Thread: SGH Reviews
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Old 11-16-2005, 10:10 AM
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Default Re: SGH Reviews

IGN Review- Not So Solid
Miramanee gets a shoutout...

Quote:
Beastie Boys - Solid Gold Hits
A far from essential collection of b-boy sonic bouillabaisse.
by Spence D.

November 14, 2005 - Let's face it; Greatest Hits/Best Of packages are the new album. They are quickly replacing that other lame gap stop The Remix Album (or the Screwed and Chopped album depending on your genre). It used to be that a musical group had to have at least 10 albums in their back catalog before they could even consider a Greatest Hits collection or a live album (the third form of tide-the-fans-over-until-the-band-can-write-some-new-music-type of album). These days pop stars drop two albums of original material, then push out a Greatest Hits collection that is usually comprised of their radio hits, a few remixes, a song or two culled from a soundtrack, and the obligatory "brand new/previously unreleased" songs to spur the purchase of an otherwise pointless collection.



This holiday season alone everyone from The Roots to Eminem and Limp Bizkit is dropping a Greatest Hits collection. Which makes The Beastie Boys' latest offering, Solid Gold Hits, all the more strange. MCA, Adrock, and Mike D. are generally regarded as taking the high road, being in possession of a certain amount of musical and socio-political integrity when it comes to their music. Yet for some unknown reason they saw fit to drop a 15-song Greatest Hits package right around the holidays. On the surface it might seem like a sweet deal for the fans, but when you consider that in 1999 they dropped the pretty damn seminal Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science, a massive 42-track collection, then a 15-song single CD seems kind of anticlimactic.

Additionally anticlimactic is the fact that Solid Gold Hits is pretty much all you get. The packaging for this collection is a supreme let down. The front cover alone promises greatness inside, but beyond one additional inside front cover classic old New School picture of the boys (props to MCA for rocking a Marker ski binding cap and to Mike D. for showcasing the VW emblem from the pre-bling days of hip-hop fashion) there's nothing else included. No liner notes, nothing. The packaging is the barest boned design since green-minded packagers tried to force the recyclable digi-pak on the market. For a Greatest Hits collection the fan deserves at least a nice little photo booklet detailing the various periods of the band's career or some kind of pithy liner notes written by one of the Boys' moms or something. Here you get the CD and that's that.

Since the CD is the main attraction, does it give you what'cha want or does it put shame in the game? Long story short, if you own every single Beastie Boys release, including the aforementioned The Sounds of Science, then Solid Gold Hits is the farthest thing from being essential. In fact, unless you're oblivious to the Beastie Boys' spot in pop music history, there's really not much of a reason to purchase this disc. Now don't get me wrong, it's not to say that the disc is worthless, it's just not a must-have item for the serious Beastie Boy apostle (unless of course you're an obsessive-compulsive completist).

The bottom-line is that this is a by-the-books, paint-by-numbers, basic-as-basic-gets Greatest Hits/Best Of collection. The Beastie Boys deserve a minor nod of approval for actually including songs from each of their six studio albums (too many Greatest Hits packages don't do this). So, for those concerned with tallies, it goes something like this: License To Ill racks up 3 songs; Paul's Boutique garners 2; Check Your Head scores 2; Ill Communication bags 3; Hello Nasty logs in with 2; To The 5 Boroughs snags 3. One question: where the hell are "Shadrach," "Lookin' Down The Barrel Of A Gun," and "Get It Together"!?!?

They also deserve an equally minor nod of disapproval for not arranging the album in chronological order, though. Out the gate they bounce from 1992's Check Your Head (with "So What'cha Want") to 1986 ("Brass Monkey" from their debut License to Ill) and then to 2004 (for To The 5 Boroughs' "Ch-Check It Out"). The rest of the album follows this timeline hopscotch by pinging all over the group's decade-plus career, with the uber small exception of tracks 4-through-6 which actually floats from 1986 to 1989 to 1992.



Realizing that some could care less about having a Greatest Hits package run in chronological order, then this is a pretty solid "mix CD" of The Beastie's hits. "So What'cha Want" is a pretty solid burner to kick the disc off with and segueing it into "Brass Monkey" is pretty sweet (so in retrospect perhaps not having the disc in chronological order ain't such a bad thing after all). One thing, however, the B-Boys should have continuously mixed this joint so that it truly was a "mix" of their greatest hits. That would have made for a better listening experience and one that tied more closely into their pause tape origins.

Perhaps the coolest thing about Solid Gold Hits is the cover blurb which bold exclaims: "15 Solid Gold Hits Digitally Remastered. Guaranteed to put the nuts in your fruitcake this holiday season!" Whoever came up with that juicy little nugget deserves serious props. In the end, sadly, if you already own all six of the Beastie's studio albums and you have a multi-disc CD player (or an iPod), then you can craft your own, invariably extensive Greatest Hits/Best Of collection in the safety of your own home and save your dough for somebody else's Greatest Hits collection (or at the very least a down payment on some fresh threads from Paul's Boutique. Just don't forget to ask for Janice).

As for the DVD, well that's another story, sort of. If you already own the Criterion Collection, then it's a rather moot point, to a certain extent. Granted this DVD, which contains the videos for all 15 songs, has some overlap, there's also a few tracks that aren't on the Criterion edition ("Brass Monkey", "Ch-check it out", "No Sleep till Brooklyn", "An Open letter to NYC", "Fight for your Right" and "Triple trouble"), so to a certain degree it's pretty damn essential after all.



Long Burn The Fire. Rest In Peace Adam.

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