Solid Gold Hits - Did B-Boys Have Any Say?

[tuc70021]

So what was up with Solid Gold Hits? Was this just Capitol wanting to put out a "greatest hits" album that would be more popular among casual fans than Sounds of Science was? Or did the Boys actually participate in this whole endeavor?

I always thought it was such a weird release given that the real anthology had come out not that long before and contained all the tracks and then some.

[Brass Monk]

I actually thought a lot of their selections for the anthology were not that good. They seemed to want to show the progression and range of their music rather than the best tracks (although obviously a lot of them were there).
Maybe that's the difference between a best of and an anthology ...

[Kid Presentable]

Any number of reasons, the following is my very hazy recollection/speculation.

It was something to do with AIFST - the label wanted a release to offset the time being taken to put together the DVD, plus there may have been some wrangling related to the revenue streams of the film. Which is to say, Oscilloscope was likely to profit from the film release and Capitol wanted something for that if it came at the opportunity cost of a recorded release. In any case, they wanted in.

The band/MCA ostensibly had input as far as using the ridiculous early PR shots, sure. Plus, coming with the DVD was a nice touch, particularly as the aforementioned film got some shine in the form of the Brass Monkey clip. The 'video' for That's It That's All shot on the Australian leg of the Pageant tour, that could have only been their doing.

Around the time, Adam Yauch was posting here in response to queries about SGH on the boards. Myself and Zorra were quizzing him about it and about Axl Rose. She or I asked if it were ironically titled Solid Gold Hits because it contained nothing but obscure, never-before-released recordings by the band. While answering in the negative, Adam did concede that "that would be a cool idea..." which even to this day has me holding out hope.

Of course, the title is ironic in any case. That's unmistakably their doing. All of this is probably still sitting in the nether realm of the search function.

[Micodin]

I remember Yauch mentioning that the LTI songs were remastered and added some extra boom in the bass department to make it worth our while.

[tuc70021]

Wow, that's really interesting. I never thought about how SGH tied into the whole AIFST thing. That makes sense though. It always seemed to me like Capitol wanted it to happen, but then the Boys got a hold of it like Kid Presentable said. The horrible early-days photo, the hype sticker that said something like "guaranteed to put the nuts in your fruitcake." Kind of seemed like they were trying to make it as sarcastic as possible, which seems about right.

The Sounds of Science always really confused me as well. I remember when it came out I thought it was a sign that they were retiring soon, then that didn't happen. Then like Brass Monk said, I started realizing that the anthology was mostly hits and really weird shit, but very few high-quality b-sides. Car Thief, Sounds of Science, Professor Booty, Futterman's Rule, etc. None of them were on the anthology, but Country Mike shows up twice. I still think it's cool, but I hardly even listen to it since it doesn't have so many of my favorite and is missing tracks from Five Boroughs, Mix Up, and HSC.

[dave790]

I remember the nuts in your fruitcake line came from Miramanee.
I also remember KP's chat with Yauch. I think Yauch said something about wanting to get Right Right Now Now on there too, but four tracks from TT5B seemed too much.

[Brother McDuff]

yeah, I remember Yauch saying that Solid Gold was a trade-off for AIFST with the label. the boys wanted to do the dvd, and capitol agreed under the condition that they could release a greatest hits collection.

[bigfatlove06]

The coolest thing about this release IMO was that we got Dolby Surround mixes of 15 tracks. It's not that they were particularly revolutionary or anything, just that we got a different mix of old tracks.

[dave790]

Originally Posted by Brass Monk

I actually thought a lot of their selections for the anthology were not that good. They seemed to want to show the progression and range of their music rather than the best tracks (although obviously a lot of them were there).
Maybe that's the difference between a best of and an anthology ...

I think your last comment is apt. It's like an overview of everything, as opposed to a best of or greatest hits. Personally, I love the anthology. There are a few songs I might swap around, and it probably doesn't represent the 42 best Beastie Boys songs of all time. But it works for me.

I think also, in an age that was still pre-download and digital, it was cool to include a lot of rarities or deep cuts. But as you say, it really complements their array of styles.

One thing I've always been interested in is the fact that, to the best of my knowledge, fans were able to compile their own tracklisting for their own personalised anthology via an earlier incarnation of the B-Boys website. I've never seen any photographic evidence, but what a great idea and - if executed - what a cool thing to do.

[WesleyOHSnaps!]

I have my own anthology that I made from the site. So it definitely existed

[dave790]

Nice one. Talk me through it please!

Was there literally every B-Boys tune to choose from? Is the CD backcover printed to your personalised selection? Was it expensive?

edit: not to worry, http://www.beastiemania.com/discog/l...630&height=865 (not sure why I never checked this before).

[Sir SkratchaLot]

Originally Posted by dave790

Nice one. Talk me through it please!

Was there literally every B-Boys tune to choose from? Is the CD backcover printed to your personalised selection? Was it expensive?

edit: not to worry, http://www.beastiemania.com/discog/l...630&height=865 (not sure why I never checked this before).

I actually got two of them. You could name your album, which was cool. As the paper add says, you could go online to pick the tracks or you could check off the tracks you wanted and send in the paper order form.

If you ordered online you could jam more tracks in because the program calculated the track length. As long as your total track lengths were under the limit you could put on as many tracks as you wanted. I was checking all the track lengths to see if any of them varied from the earlier released versions.

I ordered one though the mail too because the website ordering expired and I still wanted one for my girlfriend (now wife) so I figured if I sent in one through the mail they might honor it because it was only a few days late and mail delays might justify that. They did honor the slightly late entry.

The discs were in single plastic jewel cases instead of the cardboard sleave of the normal release. Front art was the same as the normal release but with "Disc 1" and "Disc 2" at the bottom. The backs have the tracklisting and times and at the bottom there are mini album covers of the previous albums plus the general stuff you'd expect on the back of a CD. The discs are white with the tracklistings. Art-wise, they look good, like an official release.

[dave790]

Awesome stuff, thanks so much for that insight. It was slightly before my time as a fan, unfortunately.

One more question that I must ask: what song did you kick things of with?

[MrSmiley1]

Anyone know if the DVD that came with some of these is region free? I never got around to picking this up because I really wasn't impressed with the track list but now I really want the DVD. It is ridiculously expensive right now but the import version from Japan is fairly cheap on eBay at the moment.

[bigfatlove06]

Originally Posted by Sir SkratchaLot

I actually got two of them. You could name your album, which was cool. As the paper add says, you could go online to pick the tracks or you could check off the tracks you wanted and send in the paper order form.

If you ordered online you could jam more tracks in because the program calculated the track length. As long as your total track lengths were under the limit you could put on as many tracks as you wanted. I was checking all the track lengths to see if any of them varied from the earlier released versions.

I ordered one though the mail too because the website ordering expired and I still wanted one for my girlfriend (now wife) so I figured if I sent in one through the mail they might honor it because it was only a few days late and mail delays might justify that. They did honor the slightly late entry.

The discs were in single plastic jewel cases instead of the cardboard sleave of the normal release. Front art was the same as the normal release but with "Disc 1" and "Disc 2" at the bottom. The backs have the tracklisting and times and at the bottom there are mini album covers of the previous albums plus the general stuff you'd expect on the back of a CD. The discs are white with the tracklistings. Art-wise, they look good, like an official release.

I love stories like this ^

Here is mine...

I remember when the offer rolled out that my wife (now ex-wife) was pregnant with our twin girls. We didn't have internet service at the time (I can't remember why) and we were very worried about budgeting. I took the add and marked off every track that I didn't have at the time on CD, as well as every track that had a different title. I remember the wife telling me I was nuts for spending the money. I was able to fit all of the tracks I was missing onto 2 x 2CD compilations. I labeled them Old School Vol. I and Old School Vol. II. It was 71 tracks over 4 discs. At some point I also picked up another custom compilation from eBay titled "Straight Up B-Boy Style" with 30 tracks over the two discs.

When Beastienut sold his collection he very kindly included the original order sheet that he had saved as a bonus for a purchase I made. I still have it somewhere.

Then a few years ago DJBC emailed Silence7 from beastiemixes.com to see if an Acappella existed for Get It Together. He was working on his third Beastles release. By that time, I had pretty well cataloged my collection. I thought it would be fun to try and create an Acappella. Ultimately the only track in my entire collection with center panned vocals (useful in getting a pella) was from the make your own compilation. Ultimately he was able to use it on Ill Submarine.

Now I'm not trying to say that all of the tracks on the custom release are recorded differently, but it is probable that some of those tracks were sourced from archived recordings that vary from any other release. Wouldn't it be cool to source every available track from the order sheet and compile them?

We could title it the Fanthology.

[tuc70021]

Keeping on the custom anthology theme...

I grew up in a medium-sized New England city (so pretty small by the rest of the world's standards) and was living there when The Sounds of Science came out. About a year later, this one record store (I can't remember if it was a chain or a local spot) had tons of custom anthologies. This was back when you could sell CDs for a decent price to record stores... maybe you can do that still but I'm so out of it I don't even know.

Anyway, I never bought any, but it was cool to see how people put these together. You could see the real mainstream people who basically put Licensed to Ill and then all the bit hits from the other 4 albums at the time, then there were the trippy people who had a lot of instrumental and bugged out tracks, etc.

I don't know if this record store actually bought these off of individuals, but I like to think that they ordered a whole bunch of what they thought were legitimate anthologies from some shady record distributor and got stuck with a whole bunch of customized mixes.

Anyway, good times.

[dave790]

This is all great stuff! Wish I'd been around for it. I'd probably be questioning some of the track choices today. Back then I imagine I would have gone for as many rarities as possible.

[YoungRemy]

I always thought it was meant to highlight their chart topping singles hence the silly title. But it was a great AIFST preview with the "official" Brass Monkey vid coming in Fall 05 before the movie was released.

the DVD with every video made it cool, although the Criterion Video anthology (Fall 2000) had already also been released just a year after the Sounds of Silence (Fall 99) and itself showcased the alternate camera angle feature that was eventually used in AIFST

It really punctuated the O Scope era as an entirely independent music and production arm

And it spawned cool threads and discussions then and now like this one.