Paul’s Boutique is Twenty

Today, the Beastie Boys released the 20th anniversary remastered edition of one of their classic albums, Paul’s Boutique. And they released it direct-to-fan on their own website, using technology created by Foundry Group portfolio company Topspin Media.

Even better, in addition to making high quality mp3s available for download, the Beastie Boys are offering several different bundles of exclusive you-won’t-find-it-on-iTunes content and merchandise, including CDs and vinyl, posters, t-shirts, downloadable DVD-quality videos and lossless digital formats.

Topspin’s CEO Ian Rogers’ life has been intertwined with the Beastie Boys for decades, and he’s got a great story to share about how Paul’s Boutique literally changed the course of his life.

While I was in high school I was still busy listening to heavy metal (think Iron Maiden and Judas Priest), which became my gateway into Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and classic rock. So at the time, I wasn’t that hip to the Beastie Boys, other than knowing they were the crazy guys who sang “Fight for your Right to Party”.

Happily, my ears opened (way) up over the years, and I appreciate great music from a wide range of genres. I’m really digging re-familiarizing myself with Paul’s Boutique, as well as the Beastie Boys albums that really hooked me back in the day, The In Sound from Way Out and Hello Nasty. The track “Putting Shame in Your Game” on Hello Nasty contains one of my favorite lyrics of all time:

I am the king of boggle, there is none higher

I gets eleven points for the word ‘quagmire’

Perhaps this is because I’ve always been a word game nut and obsessively/automatically make anagrams of every word I see. Or because I once co-wrote a Boggle-solving program in LISP while in college. And now, in a case of life-comes-full-circle, I can get my word game fix playing Scramble on Foundry Group portfolio company Zynga’s Facebook app. Hmm, maybe the Beasties will challenge me to a game…