Re: What year did you start listening to the Beasties?
I would guess summer of 87. That would have made me 11. My friend's older brother had LTI on tape and we would listen to it while he was out doing "high school stuff".
I'll admit that I didn't understand Paul's Boutique when it came out. I watched the videos on MTV but didn't get the "disco" thing. So, aside from whatever was played on MTV I completely slept on that album.
When Whatchawant dropped in 92 I was hooked on that track and Pass the Mic. Loved the punk aspect too because I was already listening to a good amount of DC hardcore at the time. At that point I revisited Paul's Boutique and got hooked on that.
Then I found out about Pollywog Stew. I was in high school and a teacher's assistant for my English class was this punkrocker dude. I went to see a band at a college house and it turned out to be the teacher's assistant's house. He had Pollywog Stew on cassette (the one with the sticker label) and I was like "whaaaat is this?" It was really intriguing to find out they had been a hardcore band before LTI. Now Check Your Head made a lot more sense. That summer I found Pollywog Stew and Cookie Puss on cassette in an indie record store in DC (I want to say Smash Records in Georgetown but maybe it was Orpheus). I had no idea was Cookie Puss was going to be like.
After finding out that there was a back catalogue prior to LTI it was kind "off to the races" and I was trying to find everything. Between 92 and 96 I tracked down a nice Pollywog Stew 7", a sealed copy of Rock Hard, MCA and Burzootie, etc. etc. I started buying all the singles and EPs. This was pretty much pre-internet for most of this period so I would go to various record stores and find out what Beastie Boys records they had gotten in stock in the past. From there I found out I could get on lists at places like Reckless Records in Chicago and they would call me when something came in and mail the record to me! I would find people at College who had some of the out of print singles and EPs from Check Your Head and Paul's Boutique on tape or CD and I would buy their copies from them. The radio station also had promo stuff.
By 95 I was pretty much buying everything I could get my hands on. eBay was for sure a game changer. I'm sure I was competing with a lot of you guys on auctions back in those early eBay days.
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