License to Ill was not the first album I
ever bought. It was however my first gatefold cover album. For someone who
would go on to a lifetime of listening to and collecting records this was a pretty big deal. For
me the draw of LPs over cassettes (CDs were not around yet) was the sleeves. They
give you something to look at while listening to the record. Gatefold covers allow you double the space to admire. Although License to Ill’s cover looks like a simple plane
crashing into a mountain there was actually so much more going on in the
picture. The “Beastie Boys” insignia on the tail, the Def Jam logo and the
numbers and letters that we could never figure out the meaning to in front of it. Every time
my friends and I put on the record we tried to see if there was anything else
on the album cover we missed. The whole time we were totally oblivious to the fact the
plane was made to look like a stubbed out joint.
Throughout Middle School other bands and albums would come and go off our record players, boom boxes and parents car radio tape decks but License to Ill would remain in our rotation all the way through the end of eighth grade.
In High School a few years later The Beastie Boys released their second album Paul's Boutique. My homeroom class bonded over our secret plot to have the album's "Hey Ladies" voted in as the theme to the Homecoming Dance.
I was lucky enough to have seen the Beastie Boys live three times. The first was in 1992 just after Check Your Head was released. They were playing with Sonic Youth at Michael's Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie,Maryland of all places. The Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth. You can't get much more New York than that. The second time was in 1994 at a Sold Out last minute show at WUST Music Hall (now the "New" 9:30 Club) in Washington, DC just a few days after Ill Communication had been released. I remember Mike D., Adrock and MCA checking the score of the Knicks playoff game between each song. The "Secret" show was meant to be a warm up for the Beastie Boys upcoming stint on Lollapalooza tour, which is actually the third place I caught them
About ten of us piled into two cars and headed to Charlestown, WV for the show. Each one of us with a few acts in particular we wanted to catch. Some went for Tribe Called Quest, a few went for Smashing Pumpkins, one or two for The Breeders and a couple for George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars. I wanted to see them all. Out of the ten of us there was no one who was not totally psyched to be seeing the Beastie Boys. With no cell phones or set place to meet it was not uncommon at all day "Festival" concerts to become separated from your friends for hours on end. Throughout the day various members of our group found ourselves lost from the group for long periods of time. When The Beastie Boys came on we all found ourselves reunited right up front. Last week when MCA. passed away from cancer it was almost eleven years exactly after Joey Ramone's life was taken by the same disease. Eleven more years listening to and buying new albums from one of my earliest favorite bands. From the very beginning I definitely thought MCA was the coolest Beastie Boy. After all if you remember the video for "(You've Got to )Fight For Your Right (To Party)" he is the only one wearing a leather jacket.
Great post Josh! I had forgotten about them checking the Knicks game between each song. But you failed to mention that the show was in the middle of the afternoon. I remember walking out into the bright sunlight and feeling like it should have been night.
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing is I originally had that in there it was but the sentence sounded awkward so I cut it out. maybe ill add it back in
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