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Beastie Boys biography

In 1995, the popularity of Beastie Boys was underlined when tickets for an arena tour went on sale in the U.S. and sold out within a few minutes. One dollar from each ticket sold went to local charities. The Beastie Boys toured South America and Southeast Asia for the first time. The band also released Aglio e Olio, a collection of eight songs lasting for just eleven minutes harking back to their punk roots, in 1995. The In Sound From Way Out!, a collection of previously released jazz/funk instrumentals, was released on Grand Royal in 1996 with the title and artwork a homage to an album by electronic pop music pioneers Perrey and Kingsley.

Beastie Boys returned to New York City in 1997 to produce and record the album Hello Nasty. The album displayed a substantial shift in musical feel, with the addition of Mix Master Mike, who added to the Beasties' sound with his kinetic DJ style. Released July 14, 1998, Hello Nasty earned first week sales of 698,527 in the U.S. and went straight to #1 in the U.S., the UK, Germany, Australia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and Sweden. The album achieved #2 rank in the charts in Canada and Japan, and reached Top Ten chart positions in Austria, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, France and Israel.

During 1998, rumors, seemingly generated by comments from the band, pointed to a possibility that they were to release a country album. Both Michael Diamond and Adam Yauch are credited with interview comments that piqued interest in whether or not an album would be released. Since they had long been notorious for pranking the media, it was difficult for anyone to take these comments seriously until tracks became available, most notably on The Sounds of Science anthology album. Adam Yauch published the following in the liner notes: "At some point after Ill Communication came out, Mike got hit in the head by a large foreign object and lost all of his memory. As it started coming back he believed he was a country singer named Country Mike. The psychologists told us that if we didn't play along with Mike's fantasy, he would be in grave danger. Finally he came back to his senses. These songs are just a few of many we made during that tragic period of time." How much is fact or fiction is difficult to determine, but when the album surfaced on eBay fans scrambled to get their hands on what had proven to be a rare album.

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