Forgotten Fridays is a weekly feature here at If It’s Too Loud... where we go back and find the lost records of our glory days. We played these on our college radio shows, put them on countless mix tapes, and then forgot they existed. Once a week we go back and remind you, and help decide if they were any good.
BS 2000 was a side project of Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys and Amery Smith, aka AWOL.Simply Mortified was their third release, and was also the final release from the Beastie Boys’ vanity record label, Grand Royal records. Since they lived on opposite coasts, the two members would take pieces of songs they had been working on and pass them back and forth. What you get is a fun record that sounds very little like a Beastie Boys project. It’s very lo-fi and synth-heavy. Cute would be an accurate description. While it doesn’t feel like it should be taken all that seriously, it’s hardly a novelty release. “Sick for a Reason” rails against former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani. “Boogie Bored” sounds like old school Beastie’s thrash punk, but put through an 8-bit video game. The two stand-out tracks, “The Side to Side” and “The Scrappy,” are Casio keyboard dance jams.
BS 2000 was a side project of Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys and Amery Smith, aka AWOL.Simply Mortified was their third release, and was also the final release from the Beastie Boys’ vanity record label, Grand Royal records. Since they lived on opposite coasts, the two members would take pieces of songs they had been working on and pass them back and forth. What you get is a fun record that sounds very little like a Beastie Boys project. It’s very lo-fi and synth-heavy. Cute would be an accurate description. While it doesn’t feel like it should be taken all that seriously, it’s hardly a novelty release. “Sick for a Reason” rails against former NYC Mayor Rudy Guiliani. “Boogie Bored” sounds like old school Beastie’s thrash punk, but put through an 8-bit video game. The two stand-out tracks, “The Side to Side” and “The Scrappy,” are Casio keyboard dance jams.
Simply Mortified is not a great album by any means. But it’s an absolute blast that harkens back to simpler times, when the Beastie Boys were a party band, while still keeping their trademark political beliefs. It’s a must-have for any Beastie Boys die hard.
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