Beastie Boys’ ‘Check Your Head’ gets the deluxe treatment

By Patrick Luce Mar 18, 2009, 15:16 GMT

With their third album, the Beasties transformed themselves from smart-ass punks with a hip-hop jones into a playful live funk band with some solid rhymes, assisted by the extraordinary keyboardist Mark Ramos Nishita. A couple of tracks look back to their old school rap roots, and they still deploy goofy samples like nobody\'s business, but they\'re mostly making their own grooves (including some instrumentals worthy of being sampled in their ...more

Beastie Boys' third studio album ‘Check Your Head’ will be the next classic album from the music icons to get the remastered expanded reissue treatment by Beastie Boys and Capitol/EMI. The album is scheduled to return to store shelves on April 7th.

The album’s pre-orders can be made at beastieboys.com for multiple configurations ranging from a high quality DRM-free digital download of the album (including its numerous and classic b-sides and bonus tracks) to an ultra-deluxe 4 LP 180HQ vinyl version packaged in a fabric-wrapped hardcover coffee table book case and limited to 2000 copies.

The ‘Check Your Head’ reissue news coincides with the announcement that Beastie Boys are scheduled to headline the Hollywood Bowl on September 24. Following on a confirmed appearance at this summer's Bonnaroo festival and ongoing speculation regarding the band's appearances at various summer festivals, the Hollywood Bowl show is both the first headline show in the run-up to a new Beastie Boys album due later this year, as well as the first time Beastie Boys have ever headlined the hallowed L.A. venue.

Originally released in April 1992, ‘Check Your Head’ is considered a milestone for Beastie Boys on multiple levels: It was the first B Boys album to be produced in its entirety by Mario Caldato Jr. and to feature keyboard player Keyboard Money Mark, as well as the first to be recorded at the band's own G-Son studios in Atwater Village, CA.

‘Check Your Head’ also served as the return of live instrumentation to the forefront and backbone of the Beastie Boys sound, with the bulk of the album featuring Mike D on drums, Adrock on guitar and MCA on bass for the first time since the band's early 1980s hardcore punk recordings.

On the strength of now-classic singles and videos "So What'cha Want," "Pass The Mic," "Gratitude" and "Jimmy James" - all of which are included in their original 12" vinyl incarnations in the ultra deluxe version – ‘Check Your Head’ took the U.S. Top 10, ultimately returning Beastie Boys to hard-touring, platinum-selling status, and setting the band up for the pop cultural dominance it would achieve in the decade to come.

The full list of Check Your Head reissue configurations is as follows:

Digital Download (album and b-sides)
Deluxe Digital Option (also includes videos and video commentary)
Deluxe, limited collector's vinyl + Digital Download
Standard double vinyl + Digital Download
Ecopack double CD + Digital Download

Shirt combos:
Deluxe Digital + shirt
Standard Vinyl + shirt
CD + shirt
Deluxe, limited collector's vinyl + shirt