News:: It's The Ack's Barkley Birthday

That's right folks: the Ack, the man we all know and love turns thirty-four years of age today. For those not as familiar with us, the Ack's government name is in fact Bryan Acker, and despite his ever-youthful visage, he is indeed now only a year away from being a half-decade from 40. Yes, that youngster to the left is now a full-fledged, semi-balding adult. Crazy stuff.

I already had my Barkley birthday in December, and as such, I used the Barkley-post gimmick for myself. So what to use as a musical tribute to the Ack's birthday? Well, as you may or may not know, the Ack was(is), a pretty fanatical Beastie fan. So you can imagine he was a little excited to hear about the Check Your Head re-issue. Certainly no where near as excited as he would've been ten years ago, but interested none the less.

So, some remixes and the like from Check Your Head seems like the perfect call for such an occasion (as an aside, these are from older releases, I'm sure the re-issue ones are much better quality, so buy that!). Mainly because the Ack had a crackfiend-like jones for any Beasties B-side or remix material, and he likely had most of these jams (the older ones anyway), on some bootleg or other. But it's also appropriate as I myself have a checkered history with the album. I loved Paul's boutique, and loved plenty of the songs on CYH (Jimmy James is still one of the best beats of all-time in my humble) but my hip hop zealotry of that time period caused me to be a little less than impressed with the fact that the B-Boys decided to get back to their roots and bust out plenty of live instrument jams. Today, I can appreciate that this is, in fact, a pretty awesome album, so consider this also my way to make peace with CYH.

If you happen to be connected to the promotion of the Check Your Head re-issue, you would make the Ack the happiest birthday boy ever by shipping the vinyl version his way. As for myself, I'll simply say Happy Birthday Ack, and of course, here's to you, the best there is.