RIP Adam Yauch/MCA of the Beastie Boys

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.

Oh shit, I still have issues of Grand Royal at my parents' house somewhere.

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.

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

artistic, duh

yeah dominique that's definitely what i was trying to get at, said better

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

Don't want to be at work right now.

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

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.

with certain musicians their own overwhelming fannishness informs their music, thurston moore and the beasties come to mind

xp to dominique and matt

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.

ha, that's a good jewish twist on the celebrities-just-like-us meme xp

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

TRAGIC
RIP

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...

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.

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.

sorry to hear this, RIP.

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.

really ground zero for a certain cool R&B/jazz/classic/punk axis
this 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.

yeah, ditto on that.

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.

precious = precocious

maybe precious too.

(Who'd did they knock out--Peter Cetera? Jennifer Rush?)

In the US, it was Bon Jovi.

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!

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.

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.

In the US, it was Bon Jovi.

― 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.

Eh, the Zep stuff was Rick Rubin's doing.

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.

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

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)

(drop the "been")

things the Beastie Boys introduced me to:

Idris Muhammad
Lee "Scratch" Perry
Wild Style
Black Oak Arkansas
Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee
Eddie Harris
The Turtles

remember this being a total HOLY SHIT moment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC-gRQh_pFw

From Tim Sommer.

Here's an interesting thought: was Yauch the first of his peers (hip-hop, alt-rock, whatever) to let himself go dramatically grey?

Toss up between him and Lee Ranaldo?

things the Beastie Boys introduced me to:

Idris Muhammad
Lee "Scratch" Perry
Wild Style
Black Oak Arkansas
Kool Moe Dee vs. Busy Bee
Eddie Harris
The Turtles

add The Meters to that list for me

i think yauch was super gray back when lee was just getting some salt and pepper (xpost)

I thought he was getting better. Fuck this shit.

yeah i hadn't been following what was going on but when they finally released the album i assumed he was gonna be okay! so sad. i didn't even realize he missed the HOF induction last month.

i lost my grandmother a few weeks ago, and have felt really numb to celebrity passings since, but feel really sad about MCA. he seemed like such a decent, hilarious and talented guy, and was always my favourite beastie boy. they were the exact definition of cool to me at a certain age, and probably still now - i started wearing puma suedes because of them, and lookit i'm wearing a pair right now. and they pointed me in the direction of so much amazing music. SO much. a decade or so ago, backstage in glasgow, i got to meet him and even held his baby for a few minutes, and he was as cool as you could ever have wanted him to be.

after he didn't make it to the rock and roll hall of fame a month or so back, i feared the worst. such a shame. listen to those beastie commentaries if you haven't already. they are awesome.

this one made me laugh: http://www.criterion.com/explore/57-adam-yauch-s-top-10

When I was in college in the 90s my group of friends often disagreed about what should be playing on the stereo at any given times. Usually it was a fight between Grateful Dead and Classic Rock vs. Rave music. Beastie Boys seemed like the one thing that made everyone happy.

I still have a couple of the Grand Royal magazines. They seemed like the coolest thing in the world when they first came out. B-Boys were definitely ahead of the game with the whole unearthing of retro culture.

It's hard to even think of all the stuff I was intro'd to by the beastie boys. I definitely checked out Lee Perry because of a name drop in a Beasties song, and their instrumentals got me into 60s/70s Soul Jazz breaks.

damn, rip. didn't even realize he was still sick. ;_;

iirc remy bean has a great story concerning yauch, not sure he posts anymore tho?

oh he's around

I slept in his bed once, and barfed in his mom's commode (he wasn't there). RIP duder.

― Olivia Newton John Justen Bieberheimer Schmidt (remy bean), Friday, May 4, 2012 1:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wanna hear this story sometime.