Day 10 - Paul's Boutique by The Beastie Boys

Day 10 of 10 – My all time favorite albums that are STILL in rotation, in no particular order. This was tough. Limiting my list to ten meant some great records would be left out, some feathers would be ruffled, and some feelings hurt. I grappled with a number of options for this slot, including the 1994 gem “Parklife” by Blur, Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions…”, “Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches” by the Happy Mondays, “Mali Music” by Damon Albarn, "Marquee Moon" by Television, the debut from Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner’s Electronic as well as albums by Wire, Super Furry Animals, Guided by Voices, Pavement and the New Pornographers, all of which have played major roles in my listening life. But ultimately, they all finished on the outside looking in. That’s because when I really thought about albums I love, albums that have stayed with me over the years, albums I still listen to, albums I still know all the words to, albums that inhabit strange corners of my brain, the choice was clear: It’s 1989’s Paul’s Boutique by Beastie Boys.

Much like yesterday’s choice, this is a repeat pick – John Cari included it earlier on his list. But in keeping with the spirit of this exercise, I figured that cannot and should not be grounds for excluding it from mine. But like a lot of people, I ignored Paul’s Boutique when it first came out, foolishly relegating the Beasties to one hit wonder status after the unprecedented commercial success of License to Ill. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Five years later, I picked up a used cassette of Paul’s Boutique at a record store (that’s no longer there) in Auburn, Alabama. (Why Auburn? I was driving around the South looking for my first job in television news.) And all it took was the opening drum roll of “Shake Your Rump” to hook me: Paul’s Boutique never left my cassette deck of my ’87 Honda Accord for the rest of my trip.

There are so many things that make Paul’s Boutique great. The wordplay and name-checking show Ad-Rock, Mike D and MCA at their fun-loving best. (Where else can you find references to Sadaharu Oh, Chuck Woolery and Vincent Van Gogh? And that’s just on “Hey Ladies”). The stew of pop culture references presaged our post-modern culture – for better or worse. But what makes this record really stand out is that it can never be done again: The Beasties and their producers the Dust Brothers sampled more than a hundred songs, sounds and snippets to create this sonic masterpiece. Two years later, a landmark copyright case would change sampling rules forever. The rich sound collage that provides the backbone of Paul’s Boutique would become unattainable to future hip hop artists.