Beasties Back On Attack

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"We always work a little slower than others," says Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. Five Years after Hello Nasty, the group is busy recording in a New York studio it built last year.

But have patience: The new CD is unlikely to be finished before 2004. According to the band, "it's about fifteen percent done." One completed track, however, was posted on the Beasties' Web site this week: the anti-war tirade "In a World Gone Mad." "We wanted to offer out help in the war-protest arena," says Yauch. Over a herky-jerky beat, the song attacks President Bush, but it also flashes trademark Beasties humor, as when Mike Diamond addresses the president: "You and Saddam should kick it like back in the day/With the cocaine and the Courvoisier."

"It's a bit of a goof," says Yauch. "The implication is, rather than involving everyone in the world in their problems, the two of them could go work it out somewhere."

During a quick recording break, the Beasties have two live appearances scheduled: the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Japan, on April 19th, and the Coachella Festival on April 26th. "I don't quite know how bands put out a record every year," says Yauch. "It takes a year to make the record, a year to tour and then a year of vacation. We just happen to stretch that vacation part to two or three years."

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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