This revelatory Capitol-Grand Royal compilation, perfectly named, paired the Beastie Boys’ Pollywog Stew (an eight-song punk-thrash thing from 1982) with the “Cooky Puss” 12-inch from 1984, a surprise regional hit.
Both were originally done on small, long-since-defunct East Coast labels — and, issued on Feb. 8, 1994 as Some Old Bullshit, they uncover an early hardcore sound perhaps unknown to those who joined the narrative with later Beastie Boys projects like the breakout Licensed to Ill, the widely heralded Paul’s Boutique and the then-recent Check Your Head.
Let’s just say the Beastie Boys weren’t always so well received prior to that. Reprinted on the sleeve is this hilarious letter: “The Beastie Boys are the most feeble band I have ever and will ever seen or see,” it huffs. “Please save face and bow out of this mess as gracefully as you can before everyone realizes the same thing that we did.” Listening to the first 10 tracks, some might decide that was a pretty incisive record review.
But then, all of a sudden, you’re having … well, fun. There’s always been something helplessly involving about the Beastie Boys — even at their most frat-boy silly and, it turns out, even at their most embryonic.
Some Old Bullshit finishes strong, too, with “Cooky Puss.” Having already broken up and reformed several times, the Beastie Boys had by then landed a studio gig recording commercial jingles. That knob fiddling led to a new complexity in their sound, with this single and then “Bonus Butter” moving into a house-rap synthesis — but, this being the early 1980s, with a heavy disco vibe.
Everybody knows what happened next.
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