Beastie Boys Discovered What Music is Actually Pressed on Gold Records
Anyone reading this is probably familiar with gold record awards, which an artist earns for selling 500,000 copies of an album. This honor is represented in a fancy frame that features a shiny golden record, and it makes for a nice item to hang on a wall. Have you ever stopped and thought about what music is actually pressed on those gold records in the frame?
It’s something the Beastie Boys pondered one day, and Ad-Rock and Mike D discussed their findings in an appearance on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. As the story goes, the Beastie Boys were at their recording studio in California, and Ad-Rock admits that at the time, he was “smoking the pot.” (With an intro like that, you know the story is going to be solid.)
Anyway, on the wall at the studio was a gold record for their classic album Paul’s Boutique. Upon further examination of the gold album, Ad-Rock noticed that the grooves on the album only showed four tracks, when the album’s label showed there should have been nine. This then led the Beastie Boys to break the glass to the framed award, take the gold record and then put it on a turntable to hear what was on the record.
“And it was somebody doing, like, piano versions of Barry Manilow. Just some other sh-t,” said Ad-Rock.
Mike D added, “I’d like to think that for, you know, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Barry Manilow, a real mega-star, that it was actually their record.
So, there you have it. There’s a good possibility that the music pressed on gold and platinum record awards might just be some random piano recording of Barry Manilow songs. We would be remiss if we didn’t thank marijuana for this discovery, because it clearly played some role in this whole ordeal. Obviously, we should thank the Beastie Boys for smoking said pot and having the low-key brilliant idea to even put a gold record on a turntable in the first place. If you needed any further evidence of the group’s genius, what a prime example this story was!
Here’s hoping more musicians just start breaking their gold and platinum record awards just to see what music is pressed on them. For real, this could be a fun social media phenomenon! Some random artist should really do this. Maybe even Barry Manilow himself could break open his own gold/platinum awards to see what music is pressed on them.
