Very sad. I remember seeing them first on the bill at one of those Def Jam shows, back in '86 or so. They weren't very well known back then, and they were getting booed pretty much from the moment they hit the stage. (And this was at a very large venue.) Still, they were falling over themselves laughing, MCA most of all. I recall getting a weird sense of, I don't know, freedom, watching this. I think about it every time I have to speak in front of a large group of people. I still aspire to have that kind of "fuck all y'all" confidence. I guess it was a pretty meaningful moment for me. RIP, MCA. Way too soon.
― henry s, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:17 (eleven years ago) link
He seems like a pretty good model for how to live a life.
― Scott, bass player for Tenth Avenue North (Hurting 2), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:19 (eleven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kdThLmS4Ig
― billstevejim, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:28 (eleven years ago) link
Listening to this mix right now: http://soundcloud.com/dj-format-c-1/beastie-boys-mix-by-dj-format-c
― Vini Reilly Invasion (Elvis Telecom), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:30 (eleven years ago) link
RIP MCA. I'm gonna bump Licensed To Ill like 3 times tonight. This dude was the best and the world is a little worse without him.
― Thoughts? You must have loads. (a hoy hoy), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:33 (eleven years ago) link
good TV moment at 2:45....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB-ya6gBI4w
― billstevejim, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:34 (eleven years ago) link
aside from the music, I think the Beasties in general were really ground zero for a certain cool R&B/jazz/classic/punk axis collector mentality...like dudes that dug bad brains and old R&B and early hip hop and sonic youth etc...sorta the wax poetics mag aesthetic...i couldn't imagine, say, numero group existing w/o them
― l0u1s j0rdan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:36 (eleven years ago) link
Kinda pisses me off that the three of 'em will never have a chance to actually do this, just walk down the street years and years on and swap stories:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_J7ROcRhsO4/Tgux7ShM-4I/AAAAAAAAAtQ/AyyqJpqerGI/s1600/MUDD07.jpg
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:37 (eleven years ago) link
awww
― some dude, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:37 (eleven years ago) link
^^^yeah those getups are what I was thinking of when I ref'd the b-ball video upthread
― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:38 (eleven years ago) link
http://gizmodo.com/5907730/deceased-beastie-boy-adam-mca-yauch-is-every-single-twitter-trending-topic-right-now
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:41 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/05/remembering-grand-royal-beastie-boys-brief-brilliant-magazine/51944/
M*tt, these were great
― curmudgeon, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:41 (eleven years ago) link
they were, yeah
― 10. “Pour Some Sugar On Me” – Tom Cruise (contenderizer), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:42 (eleven years ago) link
I was 16 and at this summer college program when Paul's Boutique came out and I remember walking to the record store the day it was released, buying it and bringing it back to play in our dorm's common room and being floored by it. I was expecting another goofy, fun Licensed to Ill and instead it was this incredible other thing.
― Polly biscuit face (carl agatha), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:42 (eleven years ago) link
License To Ill was the first "real" tape I ever bought back in 7th grade, and Paul's Boutique was the first record that I ever remember looking forward to. Check Your Head came out right before I graduated high school, and Ill Communication came out during a particular decadent era of my college life and I have really fond memories of all of these eras. I saw them once at an outside venue in Pontiac, Michigan with L7 and House of Pain (lol 90s), and technically I saw one song from them at Lollapalooza in 1994 before I got kicked out.
Anyway this is pretty sad because unlike other recent big music deaths he seemed like a legit decent person who would probably still do some interesting shit later in life instead holing up and becoming a drugged out / crazy recluse.
― joygoat, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:43 (eleven years ago) link
Oh shit, I still have issues of Grand Royal at my parents' house somewhere.
― Polly biscuit face (carl agatha), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:43 (eleven years ago) link
I have a couple issues of Grand Royal stashed somewhere. So classic.
I think I still have my faded circa-'98 Beastie Boys shirt somewhere at home. Going to try to dig it out to wear when I'm out with friends tonight.
― mh, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:45 (eleven years ago) link
really ground zero for a certain cool R&B/jazz/classic/punk axis collector mentality
yeah, I'd go further and say they were an archetype for how pretty much every music hipster/geek operates today. Like, is pitchfork quite the same site in a world where the beastie boys didn't exist? It's not like they were the first people to ever be way into all kinds of music, or even all kinds of *cool* music, but nobody really pulled off an aristic statement pulling all of that knowledge and love in like paul's boutique, or their 90s records. I think this is part of why MCA dying means something to me, despite not having listened to the BBs records in years. I *feel* a part of whatever generation guys like him belonged to /blogging
― Dominique, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:48 (eleven years ago) link
artistic, duh
― Dominique, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:49 (eleven years ago) link
yeah dominique that's definitely what i was trying to get at, said better
― l0u1s j0rdan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:51 (eleven years ago) link
jeez that picture made me cry a little bit in my office
― l0u1s j0rdan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, May 4, 2012 2:37 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― bit.ly sno cone maker (Jon Lewis), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:51 (eleven years ago) link
Don't want to be at work right now.
― bit.ly sno cone maker (Jon Lewis), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:52 (eleven years ago) link
An incomplete and off the top of my head ramble from the past hour:
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/2012/05/adam_yauch_dead_mca_beastie_boys.php
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:54 (eleven years ago) link
Wow. Shit.
Some friends of mine and I went to see the hip-hop exhibit at the Brooklyn Academy of Music some years back. It was springtime and there was no one there but us and Yauch, who was alone and perusing the exhibit quietly. On the way out, we found it striking that the Lubavitcher Jews went straight toward him and not toward us, who were about as Jewish looking as it gets. There was a brief moment that felt very "one of us ..." as we looked over our shoulders to see them proffering him a lulav and etrog, likely oblivious to who he was.
This is a sad.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:54 (eleven years ago) link
with certain musicians their own overwhelming fannishness informs their music, thurston moore and the beasties come to mind
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:55 (eleven years ago) link
xp to dominique and matt
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:56 (eleven years ago) link
The time between Licensed to Ill and Paul's Boutique took forever. And when PB sounded nothing like LtI, I was a little disappointed at first. But the more I listened to it, the more I got into it, the more I could hear that beer-drinking frat rappers were moving them and us forward into a new direction…
I think I heard the first side of Check Your Head every morning for six months my freshman year in the dorm. Though I got sick of it, I still taped the CD longbox up on my cinderblock wall.
― pplains, Friday, 4 May 2012 19:56 (eleven years ago) link
ha, that's a good jewish twist on the celebrities-just-like-us meme xp
― Scott, bass player for Tenth Avenue North (Hurting 2), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:57 (eleven years ago) link
Didn't have quite the same agewise impact on me cuz when I was in college all I was hearing was "Cookie Puss," but I bought the first 4 albums (Paul's Boutique on cassette) and my best friend claims they copped some of their behavior from watching him at parties at Bard. (saw them at L'looza 94 too)
also heavy Jerry Lewis influence obv
― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Friday, 4 May 2012 19:57 (eleven years ago) link
TRAGICRIP
― nakamura, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:01 (eleven years ago) link
in high school, for my friend's birthday i made a mix cassette tape where i laboriously compiled not songs but clips of our fav bboys lines. i would never do this now, so it's too bad that this mix is lost forever, on a lone cassette tape out there somewhere...
― rayuela, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:02 (eleven years ago) link
Just finding out about this now--big surprise, even though I knew there had been health issues. It was so exciting when they went #1 with their first album; as key a moment as Nevermind grabbing #1. (Who'd did they knock out--Peter Cetera? Jennifer Rush?) I had interviewed them a few months prior, and they were so funny and so obscene, I wrote it up under a pseudonym--I was still passing on my writing to my parents, and I didn't want my mother to read it.
― clemenza, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:12 (eleven years ago) link
didn't he found that distributor oscilloscope. because they do some great stuff. ditto grand royal magazine (RIP).
i admit i've never been an unqualified fan of the BB but they all seem(ed) like interesting, likable dudes.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:13 (eleven years ago) link
sorry to hear this, RIP.
― Peace (peaceful) (The Brainwasher), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:15 (eleven years ago) link
when i was 10 or 11 licensed to ill came out and i didn't like it that much and completely missed the boat on paul's boutique, but i picked up check your head on a whim and it didn't leave my car's cassette deck for months. definitely a game-changer for me w/r/t how i listened to music, it led me into soul-jazz and funk and all sorts of good shit. ill communication and hello nasty had similar lengthy runs in my car. this is really unexpected, i thought he had kicked it. i guess i haven't been paying attention. damn shame.
― omar little, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:16 (eleven years ago) link
really ground zero for a certain cool R&B/jazz/classic/punk axisthis is otm -- i know i discovered a bunch of random things via the beasties ... jimmy smith's root down, for one, which led to a big dive into that kinda organ stuff.
― tylerw, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:16 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, ditto on that.
― (Name Withheld to Avoid Hassle) (forksclovetofu), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:17 (eleven years ago) link
i guess when i was in h.s. i was somehow on this precious deep soul tip and i thought of the BBs fans who were just being exposed to this deep vein of black music as johnny-come-latelys. but that has a lot to do with h.s. social politics and now i totally get how they could be an awesome gateway drug.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:19 (eleven years ago) link
precious = precocious
maybe precious too.
(Who'd did they knock out--Peter Cetera? Jennifer Rush?)
In the US, it was Bon Jovi.
― Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:20 (eleven years ago) link
ha, i'm probably a johnny come lately. to some extent, listening to paul's boutique made me realize the vast depths of american music -- almost as much as, say, the anthology of american folk music. i might've ended up liking the source material more than the beastie boys, but gotta give them their due in getting me there!
― tylerw, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:21 (eleven years ago) link
Here's an interesting thought: was Yauch the first of his peers (hip-hop, alt-rock, whatever) to let himself go dramatically grey?
I had a cassette dupe of "License to Ill" on one side and "Invisible Touch" on the other. I used to listen to it on a boom box on canoe trips down the Brandywine River.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:22 (eleven years ago) link
Maybe they weren't alone in this, but they were also central to a huge rekindling of interest in Led Zeppelin (outside of just classic-rock stations) when they sampled "The Ocean"; Schoolly-D and others followed in short order, and it went from there.
― clemenza, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:23 (eleven years ago) link
― Tarfumes The Escape Goat, Friday, May 4, 2012 3:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
the later collab, "beastie jovi," was pretty great IIRC.
― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:23 (eleven years ago) link
Eh, the Zep stuff was Rick Rubin's doing.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:27 (eleven years ago) link
listening to the audio commentary vid for 'check your head', pretty great (from a production nerd standpoint anyway). still love how integrated the samples + live instrumentation is on that record, massive drum sound too. apparently yauch was the one who came up with the led zep-style cardboard tunnel for the kick drum.
― 40oz of tears (Jordan), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:28 (eleven years ago) link
bboys were just one musical vector of a number for me but they specifically unearthed a few dope artists/beats i dunno how long it would've taken me to find otherwise
― (Name Withheld to Avoid Hassle) (forksclovetofu), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:30 (eleven years ago) link
I'm sure that's true, but of the thousands of teenagers who may have been found out about Led Zeppelin via Licensed to Ill, my guess is that they almost gave credit to the Beastie Boys rather than Rick Rubin (if they even knew who he was). (xpost)
― clemenza, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:32 (eleven years ago) link
(drop the "been")
― clemenza, Friday, 4 May 2012 20:33 (eleven years ago) link
things the Beastie Boys introduced me to:
Idris MuhammadLee "Scratch" PerryWild StyleBlack Oak ArkansasKool Moe Dee vs. Busy BeeEddie HarrisThe Turtles
remember this being a total HOLY SHIT moment:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC-gRQh_pFw
― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 4 May 2012 20:45 (eleven years ago) link