Beastie Boys “An Exciting Evening at Home with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego” 1989. I’m spinning this 6-song EP on what would have been MCA/Adam Yauch’s 56th birthday (b. Aug. 5th, 1964, d. 2012). Two of the tracks appear on the Beastie Boys’ 1989 LP Paul’s Boutique (#14 US) including the fabulous “Shadrach” (the first single released from the album, its animated video directed by Yauch), its groove (provided by a sampling of Sly Stone among others) carries through the rest of Side A: the non-LP tracks “Caught In the Middle of a 3-Way Mix” and “And What You Give is What You Get.” Side B has “Car Thief,” also from Paul’s Boutique and also super-funky with samples from Funk Factory, Funkadelic and Trouble Funk (that’s a shitload of funk) as well as “Some Dumb Cop Gave Me Two Tickets Already” (heavy on the Biz Markie lyrical samples or maybe he recorded it directly for them, I’m not sure, they did several collaborations over the years) and “Your Sister’s Def.”

I really didn’t like Beastie Boys when their first album Licensed to Ill came out in ‘86: the bonehead jocks at my high school, of course, LOVED it. We watched the Beastie Boys Story (2020) a couple of weeks ago and it turns out the band didn’t really like the record either (well, they probably did at the time but didn’t appreciate the bonehead jock thing either). I didn’t pay any attention to the Beastie Boys until ‘94′s Ill Communication which I loved so I missed out on some really great material which I’m only recently discovering/rediscovering.