The Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication album was released in 1994, when I was in high school. I remember watching the music video for Sabotage on MTV and being excited about buying the album when it was released.
In those days, CDs were expensive, often $18-20 while cassettes were closer to $9-11. When the album was released, I didn’t have enough money to buy the CD and didn’t want to wait until I did to hear the entire thing so I bought the cassette version instead.
The thing I remember most about this release is that green shell on the cassette. I was accustomed to the clear and white shells, but had yet to buy a tape with a colored shell like this.
I lost that tape, probably in one of the many moves from high school to college, but I always remember that green shell.
I saw this cassette recently on eBay and had to buy it, especially since I just repaired my Sony cassette deck and am looking for tapes to play.
I almost bought this tape on Discogs but the seller messaged me and told me it was the “clean” version which I had forgotten was something Wal-Mart would do. They refused to sell music with explicit lyrics so labels would have to edit the albums and sell a “clean” version in Wal-Mart. I politely turned down that copy down.
Speaking of green…I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, a few years back for my Grandmother’s birthday party and found a record store on the way home. I stopped in and found a double LP copy of Ill Communication that is a green translucent color. So I now own a green LP version and green cassette version of Ill Communication.
Over the years I’ve found new songs to love on this album and last year when I was DJ’ing on the weekends, I started playing Do It and it was always a hit:
Aaron Hartley 