with shit spinning rims, shit collaborations with even shitter flavour of the month pop stars, Krunk, Pimp Juice and Snoop Dogg dressing up like Willy Wonka for a Katy Perry video, there was hip hop. More importantly, there was The Beastie Boys.

During the mid-1980’s, American guitar music was drowning in a sea of hairspray and acid wash denim. Fortunately the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens had the cure to this horrific overdose of Axl Rose and Bon Jovi. 

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Kurtis Blow and Run DMC took funk loops, drum machines and flawless MC’ing and brought about the most exciting musical revolution since punk fucked up the rulebook in the mid 70’s.

Ironically, it would be the punk revolution that inspired Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock (there’s no need for real names is there?) to become The Beastie Boys, after MCA attended a Black Flag gig at the Peppermint Lounge in March, 1981. It would be two years and an appearance on punk compilation New York Thrash later that The Beasties finally incorporated rap into their act with the recording of ‘Cooky Puss’.

Fast forward another three years and The Beasties had aligned themselves with Def Jam co-founder and producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin and were in the studio creating their immature masterpiece.

From the opening hollers of “Because Mutiny on the bounty’s what we’re all about” on ‘Rhymin and Stealin’ you’re transported away from Adidas shell toes and basketball to Lydonesque chanting over Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’ and Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’. Then, if that wasn’t enough, The Beasties break down into a chant of “Ali Baba and the forty thieves!” It’s as if three nerdy white kids decided to record a punk album in a White Castle burger bar. Actually, that’s not that far removed from what actually happened.

From the now legendary MTV classics of ‘Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ and ‘No Sleep Til Brooklyn’ (which features Slayer’s Kerry King on guitar, no less) to the inane ramblings of ‘Brass Monkey’ (“Brass Monkey/ That funky monkey/Brass Monkey junkie/ That funky monkey”) and ‘Girls’, the most endearing quality of this glorious nonsense is how innocent it all is. 

 

There’s no status in The Beastie Boys music. No rep to protect or enemies to threaten. No bragging necessary. Licensed To Ill is the most unashamedly fun record you’re ever likely to hear. The lyrics are hardly air tight, in fact, a lot of the time they can be downright bollocks, but that’s what makes Licensed  . . . such an essential piece of work.

This is an album that on paper, should not work. It’s three scrawny white boys making black music by blending it with punk and heavy metal. They spend the entire 44 minutes and 33 seconds of the album rapping about girls, cartoons, pirates and getting hammered. 

Yet, it’s such an unapologetically refreshing blast of surrealism that it works outstandingly well. Rolling Stone put it best in their review of the album with the headline “Three Idiots Make a Masterpiece”. And that’s just what The Beasties were, and still are, in the greatest sense of the word, idiots. Not smack peddling gang members done good, but idiots with an ear for a tune and the confidence to do whatever the fuck they want.

Licensed To Ill became an overnight phenomenon. It was the first hip hop LP to hit the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart and is still Columbia Records best-selling debut to date, with sales of nine million and counting. Not to mention being the only album by a white hip hop act to earn The Source’s coveted Five Mics rating.

In the modern world of soulless, “I’m worth more than you” rap music, Licensed To Ill is a striking testament to how important an art form hip hop can be when done properly. As Melody Maker so perfectly summed up Licensed . . . upon it’s release, “It’s an unshakably glorious celebration of being alive.”

Until next time,

Keep on Keepin’ on,

Baia

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From The Vinyl Vault

Album: S.F Sorrow
Artist: The Pretty Things
Original Release: December 1968
Label: EMI

Think of the term ‘rock opera’ and your mind may grimace at the thought of Ben Elton and Brian May fawning over their collective ‘We Will Rock You’ trillions. Hopefully though, you’ll be reminded of The Who’s seminal pieces Tommy and Quadrophenia or even perhaps The Kinks’ Arthur. However, before there were any Pinball Wizards or Shangri-La’s, there was Sebastian F. Sorrow.

The story of Sorrow’s life through childhood, love, war, heartbreak, disaster and finally loneliness was the brainchild of The Pretty Things’ lead singer Phil May, who had originally devised it as a short story. In November 1967 however, the story leapt from the pages of May’s notebooks and into the speakers of Abbey Road studios.

S.F Sorrow saw The Pretties’ sharp left turn from hard edged R&B to psychedelics confirmed. Having flirted with orchestral string arrangements and brass sections on preceding album Emotions, they were taken under the wing of producer Norman ‘Hurricane’ Smith. Smith, having just finished working with Pink Floyd on their own psychedelic masterpiece Piper At The Gates of Dawn, acted almost as a sixth member of The Pretties and allowed them to experiment with everything from electric tone generators to Mellotrons.

The results were astounding. From the opening twangs of ‘S.F Sorrow Is Born’, it was clear we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. ‘Bracelets of Fingers’, chronicling Sorrow’s sexual adolescence, is harmonious psych folk, complete with a typically LSD laden late sixties chorus of “Fly to the Moon on the curve of a spoon/ I turn upside down/ Tumbling through leaves as I scatter the seeds on an eiderdown”.

‘Private Sorrow’ is a whimsical folkish affair that wouldn’t sound out of place on The Zombies Odessey and Oracle while the not so subtly titled ‘Death’ (dealing with the heart breaking aftermath of the death of Sorrow’s girl in ‘Balloon Burning’) sounds as if it’s being preached to you from Middle Earth via the outer reaches of the Cosmos. And that’s only side one!

The star that shines brightest on S.F Sorrow arrives at the beginning of side two. ‘Baron Saturday’ quietly rumbles along for 45 seconds, all sharp vocals, shuffling drums and a slightly Eastern bass line before BAM! It hits you square in the face. The mellotron kicks in and you’re hooked with no way out.

What makes this accomplishment in musicianship and song writing all the more astounding is the fact that three years previously, The Pretty Things had infuriated a producer to the point where he quit midway through their session, unable to summon anything worthwhile from them. Fast forward three years and May, along with lead guitarist (and one time Rolling Stones bassist) Dick Taylor, had been joined by Jon Povey and Wally Waller, replacing the outgoing Brian Pendleton and John Stax, with Twink completing the five piece on drums.

 It would only take less than a year after S.F Sorrow’s release for the band to once again undergo personnel changes however, as Taylor and Twink both left the group, who fell disillusioned by the lack of commercial success Sorrow gained.

The album draws to a close in typically dark fashion with the Spanish Xian garage smack of ‘Old Man Going’ and the hauntingly stark ‘Loneliest Person’ which signs the story off with the line, “Yes you might be the loneliest person in the world/ Your name it would have to be me”.

The depressing narrative of the piece, coupled with its EMI’s lack of promotion and it being released in the same week as the three little known albums The White Album, Beggar’s Banquet and The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society caused S.F Sorrow to be criminally underappreciated at the time. However, it’s lasting influence is undeniable, and whether Pete Townshend will ever admit it (let’s face it, he won’t) Sorrow played a major part in the construction of a seminal British album, released just a year later. Pinball Wizards and all.


Until next time,

Keep on keepin' on,

Baia

X