This footage of the teenage Beastie Boys playing punk rock on public access TV is just too cute

Beasties — (Image credit: The Scott and Gary Show)

In 1984, having scored a measure of local success with their irreverent-hip-hop debut single Cooky Puss, released the previous year, New York teenagers Mike Diamond, Adam Horowitz and Adam Yauch decided that taking on the personas of snotty, obnoxious, delinquent hip-hop brats would serve their future interests better than playing hardcore all-dayers on the city's Lower East Side, and therefore their drummer Kate Schellenbach was now surplus to requirements.

Before the adolescent Beastie Boys took the rather ignoble and decidedly insensitive decision to ditch one of their best friends - “We kicked Kate out of the band because she didn’t fit into our new tough-rapper-guy identity,” an embarrassed Adam Horowitz admitted in band memoir Beastie Boys Book - Shellenbach did get to appear with the trio on New York public access TV show The Scott and Gary Show.

That the trio's disrespect towards Schellenbach was part of a wider culture of sexism within the entertainment industry at the time is evident in one regrettable segment of a mini-feature on the band's performance uploaded online by You Tuber Ben Escobedo.

Having rather lost control of his impossibly fresh-faced, cheeky and sweetly charismatic charges during a post-performance interview, co-host Scott Lewis follow up a brief conversation with the drummer by telling her and the show's viewers, that "If anybody wants a date with Kate, just call us, and we'll get in contact with you." Clearly unaware that this invitation was going to be thrown out to every horny male within the Five Boroughs. the drummer politely mutters "Ok, that's cool' before passing on the mic.

This cringe-worthy sequence aside, there's much joy to be had in observing the pre-fame Beasties goofing off, with future cult classic Egg Raid on Mojo among the scrappy punk tunes aired.

Watch the pure and wholesome footage below:

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.