This special issue celebrates 25 years of the Beastie Boys’ classic Check Your Head.
FLOOD Issue 06


Stereolab, “Instant Holograms on Metal Film”
Their first new album in fifteen years spins on an axis of subtly infectious refrains and gently askew rhythms—it’s avant-garde art-pop as something radically old yet experimentally new.

Sparks, “MAD!”
The Mael brothers’ 26th album purrs with sincere longings dedicated to romantic splits, though ultimately remains true to the duo’s idiosyncratic melody and tongue-in-cheek lyricism.

These New Puritans, “Crooked Wing”
The interplay of organ and voice throughout the Essex band’s fifth album creates a haunting document of the modern world wrestling for coexistence with the old world.

In conjunction with the label of the same name, the Beastie Boys launched “Grand Royal” magazine without much of a plan. But with the help of a ramshackle editorial team that included Spike Jonze and Bob Mack, they didn’t need one.

Looking back at the unlikely history of the Beastie Boys–affiliated clothing line.

The filmmaker—and expert in all things Beastie Boys—gives us an inside look at the music video career of MCA’s Swiss uncle, who was definitely a real person.

Great record collectors make great records. Uh, sometimes.

photo by Quantrell Colbert
All eyes are on the first-time actor who was born to play the part of Tupac Shakur.

photo by Conner Lyons
On their third album, Seattle’s funniest punks come clean.

Three years after his debut the LA-based singer-songwriter questions whether bearing witness to history is enough.

What once started as a series of essays about the ruins of civilization eventually turned into a full-blown graphic memoir—”Imagine Wanting Only This.” But it’s not as apocalyptic as it sounds.

Back in 1992, Abe Wool, the writer of “Sid and Nancy,” got a very weird film made starring John Doe of X and Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys. John Doe remembers some of it.

The Beastie Boys’ longtime organist and resident savant talks “Check Your Head,” carpentry, and keyboards.

photo courtesy of Mario Caldato Jr.
Behind the boards with Mario Caldato Jr.

‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ starring Jonah Ray, Patton Oswalt, Felicia Day, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, Mary Jo Pehl, Hampton Yount, Baron Vaughn, Rebecca Hanson, Tim Blaney, Elliot Kalan. Directed by Joel Hodgson & Rob Cohen. Photo by Darren Michaels, SMPSP
It’s no mystery. It’s not rocket science. It only looks like it.

To the Five Freeway.

Go wall to wall with Helen Johannesen from Helen’s Wines and Jon & Vinny’s.

The Beastie Boys filming the “Pass the Mic” video / photo courtesy of Mario Caldato Jr.
Twenty-five years later, “Check Your Head”‘s influence still looms large.

photo by Ari Marcopoulos
It didn’t just help define a band: It formed how a generation would abandon singularity for fusion. A quarter-century after its release, we can trace our cultural evolution to the Beastie Boys’ third record.

261278-019-v3.psd
In addition to a cover story on “Silicon Valley”’s Thomas Middleditch, our latest print issue also features an extended celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Beastie Boys’ “Check Your Head.”

A-144
Their audience didn’t understand them. Their label didn’t want to talk to them. Not to worry: For the Beastie Boys, it was a brand-new morning.

Sad streaks, fatal flaws, and new generations of bullies are all laughing matters when you own it and clown it like Thomas Middleditch.

For a songwriter known for his inability to write a bad song, it’s easy to forget that Britt Daniel was once pushed to the brink. And whether he wants to or not, on “Hot Thoughts,” his group is bridging back to the beginning.


Listen to flood fm
Close