| Triple Sly Crew
"Toxic Shock, The Carcinogens and Triple Sly Crew (w/ Sarah Cox and Adam Yauch) were all what I refer to as "button bands"- formed loosely and probably didn't gig, just jammed, named the band, and made a button for it," explained Kate Schellenbach. Back in the fall of 1981, the Beastie Boys were performing some of their very first shows at venues like the A-7 and Max’s Kansas City. Around the same time, the Triple Sly Crew, comprised of Adam Yauch, Sarah Cox, and Kate Schellenbach, would meet up at Kate’s home to rhyme over hip-hop instrumentals. "We were never really a real band…more of a concept," Kate told beastiemania.com in a November 2006 interview. "The Triple Sly Crew was just a way to acknowledge our interest in rap even as punk rockers."
In the early 1980s, the New York Hardcore music scene saw a number of button bands form and fold. The way these button bands would come about is that a group of friends would get together and write songs or jam. Someone would then think up a name for the group and make a button with that name on it. Over a period of time, the members of the group would proceed to get busy with other things and lose interest and the band’s lifespan would subsequently come to an end. As Kate said this was the fate of the Triple Sly Crew. "We didn’t have any songs per se," Kate clarified. "This was just another one of those button bands. We just fucked around rapping at my house over Sugar Hill Gang instrumentals and onto cassette tapes." The Triple Sly Crew is important chronologically, because this short-lived group is a testament to the fact that the members of the Beastie Boys were experimenting with hip-hop long before recording the Cooky Puss E.P in 1983.
|
