Hangin' Out In 100b

BS 2000’s Simply Mortified is an album that I bought on a lunch break about six years ago but over the years, had completely forgotten about. While I was packing up all my CDs for the move recently, I noticed loads of albums that I wanted to listen to again, but none more than 2001’s Simply Mortified.

BS 2000 is (or maybe was?) a side project of the Beastie Boys’ Adam Horovitz and West Coast-based Avery Smith, the Beasties’ tour drummer. According to their VH1 artist page, BS 2000 was “originally conceived as an east-meets-west long distance beat-trading coalition”. Their first album (1997’s BS 2000) was released in 1997 on vinyl only, through Grand Royal. I didn’t even know that album existed until this week, but apparently it was an instant hit with DJs. A few years later, I saw a video on MTV for some crazy song called “Buddy” and loved it immediately. It was goofy and charming and incredibly catchy. I didn’t realize it had anything to do with the Beastie Boys until later, when I looked them up and found the album on that lunch break.

Martin Strong’s Great Rock Discography is a great book (there I go, using those crazy books again) and a fantastic resource, but I’m not sure I agree with what Mr. Strong has to say about my beloved Simply Mortified:

Much the same fare [as the 1997 release], but with distorted vocals, fantastic scratching and less songs, at least the passion was all there if Horovitz’s and Smith’s brains were somewhere else. Many would’ve liked to dismiss BS 2000 as a sad joke or just another example of the Beastie’s ever increasing oddness – and perhaps it was, but that still didn’t diminish the fact that it was as zany, as lo-fi and as nuts as anything to grace the underground indie scene that year.”

One my biggest music-related pet peeves – I reckon you should be able to tell when a review is positive or negative, don’t you?

Some of that is true though – the songs on Simply Mortified are crazy, and some may not even completely qualify as songs exactly, but that’s what makes me love it. I’ve said it at least ten thousand times, but I always appreciate music that can’t be pinned down, genre-wise. Sometimes BS 2000 are silly rap, like the Beastie Boys making children’s music. And then sometimes they’re punk. But other times they’re roller rink instrumentals with sweet beats. I’m sure I don’t know what genre I’d classify them in – is ‘fun’ a genre?

   BS 2000 – Buddy
   BS 2000 – No Matter What Shape Your Stomach Is In
   BS 2000 – The Scrappy