Thank god for the middle-classes, without whom I may never have discovered The Beastie Boys Book. How come, you ask? Well, they're the only ones who can afford to support my local bookshop, Owl (Kentish Town), where I was browsing (that's all I ever do in there) the other week when I came across this book. Flicked through - looks fantastic! - came home and bought it for half the retail price (like you do, don't you? Unless you can afford to buy books at retail price and feel very self-righteous about supporting ye olde bookshoppes).
Look, I'm not thrilled to see bookshops go the way of dinosaurs, honest, but I've mostly bought from secondhand bookshops anyway, my whole adult life. The best bookshop in the world was Compendium in Camden, but that's another whole story, one from days of book-buying that brings a little tear to my eye when I think about a shop where you got to know the assistant, who knew everything about, say, Beat literature and would tip you off about what to buy because underground US books were what they promoted and I can see him now, smoking (!) behind the counter as we chatted about all the good stuff, perhaps whilst I rifled through the cassettes of Kerouac and Burroughs - ah!
Whilst I've loved the Beat stuff since I was old enough to know what they were talking about and appreciate the prose whilst dreaming of living in 40s America where it was possible to pop into a club and hear Charlie Parker I've had an on/off affair with The Beastie Boys. Their early brattish, stoopid stuff didn't impress me at all but then Paul's Boutique (1989) landed - wham! - followed by Check Your Head (1992) - oh yes! - and Ill Communication (1994), by which time it felt like they were peaking and they were. I got great mileage out of those albums but they faded away and seldom got played until a few years back I got into them again.
This book is a treat - spot-on design and from what I've read so far snappy, user-friendly essays by Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz, the kind that skip all over, touching on people, places and musical influences plus loads of photos.
Here's a playlist from the Danceteria club chosen by Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz.
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