Over the weekend I was hanging out with a few friends (including DM’s own Ron Kretsch) playing Left Center Right and someone put on Check Your Head and then Paul’s Boutique. Those two albums hold up as well today as they ever did, I tell you.

Check Your Head is swell, but Paul’s Boutique is the masterpiece IMO. I went looking for some info about the album and found this great clip in which the Beastie Boys are being interviewed by a German-speaking crew—an off-camera voice says something about “die Fotos will er haben” (“he wants the photos”) after zooming in on MCA holding up two Polaroids; the first words out of any Beastie’s mouth is “Lederhosen.”

The setting is Los Angeles, the date September 1, 1989. The trio are in high horseshit mode, selling the interviews an elaborate picture of the role of “Paul” in the “neighborhood”: “He does a lot of stuff in the community, so we figured ... help him out, you know?” says Ad-Rock. Then MCA pipes up that “Adam used to go out with Janice—Janice, she’s the manager. Paul doesn’t even hang out at the place too much. He like—he’s maybe like the financier.” Of course, there never was any Paul’s Boutique, not on Manhattan’s Ludlow Street, where the album cover was shot, and not “in Brooklyn,” you can’t call 718-498-ten-something and “ask for Janice.” Paul’s Boutique exists only in your mind and mine. [Oooops. Turns out there once was a Paul’s Boutique in Brooklyn, at 758 Linden Blvd. We can only guess if Adam ever dated Janice, or if there ever was a Janice.]

When the interviewer innocuously inquires about “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” the twelve-plus-minute “medley” at the end of the album, the gang improvs an elaborate comparison to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”—after all, Beethoven was deaf when he composed that, whereas the Beastie Boys are merely “stupid.” Ad-Rock pulls a Tufnel when he insists that Ludwig could have skipped the Ninth altogether and just composed the Tenth, while MCA riffs, “Just imagine if my man Beethoven had a fuckin’ sampler!” In no time flat they’re referencing Walter Murphy’s disco-tastic “A Fifth of Beethoven.”

I don’t think I can embed it, or else I would, but if you haven’t seen the marvelous “Paul’s Boutique: A Visual Companion,” you really need to check that out too, it’s a kind of album-length compilation designed to give every song on the album its own visual montage.

Here’s the interview.