RIP MCA
May 4, 2012 10:32 AM   Subscribe

 
An artist who became better at his craft, then used it do good in the world. Shit, cancer, you're a goddamn dick. This is who you take? Fuck you.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 10:33 AM on May 4, 2012 [69 favorites]


.
posted by anewnadir at 10:33 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by basketballandinternet at 10:33 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012


In tribute, a straight up classic album in full.

RIP MCA and thank you for 3 decades of blinding creativity.


posted by Senor Cardgage at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012 [7 favorites]


.
posted by rocket88 at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by calamari kid at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012


There is no dot. Once you realize that you are liberated. So here's no dot, to you, Yauch.
posted by symbioid at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012 [45 favorites]


When you got so much to say
Its called gratitude
.
posted by googly at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012 [11 favorites]


.
posted by gauche at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by little mouth at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012




.
posted by gideonswann at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by maggieb at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012


WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!

.
posted by Madamina at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


3MTA3, Cancer.
posted by bondcliff at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012 [11 favorites]


.
posted by ambrosen at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012


.

Pauls Boutique is one of the few albums from my youth that never has gotten old.
posted by gofargogo at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012 [17 favorites]


.
posted by quadog at 10:35 AM on May 4, 2012


Pass me the scalpel, I'll make an incision
I'll cut off the part of your brain that does the bitching

.
posted by PHINC at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Well Now don't you tell me to smile

.
posted by holdkris99 at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Damn, I was hoping this would be a story I didn't hear for many years to come. In those early days of the Beasties Adam seemed like the one destined to die young since, even by Beastie Boys standards, he was pushing the envelope of partying and bad behavior. That's why it was such a pleasant surprise to see him grow into this very reasoned and spiritual adult. He crammed a lot of living into those 47 years and left behind a hell of legacy as an artist, an activist, and all around decent guy. This is one of the few celebrity deaths that truly bums me out on a personal level as if I lost a close friend.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [14 favorites]


shit.
posted by donnagirl at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Just last night I was organizing our cd collection, and every time I came across a Beastie Boys cd I felt a little bump of happy nostalgia. So sad.
posted by Malla at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Man, I'm getting really sick of saying, "Fuck you, cancer" all the time.
posted by Rangeboy at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [41 favorites]


.
posted by JennyJupiter at 10:36 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by theartandsound at 10:37 AM on May 4, 2012


He was a writer a poet a genius I know it.
posted by Fizz at 10:37 AM on May 4, 2012 [9 favorites]


fuck cancer forever
posted by elizardbits at 10:37 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


globalgrind's breaking article has loads of pictures of Yauch living his life to the fullest. It's slow loading right now, but very worthwhile.

Bless those who love him with comfort & strength.

.
posted by batmonkey at 10:38 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Now I'd like to pass the mic to Yauch...

.
posted by mcstayinskool at 10:38 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by jiroczech at 10:38 AM on May 4, 2012


I cannot express how much these guys have meant to me throughout my life. God damn it.
posted by Optamystic at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by hippybear at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


A cold chill of fear cut through me
I felt my heart contract
posted by diogenes at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wow, so young.

License to Ill blew up huge in my 7th grade year. Riding on the bus to a magnet school across town I think just about everyone listened to that album over and over on their walkmans. Hip Hop was obviously already on the scene but Beastie Boys brought it into the suburbs in a way that even Run DMC failed to accomplish.

I stayed a fan of the Beastie Boys over the year even though I was never really obsessed with them ever again and definitely though MCA had a shitty deal when he got diagnosed with cancer. I can't really imagine the Beastie Boys ever really working without him.
posted by vuron at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Nothing will ever surpass the joyful astonishment of hearing Paul's Boutique for the first time. Pure genius.
posted by R. Schlock at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


.
posted by lumpenprole at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012


In the middle of the tidal wave of bummage that I feel about this, it occurred to me just now that on Sunday we'll probably see some sort of lengthy obit/career retrospective bit on CBS Sunday Morning or 60 Minutes. And that'll be simultaneously very appropriate and very surreal.
posted by COBRA! at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


Back in undergrad, we had this big poster board chart in the hallway of our student house where we sorta half-kiddingly tracked each roommate's "Steps Closer To Being As Cool As The Beastie Boys." There was general agreement that MCA sat at the very peak of the trinity - cool in the best sense, brilliant and creative and true to one's self and outside any conventional authority's judgment of his worth - and that the task was impossible.

There was no way any of us would ever be the equal of MCA.

There was at least a year of my life where my ideal mindset sounded exactly like "So What'cha Want."

.
posted by gompa at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [9 favorites]


.
posted by asnider at 10:40 AM on May 4, 2012


(wait, was it really WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? Goddamn you, rappers. I love you anyway.)
posted by Madamina at 10:40 AM on May 4, 2012


Paul's Boutique is perfect and Yauch will not stop inspiring people for quite some time.

.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:40 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


. Nathanial Hörnblowér, my secret boyfriend from Junior High. I will never forget you.
posted by Elly Vortex at 10:40 AM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


Safe journey, Yauch. And thanks.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:41 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by ericb at 10:41 AM on May 4, 2012


He was one hell of a bass player.

.
posted by drezdn at 10:41 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.

His legacy can't, it won't, and it don't stop.
posted by adamk at 10:41 AM on May 4, 2012 [37 favorites]


*grabs 2 girlies and a beer thats cold*

.
posted by marienbad at 10:41 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


"The famous rapper born in Midwood, Brooklyn" sounds so absurd and yet, well, there he was. Peace out, Adam.

.
posted by griphus at 10:42 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Ouch! That came out of nowhere. god damn it.
posted by Trochanter at 10:42 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by i_have_a_computer at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2012


Like a lemon to a lime, a lime to a lemon
sip the def ale forever in heaven.

.
posted by uncleozzy at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by smoothvirus at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Start with Dessert at 10:43 AM on May 4, 2012


Twenty some odd years ago now I was sharing an apartment over a bar with a good friend of mine who had an unexplained and apparently endless supply of weed that came from I do not know who or where. The apartment was a huge open space, part of what had once been a warehouse, and we used to smoke up and listen to music turned up real, real loud.

What was great about having this guy for a friend was that although we had very similar standards for what constituted good music, somehow we'd ended up with almost entirely orthagonal music collections...not hardly any overlap at all.

One night he put on "Paul's Boutique". At that point all I knew of the Beastie Boys was "You Gotta Fight", and I'd written them off as crap on that basis, what seemed like a long time prior to the night I'm discussing. I was shocked at how good that record was. And how good the next one was. And the next.

This makes me so sad. Namaste MCA, and

.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:44 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


.
posted by jkolko at 10:44 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:44 AM on May 4, 2012


Holy shit. I'm walking back from lunch to my computer mumbling the end-section rap of "The Sounds of Science", saying "Yeah that's right my name's Yauch" as I log onto Metafilter and see the FPP about his passing. No matter what you believe about coincidences, that's just eerie.

Be at peace, MCA. Namaste.

.
posted by pianoblack at 10:44 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


(Wait, actually, he just went to high school in Midwood. I don't know if he was born there. But still, local boy made good!)
posted by griphus at 10:45 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Iridic at 10:45 AM on May 4, 2012


Damn it, it seems like every time I turn around, there is someone I like with cancer and someone I don't like without it. "Flowers fall in attachment and weeds grow in aversion," indeed.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:45 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


Fucking hell. This breaks my heart. The very first hardcore matinee I ever saw was The Young and the Useless and The Beastie Boys. I even bought their ep from the old Rat Cage records when they used to haul all their stuff in a shopping cart to CBGBs. I'm just gutted right now.
posted by cazoo at 10:46 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by saintsguy at 10:46 AM on May 4, 2012


Didn't know he was dealing with cancer. This one came out of left field today.

.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:47 AM on May 4, 2012


Oh, and another memory that leaps to mind (now that it's too late to add to what I already wrote): an episode of "Beavis and Butthead" where the video for "Sabotage" came on. Butthead yells out "YES!!! The Beastie Boys kick EVERYBODY'S ass!" And then, more calmly, Beavis respons,"Heh. Heh. Yeah. I wish I was more like them."

That was the only occaision where I ever agreed with those guys.
posted by Ipsifendus at 10:47 AM on May 4, 2012 [15 favorites]


This is one of those times, like when Joey Ramone died, where my only reaction is Wait, that guy's mortal?

And then a lot of stunned, drawn out swears.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:47 AM on May 4, 2012 [23 favorites]




I am not a big fan of rap or hip-hop yet I have more of their songs than ay other group in my entire playlist.

.
posted by Vindaloo at 10:48 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Cosine at 10:48 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by brundlefly at 10:49 AM on May 4, 2012


Saw them at the Commodore for Check Your Head, they blew my mind and changed my life at the time.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:49 AM on May 4, 2012




This is a type of kinda like a formal dedication...

.
posted by funkiwan at 10:49 AM on May 4, 2012


Parotid gland cancer? Shit. He wasn't much older than me. Peace on the other side.
posted by blucevalo at 10:49 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


FUCK CANCER.

.
posted by dbiedny at 10:49 AM on May 4, 2012


The rest of the threads on metafilter can go fuck themselves temporarily.

For the rest of the day: I'm only staying in here where the love is.
posted by Fizz at 10:50 AM on May 4, 2012 [11 favorites]


.

Damn, this one hurts. He'll always be "Sir Stewart Wallace" in my favourite music video of all time.

Also, what bookhouse said said a few years ago; in my mental headspace no-one will ever be as cool as the Beasties were in 1994/95.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:50 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


"Dark is not the opposite of light. It is the absence of it."
posted by loquacious at 10:51 AM on May 4, 2012 [7 favorites]


Namaste you fearless, peaceful soul.
posted by malaprohibita at 10:51 AM on May 4, 2012


Damnit.
posted by bayliss at 10:52 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by madred at 10:52 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by cgk at 10:52 AM on May 4, 2012


His verse on "Professor Booty" is one of the great MC moments in hip-hop. I can't think of the last time a celebrity death affected me more.
posted by Bookhouse at 10:52 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I know they have remained active all along, but the Beastie Boys are really heavily intertwined with my memories of being young in the 90s and this news really feels like shit.
posted by SharkParty at 10:53 AM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by vibrotronica at 10:54 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by eustacescrubb at 10:54 AM on May 4, 2012


The craziest thing about the Beastie Boys is how they managed to go through several completely different periods and pull most of it off. There's the goofy rap of License to Ill, the sample intensity of Paul's Boutique, the live band period, the Mario C./Mixmaster Mike period. There's great stuff on every album.
posted by drezdn at 10:54 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


.
posted by Mittenz at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2012


Can't stand it
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by no relation at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by El Brendano at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2012


Ah, shit. That really sucks. RIP
posted by OmieWise at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2012


Aaaaaah!

This is Joey Ramone/Douglas Adams level bad news.
posted by furiousthought at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2012 [15 favorites]


.
posted by dlugoczaj at 10:56 AM on May 4, 2012


Fuck, this sucks.

.
posted by jerseygirl at 10:56 AM on May 4, 2012


I grew up in Iowa, and while you might occasionally hear a Beastie song at a wedding or a party due to their MTV exposure (we didn't get the channel until 84, I think), you'd be hard pressed to find any "fans".

It wasn't until much later in life, when I was living on the east coast, that I attended a Quake LAN party in NYC. They were playing music while folks were fragging, and suddenly someone put on "Sure Shot". The place went crazy. People were chanting the lyrics along with the song while massing more and more kills in the name of cool. I suddenly felt at home.

A year later, I had the chance to introduce my sons to the band at a Yankees game. We'd gotten box seats from my company, and we saw the Yanks play Toronto. A chance meeting walking back from concessions with my boys, who were 5 and 2 at the time, and suddenly I'm shaking hands with the Beastie Boys. The kids didn't know who they were, but they were just great guys. One of them bent down to my eldest, held out his hand, and said: "Hi there, Morgan, my name's Adam. I'm a big fan of your dad's." ...which didn't make any sense at the time, and then later I read that he was a father and fighter for justice and an all around good guy, and I guess I understood what he was saying.

To this day, my eldest son only remembers that we sat next to one of the outfields, and he got to chant "Darryl...Darryl...Darryl..." over and over again.
posted by thanotopsis at 10:57 AM on May 4, 2012 [30 favorites]


This is Joey Ramone/Douglas Adams level bad news.

For me, it's Joe Strummer bad (or Mark Sandman).
posted by drezdn at 10:57 AM on May 4, 2012 [16 favorites]


Lived more in 47 than most of us could in 90, but still

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck
posted by fungible at 10:59 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by gwint at 10:59 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by lilkeith07 at 10:59 AM on May 4, 2012


.

I still have fond memories of working at a Sam Goody's in the local mall the year Licensed To Ill came out, explaining to nervous parents buying gifts for their high-school kids that, no, it was fine, the Beastie Boys were just middle-class Jews from Brooklyn, so they were TOTALLY SAFE for the kiddies. Parents are suckers. 80s High-school kids of Raleigh, NC, you're welcome for the blown minds.

RIP, MCA.
posted by Shotgun Shakespeare at 10:59 AM on May 4, 2012 [59 favorites]


.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:59 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by secretdark at 11:00 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by kilo hertz at 11:00 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by jmstephan at 11:01 AM on May 4, 2012


SO sad to hear this. RIP.

I always loved this. It is a mashup of Beastie Boys and Daft Punk.

.
posted by 4ster at 11:01 AM on May 4, 2012


Saw this on facebook (of course) and was absolutely SHOCKED. I hadn't really been following them lately, but like many people, they were the anthem of my high school and college years. I had a bit of a crush on MCA when I was a teenager - he always seemed like the cool, mature one of the bunch, with his Buddhism and activism.

Goddammit.

.
posted by lunasol at 11:01 AM on May 4, 2012


Jesus Christ, I think I'm about to start crying. It feels kinda dumb to type it, but I can't imagine the last twenty years without the Beastie Boys. Fuck. I didn't even know he was sick.

Thank you for everything, Mr. Yauch.

.
posted by EatTheWeek at 11:02 AM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by /\/\/\/ at 11:02 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by spitefulcrow at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012


Also, I've been listening to the Beasties all morning and it's amazing how well everything holds up. Such great music.
posted by lunasol at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012


Took my breath away when I saw it on Twitter (where all bad news goes these days). I had hoped he would turn it around.

.
posted by immlass at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012


It won't be the same party without you, MCA, but we'll keep fighting for it.
posted by phoebus at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by hecho de la basura at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012


Very sad. I'm not generally a big fan of rap, but the Beastie Boys were an incredibly influential and energetic band that brought joy to a lot of people.
posted by John Cohen at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012


For me, it's Joe Strummer bad (or Mark Sandman).

Also worthy choices. Guru too. I like to imagine they're all in the same place somehow.
posted by furiousthought at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Namaste, MCA.

.


(and a big old Fuck You to cancer)
posted by thivaia at 11:03 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


You guys have no idea how dangerous "Fight for Your Right" sounded at a junior high school dance in rural California back when it came out. The Beasties have always woven their way in and out of the soundtrack of my life. Thanks for the music and memories, Adam.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:04 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Fight for my right to party in heaven, MCA.

.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 11:04 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by unreasonable at 11:04 AM on May 4, 2012


This one really hurts.

.
posted by BoringPostcards at 11:04 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


47? Goddammit. I'm 40 and I still recall getting the stellar Paul's Boutique on a (red) cassette the day of release and thinking "What the hell?!?

Of course, the next day it gelled into the hip-hop classic no one has matched. How mind-bogglingly advanced for 1989.

RIP.
posted by porn in the woods at 11:05 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I remember my local Richmond, VA radio station, the morning The Joshua Tree knocked License to Ill out of the number one album spot, calling U2, "The Saviors of Rock." No one knew back then how much those three men had in them. I am so sad to hear this.
posted by 4ster at 11:05 AM on May 4, 2012


Pandora's Beastie Boys station, for solidarity.
posted by batmonkey at 11:05 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by lovermont at 11:05 AM on May 4, 2012


Fuck.

.
posted by cashman at 11:05 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


In a weird pop culture synergy, last night's Community was a dark preparation for this.
posted by drezdn at 11:06 AM on May 4, 2012


Everybody has a favorite MCA rhyme, this is mine: A Year And A Day

.
posted by waraw at 11:06 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Fairly certain that productivity at most business just fucking stopped. Can this be like school!? Can I go home for the rest of the day. This shit is traumatic.
posted by Fizz at 11:06 AM on May 4, 2012 [16 favorites]


My heart just contracted. Peace, MCA.
.
posted by boofidies at 11:06 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Z303 at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012


Man, fuck this day. Seriously.

.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I still listen to Paul's Boutique regularly. It's the perfect album. I didn't know he had cancer, so this came out of left field for me. I am really sad about it.

I work for four surgical otolaryngologists who work in head and neck cancers, like the salivary gland cancer he had. The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance helps support free public screenings (we had one in our clinic last Friday); if anybody wants to do something to remember Adam Yauch, donating to that program might help somebody else discover their cancer early.

.
posted by joannemerriam at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012 [19 favorites]


.
Fuck cancer
I want to cry to Cookie Puss now.
posted by The Violet Cypher at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


> At that point all I knew of the Beastie Boys was "You Gotta Fight", and I'd written them off as crap on that basis...

Me, too. When Paul's Boutique came out (and flopped), my brother was the only person I knew who bought it and admitted to liking it*. Because I was in the middle of a heavy classic rock phase and loathe to admit I liked anything my brother did, when I realized I dug "Hey Ladies" I had to resort to borrowing his tape, listening to it on the sly and then rewinding it to the same point before putting it back. I did the same thing with "Check Your Head" a few years later.

* I remember kids at school making fun of the "Hey Ladies" video - WHICH IS AWESOME - "What's up with this '70s shit????" In my neck of the woods in 1989 the '70s were *not cool*.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I feel so old.

And so sad.

.

posted by elsietheeel at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


The guy was a few years younger than I am. This is WRONG.

Although they weren't a band I listened to much, I liked what I heard, and my respect for them definitely grew over the years.

47 is just too damn young.

.
posted by mosk at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012


Namaste, MCA.
posted by scody at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012


Cancer = Some Old Bullshit
posted by Fizz at 11:07 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Fucking cancer. I'm tellin' all y'all, it's a sabotage.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:08 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by webmutant at 11:08 AM on May 4, 2012


And the cojones to stir up shit on the Licensed to Ill tour with inflatable penises and cans of Budweiser; these guys' threat to your children dominated every early-1987 PTA meeting across the USA. How goddamn rock and roll of them.
posted by porn in the woods at 11:08 AM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


Okay so I first heard about the Beastie Boys in our 4th Grade Music class talent show. Everyone had to pick a song to lip sync and do some dance to. Some guy did the Tom Cruise bit from Risky business, my crush did Material Girl by Madonna, I did the whole Kevin Bacon chair thing from Footloose. But Donnel Washington, with his kid-n-play haircut, did Brass Monkey which is inappropriate I guess for 4th graders on so many levels and I was blown away. I remember that night telling my parents that I just had to have that tape. I said they're not really singing and they're not really talking. The word "rap" was not in my musical vocab yet. It was basketball season and my dad used to pay my 25 cents a point and they said I could save up my basketball money for a few weeks and buy it. I called the Hastings in the mall and found out that with tax it was $7.56. So I thought "okay, I need to score 30 points and I'd have enough." I usually scored about 10 points a game, but I could not wait three weeks. I took the court that Saturday morning at the YMCA and went Kobe on their asses and dropped 36 points. I was a beast that day. Grabbing boards. Blocking shots. Shooting 3's. I fucking dominated that Greys. I wanted that tape. (That was the pinnacle of my sports achievement btw, never cam close to that again).

Ok so my Dad gave me my $9 and we headed to the mall, which we always did on Saturdays for some reason. I was so excited and uncontrollable that on the way there my sister was annoying me somehow and I told her to shut up, she told on my and I got grounded for a week. I was still allowed to buy the tape, but couldn't have it for week. SO I went into Hastings and they had a huge column of the tapes in one vertical strip between the shelves, where they would display the best selling tapes I guess. I grabbed it, paid for it, and my mom immediately put the bag in her purse. After next Saturdays game (6pts) I finally got the tape. My mom handed me the bag and I ran upstairs and opened the bag ready to play Brass Monkey, took out the tape and looked at the cover: it was fucking Lionel Ritchie "Dancing on the Ceiling." I nearly lost it. I begged my parents to take me back to try to get the right tape, but they were like "nope, wait til next week." So I did what anyone would do I guess, I hopped on my Huffy and rode the three miles or so to the mall and went back to Hastings. Having never done a return I didn't know I would need the receipt but the dude working their named David let me swap it. SO I finally had my tape.

I followed their career from then until now and I have loved just about all of it. Paul's boutique took me a while to wrap my head around of course. I must have seen them live a half dozen times but in Austin in 93 or 94, I would have to look at my stub, I was lucky enough to get to meet MCA backstage. I am a shy person then as I am now and I had no idea what to say to him. He introduced himself to the group of six or seven of us and you could tell he would rather be doing something else, can't blame him, but my buddy said Marc tell em your story. Of course I refused but MCA said, no man, whats teh story. SO I told it, just like above except at that time I went Jordan on the Greys, not Kobe, and he thought it was the funniest shit ever. He had me tell it again to everyone, AdRock, Mike D, road crew everyone, and they all though it was hysterical. As we were leaving he called me over to him and said "next time you get a Lionel Richie record instead of ours, keep it, he's the shit." Then he hugged me. Greatest night ever.
posted by holdkris99 at 11:09 AM on May 4, 2012 [549 favorites]


.
posted by Diagonalize at 11:09 AM on May 4, 2012


Some day / We shall / All be one

Damn, man. It's well after 2am in somebody's living room on a warm spring evening in 1995, and there's a beer in my hand and a joint's just coming around again, and that swirling sound in the mix at 2:45 of "Something's Got To Give" (right after Yauch gleefully takes a sledgehammer to a handgun in the video) sounds like a helicopter taking off, bound for some funkier and more peaceful universe. And for a blissful half a minute, I'm on it.

Feel like I just switched from one chapter in life to another here. This isn't Cobain's suicide, this is the grim hammer of inevitable mortality or something. Damn.
posted by gompa at 11:10 AM on May 4, 2012 [31 favorites]


.

Also thanks for Tibet.
posted by Ironmouth at 11:10 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by asfuller at 11:10 AM on May 4, 2012


I'm not--and never was--a Beastie's fan, but holy shit that headline just hit me harder than any celebrity death ever has. Like a 2x4 between the eyes.

.
posted by broadway bill at 11:10 AM on May 4, 2012


At that point all I knew of the Beastie Boys was "You Gotta Fight", and I'd written them off as crap on that basis...

Oh man, me too. That song was like, the anthem of every meathead jock frat putz in town. I hated this band with every fiber of my 14-year-old being.

Until I saw the video for "Shake Your Rump" late one night. That changed the whole game for me.

I pretty much tuned out from Hello Nasty onwards, but I'll be damned if they didn't create some of the best music I'd heard produced in my lifetime.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 11:10 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by HostBryan at 11:11 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by donovan at 11:11 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Wylla at 11:11 AM on May 4, 2012


Hell yes, waraw. A Year And A Day is one of my favorite sections of Paul's Boutique and ties the whole Bouillabaise together. That, in a perfect nutshell, was our man Yauch. Thanks for thinking of that.
posted by pianoblack at 11:11 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by me3dia at 11:12 AM on May 4, 2012


gompa just nailed it
posted by R. Schlock at 11:12 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by HumanComplex at 11:12 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by jeffj at 11:12 AM on May 4, 2012


I pretty much tuned out from Hello Nasty onwards, but I'll be damned if they didn't create some of the best music I'd heard produced in my lifetime.

Tune the fuck back in.
posted by Fizz at 11:12 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


.

Still remember the very first time I heard them... Kick it!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2012


One of my favorite things about the Beastie Boys is that they are one of the few bands that each new generation of kids takes ownership of as if they discovered them. Later Beasties concerts had a wide range of ages represented, and yet everyone in the house seemed jacked to max to be seeing them live.
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


So sad.
posted by momochan at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2012


Put your worries on hold
Get up and groove with the rhythm in your soul


.
posted by furtive at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Here's the full episode of the Beastie Boys on Charlie Rose in 2007.

And here's the link to donate to Free Tibet.

Rest in peace, Mr. Yauch.
posted by argonauta at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


Holy fucking shit holdkris99.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 11:14 AM on May 4, 2012 [10 favorites]


.
posted by Gelatin at 11:15 AM on May 4, 2012


Aw man. R.I.P.


.
posted by Sailormom at 11:15 AM on May 4, 2012


requiescat in pace †
posted by Tom-B at 11:15 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by treepour at 11:16 AM on May 4, 2012


This NPR page includes a link to their Fresh Air interview, which I loved.

Also, I think I'm getting more pissed off and heartbroken at cancer as I get older, instead of more resigned and whatever. Because fuck you cancer is why.
posted by Occula at 11:16 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


oh snap!

.
posted by fatbaq at 11:17 AM on May 4, 2012


Fuck cancer

.
posted by DreamerFi at 11:17 AM on May 4, 2012


Paul's Boutique (and Three Feet High And Rising)-- messages from the days where samples roamed wild and it seemed like hip-hop could do anything it wanted.

RIP MCA.
posted by eyeballkid at 11:18 AM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


This is incredibly sad. The Beasties have been such a big part of my life.
Peace out, MCA.


.
posted by msali at 11:18 AM on May 4, 2012



Well, this is a shitty birthday present indeed.

.

("License To Ill" and Anthrax's "I'm the Man" were my gateway drug to hip-hop. So much of the music that came out of the 80s was awesome.)
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 11:18 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.

I had forgotten that I was ever a Beastie Boys fan until today when this news came out. Listening to their music now and wow...memories coming back. I was of the Licensed to Ill generation. Brass Monkey was my favorite!
posted by daydreamer at 11:18 AM on May 4, 2012


M.C. for what I AM and do
the A is for Adam and the lyrics; true
so as pray and hope and the message is sent
and I AM living in the dreams that I have dreamt
because I'm down with the three the unstoppable three
me and Adam and D. were born to M.C.
and my body and soul and mind are pure
not polluted or diluted or damaged beyond cure

.
posted by fatbaq at 11:19 AM on May 4, 2012 [17 favorites]


The Beastie Boys are one of only a handful of bands I've gone out of my way to see in concert multiple times and they never disappointed.

Someone upthread mentioned how MCA used his fame and power for good. Specifically (and apologies if this has already been mentioned, thread is moving fast), Yauch was the creator of the Tibetan Freedom Concert. I was lucky enough to attend one of these events in Golden Gate Park in 1996, and it remains one of the more memorable concert experiences I've ever had. Not every day you get to see the Foo Fighters, Biz Markie, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys and Smashing Pumpkins all on one bill.
posted by The Gooch at 11:19 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I'm gonna have to go home tonight and fire up the ol' video anthology. And maybe a little something else.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:21 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by badger_flammable at 11:21 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by derekpaco at 11:21 AM on May 4, 2012


As much love as the old stuff (License, Paul's Boutique) are getting and deserve, have you heard anything off the Beasties' newest, Hot Sauce Committee Part Two? Holy shit - MCA rocked until the end.

Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament

My life would have been very much poorer without the Beastie Boys. Go in peace, Mr. Yauch.
posted by workerant at 11:22 AM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


ill before his time to get ill :(

.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 11:23 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I've started this comment many times over, not able to adequately convey my admiration and affection for Yauch and the Beastie Boys. The To the 5 Boroughs tour is easily my favorite musical memory - seeing the group's playfulness and generosity to their fans was a joy. Peace, brother.

.
posted by smilingtiger at 11:24 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Holy fucking weird:

@ChuckSchumer: "Born and Bred in Brooklyn, U.S.A., they call him Adam Yauch, but he's M.C.A. RIP Adam. #beastieboys #nosleeptillbrooklyn"
posted by zombieflanders at 11:24 AM on May 4, 2012 [31 favorites]


.
posted by we vs us at 11:25 AM on May 4, 2012


When I lived in a share house, many years ago, I was a total bitch to one room mate who loved the Beastie Boys . . . I didn't understand them. But I learnt to. And I have made sure my son knows and loves them.

The Beastie Boys always remind of how wrong we can be, and how much we can change.

And this news, it just makes me sad. For us, for his family and friends.

.
posted by bwonder2 at 11:26 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Fuck.
posted by davidjmcgee at 11:26 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by rtha at 11:27 AM on May 4, 2012


@ChuckSchumer: "Born and Bred in Brooklyn, U.S.A., they call him Adam Yauch, but he's M.C.A. RIP Adam. #beastieboys #nosleeptillbrooklyn"

Holy shit I hope ghosts are real and can access Twitter because goddamn
posted by griphus at 11:27 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


This came up on Facebook. Beastie Boys on Hangin' w/ MTV - COMPLETE VERSION (03-20-1992)

glory days.
posted by philip-random at 11:27 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.

As an aside...I got NYTimes breaking news emails for Levon Helm and Don Cornelius, but nothing for Adam Yauch? Fuck that.
posted by mullacc at 11:27 AM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


Fuck. The Beastie Boys provided so much of the soundtrack to my life for so many years. He'll be missed.
posted by biscotti at 11:27 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by melt away at 11:28 AM on May 4, 2012


As an aside...I got NYTimes breaking news emails for Levon Helm and Don Cornelius, but nothing for Adam Yauch? Fuck that.

Yes, I'm fucking waiting.
posted by Fizz at 11:29 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by scblackman at 11:29 AM on May 4, 2012


NYT finally has their obit up. Took them a long time. Prior to this, the last mention of Yauch was '09.
posted by batmonkey at 11:30 AM on May 4, 2012


... and also, a thought.

Strangely, the thing that comes to mind was not the Beastie Boys themselves (saw them live twice back in the early 90s, and they were GREAT) but the quality of the music they played on the PA before they hit the stage. Just a wide, wild mixture of the BEST stuff. They Loved Music and not just some narrow niche of it. And I think Music loved them.
posted by philip-random at 11:30 AM on May 4, 2012 [10 favorites]


.
posted by random thoughts at 11:30 AM on May 4, 2012


Namaste MCA. _/\_
posted by Argyle at 11:30 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


ali baba and the forty thieves

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES!

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:30 AM on May 4, 2012 [22 favorites]


.
posted by neuromodulator at 11:32 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by jackmakrl at 11:32 AM on May 4, 2012


I got NYTimes breaking news emails for Levon Helm and Don Cornelius

I believe Roy Orbison's death got more column inches than Elvis Presley's. Editors aren't immune to generation bias.
posted by bendybendy at 11:32 AM on May 4, 2012


I'm don't really know anyone who loves it as much as I do, but The In Sound From Way Out! continues to be one of my favorite albums, ever. You'll be missed, sir.

.
posted by mfu at 11:32 AM on May 4, 2012 [10 favorites]


and...

rest in beastie
posted by bendybendy at 11:33 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Acey at 11:33 AM on May 4, 2012


Fuck cancer indeed.

!
posted by Loudmax at 11:34 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Rock Steady at 11:35 AM on May 4, 2012


fuck. I was 15 when License to Ill dropped.

It had a huge effect on me and everyone around me.

Sadness and the shadow of looming mortality.

.
posted by dontoine at 11:35 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar at 11:35 AM on May 4, 2012


I believe Roy Orbison's death got more column inches than Elvis Presley's.

Seriously? When Elvis died, he was THE NEWS for about a month. As an 18 year old interested in NOW music, I truly came to loathe the guy. Me and Chuck D.
posted by philip-random at 11:36 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by h0p3y at 11:36 AM on May 4, 2012


The In Sound From Way Out! is one of my favorites too. I was working in a record store the summer it came out. I played it constantly.
posted by Sailormom at 11:36 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


What horrible news

I had such a huge crush on him when Beastie Boys debuted
posted by Julnyes at 11:37 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Oh, goddamn. Check Your Head takes me right back to being 18, first year in college, first year in NYC. Weirdly enough, been listening to Paul's Boutique a lot the past couple of weeks. Goddamn.
posted by Mavri at 11:37 AM on May 4, 2012


Nthing the "In Sound From Way Out." It used to be my go to interstitial music.
posted by drezdn at 11:38 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]



posted by Smart Dalek at 11:38 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:38 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Dumsnill at 11:38 AM on May 4, 2012


RIP, Nathanial Hörnblowér
posted by dgeiser13 at 11:39 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


My heart goes out to the other Beasties..
posted by chronkite at 11:40 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by 221bbs at 11:41 AM on May 4, 2012


I believe Roy Orbison's death got more column inches than Elvis Presley's.

Seriously? When Elvis died, he was THE NEWS for about a month



Elvis got more headlines for sure, but less coverage and tributes in ink (I got nothing to back this up other than some anecdotal memory of it being held up as an example of editorial decisions.)
posted by bendybendy at 11:41 AM on May 4, 2012


Very very sad. I wish he knew how much joy he brought to his fans.
posted by release the hardwoods! at 11:41 AM on May 4, 2012


Nathanial Hornblower
posted by casconed at 11:41 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Memories: I was five years old when Licensed To Ill came out. A friend of mine a block away was four. Somehow he got the tape. I don't remember if maybe his Mom got it and he took it from her or what. Anyway, I remember going over to his house and hanging out in his room, playing on his Commodore. I was getting ready to leave and he says "Oh wait, you've gotta listen to this!" Now, of course, I knew Fight For Your Right from the radio and MTV. I didn't know what they were saying, but it sounded great! So he starts playing that tape, and I loved it. I went back home and told my Mom about it! I was excited! Well, turns out my Mom called his Mom, and he got into trouble. D'oh!

Second memory... Sometime in the early to mid-1990s... I can't find much reference to this around the internet. I'd kill for a video clip, but I remember they were being interviewed on MTV and asked something about Nirvana and similar bands, and one of the guys goes "Oh! YOU MUST BE TALKING ABOUT GRUNGE!!! GRRRRRRRRUUUUUNNNNGE!!!!" And they were in their own way poking fun at that movement. When I (rarely) reference that line in a conversation about grunge music, sadly no one knows what the hell I'm talking about. Anyone else remember that?

Third and final memory is that of just playing the living hell out of my Beastie Boys CDs through high school and college.

RIP Adam, your creativity will be missed!
posted by mrzer0 at 11:42 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Isn't it hard to compare the two directly though (Orbison obit vs. Presley)? Orbison's death was ten years later, and during the peak of the Traveling Wilburies.
posted by drezdn at 11:43 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Beastie Boys are the center of my hip-hop world. Their music never got old, it was all just instant classics, and with such consistency...

MCA had that real steady flow and I always felt he was the perfect center for Mike D's weird/awesome wordplay and Adrock's intense voice.

You'll be missed, brother.

I keep my underwear up with a piece of elastic
I use a bullshit mic that's made out of plastic
to send my rhymes out to all nations
like Ma Bell, I've got the ILL COMMUNICATIONS!


Love ya, Adam.
posted by d1rge at 11:44 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I hate repeating what I said on FB, but: maudlin as it is, I really feel like another piece of my childhood has died with him. RIP, MCA.

And holdkris99, thank you so, so much for that story. It was fantastic.
posted by shiu mai baby at 11:45 AM on May 4, 2012


Aww, fuck. This makes me sad. Every time my three year old hears me singing along to something on the radio he asks me if it is the Beastie Boys.

.
posted by caution live frogs at 11:45 AM on May 4, 2012 [8 favorites]


And yet Britney Spears still walks among us.

There is no god.
posted by prepmonkey at 11:45 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


*pours brass monkey on curb*
posted by jonmc at 11:46 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Ah, dammit. This one was a surprise.
posted by jadepearl at 11:46 AM on May 4, 2012


47, Christ that's too young.

Eggman (live in '94) comes and goes as my favourite Beasties song, at least when it comes to capturing both their dumb vigour and their sharpness.
posted by Len at 11:47 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


You'll never realize which ones will hit you most until it happens, I guess. Fuck this news.


.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:49 AM on May 4, 2012


In other sad news, Richie Teeter, the drummer on the Dictators first two albums passed Wednesday of esophageal cancer. I'd link but I haven't learned how to do that on my phone yet.
posted by jonmc at 11:49 AM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


No.

No no no no no no no no....

Just...no.













dammit




.
posted by magstheaxe at 11:50 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by almostmanda at 11:51 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by kariebookish at 11:51 AM on May 4, 2012


.

Fought for right to party, pretty much nailed it.
posted by Artw at 11:52 AM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


.
posted by oneironaut at 11:53 AM on May 4, 2012


Now my name is MCA, I got a license to kill
I think you know what time it is, it's time to get ill
Now what do we have here? An outlaw and his beer
I run this land, you understand, I make myself clear
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:54 AM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


I remember being in grade 6, and reading Spin's best albums of the 80s, and watching one of the Free Tibet costumes, and it really was the first place I encountered the pure bricoulage of hip hop, and the pleasure, the joy, the calculated rawness of him--the transition from License to Ill to Paul's Boutique to Sabotage, is how i want to be an adult.
posted by PinkMoose at 11:55 AM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


At one point I knew the lyrics from beginning to end of License to Ill and Hello Nasty. It's mostly gone now, but...

Fuck.

.
posted by paulus andronicus at 11:56 AM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by jquinby at 11:57 AM on May 4, 2012


I can't think of two many bands that exceeded people's expectations more than the Beastie Boys. When they first came out with Fight For Your Right To Party on MTV they just seemed like they were destined for One Hit Wonderville.

Then they just kept releasing more stuff. And it was really fucking good. In the process they all seemed to grow into outstanding individuals who, like a lot of us, cringed when they thought of what they were like in their twenties.
posted by bondcliff at 11:57 AM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by koroshiya at 11:59 AM on May 4, 2012


I rarely gasp anymore. This one made me gasp. And now I'm really sad. Safe journey, man.
posted by Lukenlogs at 12:00 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


::cries::
I really thought he'd pull through, somehow. Namaste, MCA.


.
posted by droplet at 12:00 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Writer, director, musician, band-member, rapper, artist, activist, vegan, Buddhist, father, husband, brother, son, human.

RIP MCA

.
posted by Fizz at 12:01 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Can we sidebar holdkris' comment stat, please?
posted by joe lisboa at 12:02 PM on May 4, 2012 [8 favorites]


.
posted by Tiresias at 12:03 PM on May 4, 2012


(Oops: this one.)

.
posted by joe lisboa at 12:04 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by willpie at 12:05 PM on May 4, 2012


One night he put on "Paul's Boutique". At that point all I knew of the Beastie Boys was "You Gotta Fight", and I'd written them off as crap on that basis, what seemed like a long time prior to the night I'm discussing. I was shocked at how good that record was. And how good the next one was. And the next.

I was a hip hop fan and supposed to be an adult by the time License to Ill came out, and I hated it. Freakin’ hated it, an insult to hip hop and music and living things. Then I heard Paul’s Boutique and was floored. I still think it’s one of the all time great albums of any kind of music. How did they do that? I have learned to like things I didn’t like before, but I have never experienced such a profound change of my opinion of a musical act.

A guy that really showed how it’s supposed to be done.
posted by bongo_x at 12:05 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


Someone just tweeted a sentiment that perfectly sums up this event:
"For me, losing a Beastie Boy is like what losing a Beatle was to my father's generation."
posted by Fizz at 12:07 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


"He changed and grew but somehow always stayed true to his badass heart. Who could wish for more? No one ever more convincingly wailed about shaking your rump, yet certainly no one ever managed to do so while simultaneously projecting the serene demeanor of a truly enlightened human."
posted by scody at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2012 [8 favorites]


The Beastie Boys are the first music I remember ever liking. I like to think that it's because of them that I learned to like music.




.
posted by General Malaise at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2012


Dear Beastie Boys,

Thank you for Licensed to Ill, Paul's Boutique, Ill Communication, and Hello Nasty. I haven't had the chance to listen to any of your other albums, but I'm sure they're good, too. Oh, and thank you for Paul's Boutique. Again.

To Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz and the family of Adam Yauch,

love, and peace.

sincerely,

khan.
posted by KHAAAN! at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2012


Oh HELL NO
posted by angrycat at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've spent a whole lot of time in my life working in theatre hanging lights and building sets until 3 or 4 in the morning. Back in the early 90's, I worked with the same crew all the time for four or five years.

We would take turns picking the music because we couldn't really find anything we all agreed with.

One day, somebody brought in Licensed to Ill and for like six months after that, the only group we listened to was the Beastie Boys in all their glory. The Oingo Boingo fanatic, the metalhead, the obscure pop fiend and me, the punk with art rock leanings, all screaming along with the Beastie Boys to the top of our lungs. I think we probably played Paul's Boutique that year more than the radio had played any of those songs up to that time period.

MCA was easily my favorite voice in the group - not that Mike D and Ad Rock weren't great, too, but I always had a hard time telling them apart.

Man, the only other artist that we ever all agreed on was Tom Waits - and I can't explain that either.

So bummed about this.
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2012 [16 favorites]


.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:09 PM on May 4, 2012


There are very few (maybe 3) songs that I sing from memory. You gotta fight for your right to party is one of them because my friends and I practiced it over and over again in fifth or sixth grade.

.
posted by bananafish at 12:11 PM on May 4, 2012


I used to see Adam quite a bit in this bar I spent a lot of time at in the early through late 90s. He was a nice guy, very unassuming and quiet, just one of the guys hanging out with friends,we'd say hi all the time. He'd always have his bike.

I'd play this song (Ricky's Theme) to death on the jukebox in that place. God, we played that album (Ill Communication) to death, in that bar actually. And that album along with Stereolab would comprise about 50% of my soundtrack for the 90s, easy as pie.

Too too too damned young.



Listen all y'all, it's a sabotage


.
posted by Skygazer at 12:13 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I was a hip hop fan and supposed to be an adult by the time License to Ill came out, and I hated it. Freakin’ hated it, an insult to hip hop and music and living things. Then I heard Paul’s Boutique and was floored. I still think it’s one of the all time great albums of any kind of music. How did they do that? I have learned to like things I didn’t like before, but I have never experienced such a profound change of my opinion of a musical act.

Seriously .... I'm hard pressed to come up with another example of a band that released such (relatively) commercial crap and then came out of nowhere with something like Paul's Boutique.
posted by beukeboom at 12:13 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


This just fucking sucks.

I saw the Beasties when they headlined the Tibetian Freedom Concert in DC. I was there for pearl jam but had always wanted to see them.
It was time for them to play the place went NUTS. RFK was actually shaking. It was a beautiful thing.
posted by ShawnString at 12:14 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I saw...
This one time....
My favourite....
Man, this one night.....
Every time I hear.....
Remember when........

This is what the Beastie Boys gifted to us.
posted by Fizz at 12:16 PM on May 4, 2012 [17 favorites]


Been watching videos and concert footage for the last hour...

I can't even feel sad. I can never feel sad when I listen to the Beastie Boys.

LOVE YOU ADAM!
posted by d1rge at 12:17 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by lord_wolf at 12:18 PM on May 4, 2012


License to Ill was our official roof jumping sound track.

I was in 5th grade when License to Ill came out and my friend had a copy. His parents were never around. One day we realized that we could run and jump off the roof of the porch down to the ground and not get hurt. This was at least a 15ft drop. We would jump, roll, laugh and run up the stairs to do it again. This is the music we did it to.
posted by bdc34 at 12:19 PM on May 4, 2012 [7 favorites]


I can't stand it.
posted by sourwookie at 12:20 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:21 PM on May 4, 2012


He once had a beard like a billy goat.



.
posted by Spatch at 12:22 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by stagewhisper at 12:23 PM on May 4, 2012


Damn. That's some loss.
posted by Elmore at 12:24 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Cash4Lead at 12:25 PM on May 4, 2012


I have listened to Licensed to Ill more than any other album, period. I memorized every single lyric of that album by the time I was 13.

MCA, you shaped my childhood and continue to be a huge part of my cultural identity. Sigh.

I will say Kaddish for you tonight.


.
posted by ohyouknow at 12:26 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by Flood at 12:26 PM on May 4, 2012


Seriously .... I'm hard pressed to come up with another example of a band that released such (relatively) commercial crap and then came out of nowhere with something like Paul's Boutique.

The magic of Mario C.
posted by sourwookie at 12:27 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Put your worries on hold.


.
posted by zinc saucier at 12:28 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I always heard it as "Shake Europ-ah" (Mark E Smith Style). Timely.
posted by Elmore at 12:28 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Couple of additional things...

The video for "Shadrach" is gorgeous and captures all three Beasties in an unexpected way.

"Fight For Your Right To Party" was intended as a joke and they didn't play it much live after 1987.

No less a musical authority than Chuck D apparently said, of Paul's Boutique, that "it was the dirty secret among the black hip-hop community that the album had the best beats around at that time."
posted by Joey Michaels at 12:29 PM on May 4, 2012 [11 favorites]


.
posted by radiocontrolled at 12:30 PM on May 4, 2012


Wonder if my local package store carries Brass Monkey? You know, in honor of the man, I just might..

FYI #RIPMCA is a wonderful global reaction via twitter. CHEERS!
posted by TangerineGurl at 12:32 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


If you can feel what I'm feeling then it's a musical masterpiece
If you can hear what I'm dealing with then that's cool at least
What's running through my mind comes through in my walk
True feelings are shown from the way that I talk
And this is me y'all, I emcee y'all
My name is M.C.A. and I still do what I please


.
posted by falameufilho at 12:33 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by gc at 12:34 PM on May 4, 2012


Unfair.
posted by ZipRibbons at 12:35 PM on May 4, 2012


No less a musical authority than Chuck D apparently said, of Paul's Boutique, that "it was the dirty secret among the black hip-hop community that the album had the best beats around at that time."

Dude, Chuck D and Public Enemy were the OPENING ACT for the Beastie Boys once upon a time. Musical authority? Hell yeah, but the Boys were there first.

I was just listening to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in the car yesterday, and I can pick out samples that they got from Licensed to Ill. You know from that where the B-boys were in the hip-hop community. They got respect.
posted by dlugoczaj at 12:37 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I always hoped he really did punch a piano player in his face.
posted by Brainy at 12:37 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by gyusan at 12:37 PM on May 4, 2012


Beastie Boys live in Glasgow, 1999 [45 mins]. I was at this gig. It was fucking awesome.
posted by Len at 12:37 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


Between the Beasties and a Tribe Called Quest, that's the majority of my hip-hop influences. This is awful news.
posted by Edison Carter at 12:37 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Shit.

I was into Licensed to Ill when it came out (I was in ninth grade - how could I not be?) but when Paul's Boutique came out for whatever variety of reasons I didn't buy it. I never even heard a track*. My brother and I knew about it, somehow (Rolling Stone?) but in those neolithic times before the World Wide Hookydooky it was HARD to hear music that wasn't being played on the radio, if you weren't willing/able to buy it. So Paul's Boutique passed us by.

But. I graduated high school in 1991 and eventually some friends talked me out of driving my shite car to Austin, TX and into selling my shite car and moving to a sleepy, industrial neighborhood in Brooklyn on the proceeds. By the spring of 1992 I was living with 7 friends in a 5 room apartment, with no heat and no hallways (to get to any room you had to walk through another room) with the only bathroom outside of our front door (interestingly: it was at corner of N9 and Bedford, if you can believe that. This building.).

Check Your Head came out and was like a wrecking ball to us. It could not have been more perfect for who we were or wanted to be, at that point in our lives. It might as well have been created by some platonic, idealized version of us. We played it all the time. I mean ALL THE TIME. We would get 40s from the deli across the street, somebody would get a nickel bag (if that doesn't date this, nothing will) and would play Check Your Head on our gigantic Frankenstein's stereo and we would feel good about it. Every night. Our friend Howard tried to get us to go somewhere or other one night, in the city, and we were all noncommittal, and he said, "What? Do you guys just want to sit around your shitty kitchen listening to the damned Beastie Boys, AGAIN?" and we were all, "Uh, yes, actually."

The Beastie Boys showed me, us, that you could be brilliant, even if you had been a dumbass. That you could rethink mistakes. That cool people grow. MCA was the most focused example of that - he had been the sort of roughest member on Licensed to Ill and by Check Your Head he had really turned around, moved into something different. Something better - without a hint of fakery or pretension. He was my favorite when I was a 14 year old moron, and he was my favorite when I was a 20 year old slightly-less-of-a-moron, and he is my favorite now - as a 40 year old different sort of moron. Godspeed, Adam.

* Of course I got around to Paul's Boutique eventually, and now rank it ahead of Check Your Head - but Check Your Head hit me hardest, first (second?), and will always be more important to me.


PS: My first concert was Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Murphy's Law

posted by dirtdirt at 12:40 PM on May 4, 2012 [28 favorites]


.
posted by JoJoPotato at 12:40 PM on May 4, 2012


The magic of Mario C.

As I understand it, Paul's Boutique was more or less a Dust Brothers album that the Beasties rapped over.
posted by chronkite at 12:42 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


I saw the Beastie Boys at the Hollywood Palladium in 87. It was an incredible show. Most ethnically and culturally diverse show I've been do before or since. At one point Run DMC busted in unannounced and people went nuts. Unforgettable night.

My roommate and I pitched in money to buy a t-shirt from the merch table that the Beastie Boys logo on the front and "GET OFF MY DICK!" across the back and we took turns wearing it. Oh, the looks we'd get at the grocery store from that shirt.

When a Beastie Boys song comes up on shuffle these days, I'll turn shuffle off and end up just listening to the Beastie Boys for a few hours.
posted by birdherder at 12:43 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


“And shortly before his death, no less than Miles Davis said he never got tired of listening to [Paul’s Boutique].” - Gathering Dust, Bay Area Music Magazine

Ever the army brat, I was about to start my second year of junior high in '89 when my family was posted to Ottawa. My friend's dad had the exact same posting, something that doesn't happen very often in the army world, and he ended living a long bike ride/short bus ride away.

It didn't take long for us to start hanging out again after the move, and I fondly recall countless hours spent in his basement playing Wasteland on the Commodore 64, drinking Strawberry Crush and listening to Paul's Boutique.
posted by furtive at 12:47 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


.
posted by aesop at 12:48 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by mkim at 12:50 PM on May 4, 2012


I remember hearing "Fight for your Right" on the radio in grade school on the school bus. The first time my sister said something to me that wasn't mean was to ask me, "Do mom and Dad care if you listen to music with swears in it? No? Then we're listening to the Beasties...hit it!"

I fell to sleep to the In Sound from Way out for years...much of my life has been accompanied by the beasties. The last hurrah with my high school buddies was to see the Beastie/Tribe tour in 1998...it was at the end of the summer right before we left for college.

I never met him, but I still feel like I know him well. Namaste, friend.
posted by schyler523 at 12:50 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Heartbreaking. I thought he had that cancer beat, years ago. MCA in particular had a big influence on me in high school with his contributions to Check Your Head and Ill Communication. It seems absurd but I could have been a different person today.

I know at these times you're supposed to be happy for their life, not sad for their death, but it's hard not to be sad. We'll miss you, MCA.
posted by bleep at 12:50 PM on May 4, 2012


License to Ill came out just as I got my drivers' license. That was a powerful combination. Paul's Boutique in my first year of college. Somebody above said it's like a 2x4 to the head, I agree. These guys were the soundtrack to my youth. My best to his friends and family.

Kings of New York indeed. I love how they treat Letterman at the end. Respect? I think so.

I don't think someone famous dying has ever bummed me out this much.
posted by MarvinTheCat at 12:51 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Fuck fuck fuck.
posted by Big_B at 12:51 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by evoque at 12:52 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by JoeZydeco at 12:52 PM on May 4, 2012


As I understand it, Paul's Boutique was more or less a Dust Brothers album that the Beasties rapped over.

That’s part of the magic for me. It sounds like such a cohesive whole work, I can’t understand how it could have happened like that and be so good.
posted by bongo_x at 12:54 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


If there's one thing that my brother, my sister, and I can agree on, it's the Beastie Boys.

Thanks for the good times and the good tunes, MCA. I hope you're partying wherever you are.
posted by MsVader at 12:55 PM on May 4, 2012


I just came by to say Fuck You Cancer, and that Paul's Boutique was a life-altering record.

The world is lesser without you, MCA.

.
posted by griffey at 12:56 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by endotoxin at 12:56 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:57 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by zarq at 12:58 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by pink candy floss at 12:59 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by chemoboy at 12:59 PM on May 4, 2012


The only time I got to see the Beasties live was at Lollapalooza but damn, if they didn't have the entire lawn up and levitating. No one was sitting during their set, it wasn't even possible to sit because not only would you have gotten get stepped on, but the music was too infectious not to move. It was an amazing sight - 10,000 people bouncing and down to "Heart Attack Man" and on and on and on until the set was over.

.
posted by i feel possessed at 1:00 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by goodglovin77 at 1:00 PM on May 4, 2012


Okay now that I got that out, more nuance.

I had no idea he had cancer.

I remember listening to License to Ill on a small radio (maybe it was a tape player) with my friends hiding behind the RV in his driveway. I can vividly remember this. I was probably in third grade. Irving Texas.

I got moved around a bit, and ended up in California. I still have my cd copy of Check Your Head somewhere. It won't play though - it spent a lot of time directly underneath my portable cd player I had in the car for easy access. Has an actual hole burned in it. Someone's bowl popped.

So many memories. License to ill on two 12s in my trunk. Being a high school punk ass.

College. The In Sound From Way Out and being massively inebriated on plant and fungal matter. So many parties. So many sound systems.

The discovery of Paul's Boutique. Where has this been? I had Check Your Head on quick access! I've never heard of this! On a drive home from Round Table, your brilliant blue eyes. Track 13 - Car Thief.

The soundtrack to my youth. A flash. Memories.
posted by Big_B at 1:02 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


tears.
posted by Big_B at 1:02 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by NiteMayr at 1:02 PM on May 4, 2012


I saw the Beastie Boys back in '04, Worcester MA. Talib Kwali opened. They did a 30 min mini-set of just their intrumentals in the middle of their show. That was an amazing experience. RIP.



.
posted by Renoroc at 1:05 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


As I understand it, Paul's Boutique was more or less a Dust Brothers album that the Beasties rapped over.

Well, yes and no. Yes, in that that's basically how all rap works. No, in that there's a lot that went in after the vocal tracks were laid down, like the many samples-as-rhymes (e.g. the "Ballroom Blitz" sample in "Hey Ladies"), and all the samples-sam-sam-samples-amples of the vocal tracks themselves.

Point is, the rapping isn't just plopped in over top; it's spectacularly integrated. Though, obviously, all that was also the work of the Dust Brothers. But then, so was Mmm-Bop.

And as much as it is the best sampler record ever, Paul's Boutique would still be at least 75% as good if it was a capella.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:05 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


The Biz Vs. The Nuge could be the new Amazing Grace.

.
posted by uphc at 1:06 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


RIP MCA: In 2004, The New York Times' Stephanie Zacharek negatively reviewed the video for the Beastie Boys' new single "Ch-Check It Out." MCA a.k.a. Adam Yauch, who died today at the age of 47, had directed the video under his pseudonym Nathanial Hornblower. He didn't take kindly to Zacharek's review, and let her know in a letter to the Times demanding, among other things, that she send him a goat. His letter:
One Goat, on Account

To the Editor:

I had the great pleasure of reading your unsolicited critique of the "Ch-Check It Out" music video ["Licensed to Stand Still" by Stephanie Zacharek, May 16]. It took some time to get to me, as it had to be curried (sp?) on goatback through the fjords of my homeland, the Oppenzell. And in the process the goat died, and then I had to give the mailman one of my goats, so remember, you owe me a goat.

Anyway, that video is big time good. Pauline Kael is spinning over in her grave. My film technique is clearly too advanced for your small way of looking at it. Someday you will be yelling out to the streets below your windows: "He is the chancellor of all the big ones! I love his genius! I am the most his close personal friend!"

You journalists are ever lying. I remember people like you laughing at me at the university, and now they are all eating off of my feet. You make this same unkind laughter at the Jerry Lewis for his Das Verruckte Professor and now look, he is respected as a French-clown. And you so-call New York Times smarties are giving love to the U2 because they are dressing as the Amish and singing songs about America? (Must I dress as the Leprechaun to sing songs about Ireland so that you will love me? You know the point I make here is true!)

In concluding, "Ch-Check It Out" is the always best music film and you will be realizing this too far passing. As ever I now wrap my dead goat carcass in the soiled New York Times - and you are not forgetting to buy me a replacement! Please send that one more goat to me now!

NATHANIAL HORNBLOWER
Manhattan

The writer, whose real name is Adam Yauch, is a member of the Beastie Boys. He directs their music videos under the pseudonym Nathanial Hornblower.

posted by zarq at 1:08 PM on May 4, 2012 [61 favorites]


.
posted by genehack at 1:09 PM on May 4, 2012


. Very sad right now.
posted by but no cigar at 1:11 PM on May 4, 2012


Well shit.

.
posted by jokeefe at 1:12 PM on May 4, 2012


Note to self in the next iteration of life: crank it up a little louder in Corolla while MCA is young and alive and you are too.

</3
posted by deanklear at 1:13 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


East Village Radio is shredding it on the Beastie-inspired sets right now.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:14 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


Paul's Boutique was my Sgt. Pepper. I had a fussy tape player in the truck and it would only play a tape with a matchbook shoved in just so. Once I got PB in there I left it in there for the whole summer as it started and stopped at random spots. Never got tired of it.

.
posted by drowsy at 1:14 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by lily_bart at 1:15 PM on May 4, 2012


.

Cryin' and chilling to the beats of Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament.

Another cornerstone of my youth since gone...

My brother and I used to ROCK THE FUCK OUT to the Beasties of Brooklyn...

Hell, the only music that really brought us together in the first place.

Namaste, Adam... Thank you for the mad rhymes... and all the good times that they fueled.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 1:17 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by ElleElle at 1:17 PM on May 4, 2012


Oh... and Cancer...

You can go FUCK OFF. Right, God-damned, now.
posted by PROD_TPSL at 1:18 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by helion at 1:18 PM on May 4, 2012


License to Ill on cassette got a major workout my senior year of high school. Rip, that funky monkey.

.
posted by dr_dank at 1:19 PM on May 4, 2012


shittttttt
.
posted by dismas at 1:22 PM on May 4, 2012




.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 1:24 PM on May 4, 2012


Maaaaaaaan, shit. Fuck that, he ain't dead.
posted by Divine_Wino at 1:25 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I'm... I'm devastated. I don't have a thing I can say. This is so horrible. What am I supposed to do with this? I just
posted by shmegegge at 1:29 PM on May 4, 2012


*pours out a 40 of Brass Monkey*
posted by acb at 1:29 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 1:30 PM on May 4, 2012


Cancer really can go fuck itself. I'm starting to see it as less of a disease than a basic force of nature like aging or accidental miscarriage. Of course, what makes it so rage and despair inducing is that it takes the young instead of the old but gives them to us long enough to know how much we love them and long enough to change the world and long enough for us to know we will miss them every day.

Argh, fuck off.

.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:30 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


"I want to say a little somethin' that's overdue,
The disrespect to women has got to be through,
So to the mothers and the sisters and the wives and the friends,
I got to offer my love and respect to the end"
posted by Optamystic at 1:32 PM on May 4, 2012 [26 favorites]


I don't think it's a stretch to say that my two favorite bands are the Grateful Dead and the Beastie Boys. I came to be a Dead fan late in their game and only had about eight or nine years from the point when I really came to like the band and when Jerry Garcia died. However, I was on with the Beastie Boys right from Licensed to Ill and on from there. That album dropped m my junior year of high school and I wore out at least three cassettes. I saw the first tour (giant inflatable penises and all) and have been a huge fan ever since. I came into my own social awareness period about the same time as Yauch and started more of a crap for the larger world at that point in my life. They are pretty much the only band whose albums I have bought at midnight madness sales (when record stores still had those) and pre-ordered digitally (when they started being sold that way). I've been to see shows in venues large and small (and have a flier they handed out about not crowd surfing) and eagerly anticipated every single bit of Beastie Boys material I could get my grubby little mitts on.

So this news makes me incredibly sad and mortal all at the same time.

3MAT3 cancer, indeed.

Thanks and Namaste...

.
posted by Gronk at 1:35 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 1:36 PM on May 4, 2012


License to Ill -- released in my wheelhouse, age 15.

She's On It is still one of my favorite songs from the 80s.

Like so many others, today I am old and sad. RIP.
posted by hockeyfan at 1:38 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by St. Sorryass at 1:39 PM on May 4, 2012


Godspeed Adam, where ever you're headed. You will be missed by so many people.
posted by OsoMeaty at 1:42 PM on May 4, 2012


This is making me so sad, even though I was never really a fan of the Beasties.

I was a sophomore in high school when "Licensed" came out, and it was huge at my school - with most of the kids. Maybe kids are smarter today, but back then, the kind of music you identified with and loved became your tribe, and I was part of Tribe Iron Maiden - and one of the things the metal tribes all did (at least at my school) was to turn their noses up at anything remotely approaching rap. It wasn't music, it was just stealing other people's melodies and talking over them - those idiots can't even play their own instruments, they just screw around with turntables!

Whatever. Anyway, it was several years later before those stupid tribal affiliations wore off, and I'm pretty sure my first introduction to rap was 311, and then later, De La Soul. But for some reason, I never heard the Beasties, beyond the stuff that was everywhere and that you couldn't get away from. I remember several years later thinking that "Sabotage" was pretty cool, and hearing that "Paul's Boutique" was amazing, but I never dug into it.

Reading all of this, especially the bits about what an amazing human being he became over the past 10 or 12 years, I see that it is time to. I've clearly got some catching up to do.
posted by jbickers at 1:44 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by ElGuapo at 1:45 PM on May 4, 2012


Sad, sad, sad.
posted by chillmost at 1:47 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by I Havent Killed Anybody Since 1984 at 1:49 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by pandrus at 1:50 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by gergtreble at 1:51 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by gwildar at 1:52 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 1:52 PM on May 4, 2012


Thanks for the music, Adam, and for teaching me to play Mah Jongg.
posted by nicwolff at 1:55 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I saw a lot of good shows in college, but one of the best was the Beasties in February 1986. There were enough kids at Chicago who somehow knew one of the three from high school that it was almost more like a house party than, say, the Violent Femmes show a couple of months later. This was just before they started recording Licensed to Ill; I think "Paul Revere" was the closing number.


That was the first time I saw people in my own age bracket doing their own damn thing and bringing the crowd along. The Beastie Boys opened my eyes to a lot of things I'd never considered might be mine, too. Adam's commitment to peace and Buddhism has been a light on my own path along the way: "To share happiness, and to have done something good before leaving this life is sweet."
posted by catlet at 1:56 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by limeonaire at 1:56 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by snsranch at 2:01 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:01 PM on May 4, 2012


Great pics at MSNBC.
posted by batmonkey at 2:01 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by viscereal at 2:04 PM on May 4, 2012


RIP, MCA, and thanks for making my commute bearable for many years via Check Your Head. I can't believe I haven't gotten sick of that album yet. It is amazing.

This is a huge fucking bummer, and I don't think I have ever done this on MF before, but

.
posted by theredpen at 2:04 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by whuppy at 2:16 PM on May 4, 2012


.

I was in college I listened to Paul's Boutique over and over and over until I had worn out the tape. I still consider it the best hip-hop record ever. I was always impressed with the way the Beastie Boys evolved as musicians. I was only a few years younger than these guys and I always looked up to them like a freshman looks at the cool seniors and says, "I want to be like those guys." Today is a sad day indeed.
posted by sciencejock at 2:16 PM on May 4, 2012


The bass riff from Sabotage is one of the best ever.

.
posted by dry white toast at 2:17 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


Paul's Boutique blew my mind the first time I heard it. Earlier, I had written off Licensed to Ill as a one-off kind of record. But that sophomore effort proved these guys were ahead of their time.

I still can't believe we all got so old.

P.S. Fuck you, cancer.

.
posted by runningdogofcapitalism at 2:17 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by echolalia67 at 2:17 PM on May 4, 2012


Pretty sure I've bought more copies of Paul's Boutique, in more formats, than any other album.

.
posted by box at 2:28 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Aw hell no.

It was that one-two punch of first Run DMC's "Walk This way" and then "You gotta Fight for Your Right to Party" that made all the metalheads at school into wannabe rappers, that could never ever be played at school discos, but was anyway then years later stumbling over Sabotage on MTV and finally realising they were more than just a gimmick band.

Damn.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:30 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by SuzySmith at 2:31 PM on May 4, 2012


Netty's Girl
posted by box at 2:38 PM on May 4, 2012


While Licensed to Ill was the Revolver of our generation, as said above, Paul's Boutique was definitely the Sgt. Peppers.

It was just so far ahead of its time, it's difficult to describe. I had several friends who couldn't appreciate it when it came out and just kept listening to Licensed, but if it was my car it was Paul's in the shitty aftermarket cassette player.

I consider my self lucky to have seen them three times live.

Hope to see you again in the next life Adam.
posted by Sphinx at 2:40 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


One, two, oh my God.
posted by Skygazer at 2:41 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


I worked in a club in early 2000 (I was 18). It was a kind of touristy beach club with groups of "Yacht Wives" trying to re-capture their youth and their slimy husbands trying to fuck any confused spring break girl who just found out that "Hand Grenades taste like fruit punch!".

I hated practically everything that was played. This was the era of Juvenille and Cisco and that horrible bullshit "Sippin' on Sysurp" slow-rap shit. The only thing that got me through most shifts was "Intergalactic" playing at incredible volume and pretty much destroying the club every time. To this day I think it might be the perfect club song.

I get that "Paul's Boutique" is the one you're supposed to like, but Hello Nasty will forever be the one that I connected with most.

Also, "3 MCs and 1DJ" is four minutes of hip-hop perfection.

This upset me much more than I would've imagined.....
posted by lattiboy at 2:42 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


Grateful Dead and the Beastie Boys you say?

The internet's got you covered

Peace out MCA

.
posted by askmehow at 2:49 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


First they came for Levon Helm and then they came for MCA. My heart is hurting.

. .
posted by Lynsey at 2:50 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


I wrote

ADAM "MCA" YAUCH
1964-2012

on the whiteboard in my office,
and my supervisor, who's about 20 years younger than I, came in
and sat down and saw it and said, Oh, shit.
So, we talked about the Beasties a little, and he's going to
listen to "Sabotage" on his way to dinner, and I'm going to
stream Paul's Boutique tonight.

So, thanks, Adam, and thanks, guys.

ave atque vale

.
posted by the sobsister at 2:57 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by ridogi at 2:57 PM on May 4, 2012


I'm a six point seven on the Richter scale..
posted by Skygazer at 3:01 PM on May 4, 2012


It was the fall of 1989 and I'm living in England, pretending to be kind of an art school girl while I try to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life. One of my fellow foreign students has this cassette of Paul's Boutique that he's always trying get me to listen to, telling me some story about how his older sister went to Bard with Yauch and that I should listen. I wanted nothing to do with rap - like others here associated the band with Fight for your Right and not much else - but he finally convinced me by telling me that one of the guys in the band was Israel Horovitz's kid. (I'm an art school snob, what can I say?)

We crash out on the floor, lights down, and listen to the entire thing. (Side note: kids today will never understand how the pop and hiss of a second or third generation cassette can improve, in a way, the experience of hearing an album like this one). And the end I turn to him and say "why didn't you tell me they were a punk band?"

I sort of knew something was up when he didn't turn up for the Rock Hall induction.
posted by anastasiav at 3:02 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


http://beastieboys.com/
posted by Cosine at 3:02 PM on May 4, 2012


All I wanna know is when is checkout time
So I could be in heaven with the rhythm rock rhyme
And when I'm with my man Shadi Rock at the gates
We'll be rockin rhythms over disco breaks

RIP MCA
posted by lapolla at 3:03 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


If you were to ask a metal head, a punk, a b-boy, an indie rock kid, and a jazz fan who their favorite artist was, The Beastie Boys are the only conceivable unifying answer. Literally nobody else comes to my mind.
posted by lattiboy at 3:06 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


. :( Too soon.
posted by UseyurBrain at 3:10 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by brennen at 3:14 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by k8oglyph at 3:20 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by LMGM at 3:28 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Nickel Pickle at 3:29 PM on May 4, 2012


My noggin is hoggin all kinds of thoughts /
Adam Yoggin is Yauch and he's rockin of course




.
posted by robcorr at 3:32 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Hoosier Prospector at 3:39 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by tempythethird at 3:47 PM on May 4, 2012


Ah, fuck. Fuck.
posted by Decani at 3:50 PM on May 4, 2012


How we gonna kick it?
Gonna kick it root down...down...down.....down...

posted by Skygazer at 3:50 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
feels like losing a friend
posted by exlotuseater at 3:55 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by srl at 3:57 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by litlnemo at 3:58 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by C. K. Dexter Haven at 4:00 PM on May 4, 2012


Thanks to Adam, thanks to the Beastie Boys for defining me musically and giving me so much. Going to strap on my ear goggles now...

.
posted by brappi at 4:02 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Nauip at 4:11 PM on May 4, 2012


404 comments so far, hope this gets to 808

.
posted by dr. fresh at 4:12 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.

Been kinda shaken up the whole day, but kind of happy... I don't think that being depressed or mourning is reflective of the joy MCA brought us. It ain't over yet :)

Was linked to this Beasties mega-mix by a friend and it's been good healing music. Check it out..
posted by raihan_ at 4:16 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by Jimbob at 4:25 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by homunculus at 4:36 PM on May 4, 2012


The first real taste of music I wasn't ready for was Paul's Boutique. I bought it on a high school field trip to the big city, without even having listened to it!- a real leap in those days. The cassette was yellow! and the jacket liner was filled with line after line of weird lyrics and trippy art. On the bus ride home our driver would take our tapes and play them, and I got it on the tape deck. That Idris Muhammad loop slowly trickled in, and noone knew what to make of all the odes to all the girls. Then that drum break! When the synth BWAAM hit home on Shake Your Rump, the driver ripped it out of the deck and torpedoed it across the bus. I was secretly shamed that this reflected my 'taste' in music, but I started listening the shit out of it doing yardwork round the house that summer. That album blew my mind, opened the floodgates. Thank you Adam, you'll be missed.
posted by brappi at 4:37 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Fuck, man. This blows.

There's a common thread for me between MCA and Steve Jobs. Steve Novella was talking about this a couple months ago on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast, about Jobs delaying an invasive surgery in favor of diet / lifestyle changes and other complimentary and alternative therapies. Of course, there's no way to be sure, but they and I can't help but wonder if the delays and favor shown to alternative therapies contributed to the early death of these greats.

It's the passage from this BBC article that sparked the connection:

The Beastie Boy travelled to a Tibetan community in Dharamsala in India after surgery. He told fans: "I'm taking Tibetan medicine and at the recommendation of the Tibetan doctors I've been eating a vegan/organic diet."

He has also attended a three-day teaching course with the Dalai Lama and spent time visiting a nunnery. He revealed he sponsors a "few" nuns at the Jamyang Choling convent: "They did a Puja (religious ceremony) for me to help me get well. One nun said to me: 'We do prayers and then you are better'. So I've got that going for me, which is nice."


I don't know much about how swapping to a vegan diet after a cancer diagnosis plays out. From what I do know, eating vegetarian does lower your chances of getting certain types of cancers. I wonder what the science says on switching to a vegan diet after a diagnosis / surgery though. And I wonder if there was a different recuperation / therapy regimen following the surgery that he eschewed in favor of travelling to receive alternative and complimentary therapies.

When people important to me die, I can't help but try to figure out if there's something to learn from it. Somehow I think my brain says that I can pass this on to the next iconic figure to try and leave me prematurely. God help me when Stephen Fry passes on, I might just have to take a year off.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:40 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Anyways, it's Paul's Boutique on repeat tonight. Thanks, MCA.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:40 PM on May 4, 2012


Sure shot is such a perfect track. Fuck.
posted by neuromodulator at 4:44 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by rogueepicurean at 4:46 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by fonetik at 4:47 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by gomichild at 4:48 PM on May 4, 2012


I said above that Paul's Boutique is perfect but in truth I didn't have the authority to say that.

I was a little kid, 5 or 6, when Licensed to Ill came out. I heard "Fight for your Right." Of course I adored it. I was a kid and it was a loud, silly song with that chorus. It was awesome.

fast forward 6 years, and my brothers come home for Thanksgiving, quoting the spoken bits of Check Your Head over and over again and laughing hysterically. Every time someone complimented something at dinner, one would pop up with "Mmmm, it does go well with the chicken!" and the other with, "Delicious again, Peter." Hysterical laughter from them, while nobody else got it. It's clear to me in hindsight that they were obviously getting super-baked while listening to the album on repeat all the way home on the multiple-hour drive.

My first dips into the online experience were, of course, AOL chatrooms, where I'd bust in quoting lines from Brass Monkey in all caps, but I was a poser.

A year or so later, my brother Mike gives me Paul's Boutique on CD for Christmas. So many strong memories of that night, alone with my discman, looking over the liner notes and trying to understand that record. Trying to access "Sound of Science" and "Hey Ladies." "Car Thief" was obviously catchy off the bat, though still dense as a motherfucker. I tried to understand what the hell the significance of the phrase "Ask for Janice" was. I tried to figure out what a B-Boy was. I tried...

There's a certain particular connection to music that people my age were the last kids in history to likely experience. It's partly the feeling of holding the physical album in your hands, reading everything the artist wanted to include with it, following along, but it's also just the scarcity of music at a time in one's life when music is dearly, desperately needed. Having a CD makes it yours, makes it precious. Every track became valuable because it was manna in the desert of adolescence. Kids will no longer have that feeling, for better or worse.

But I did, then, hard. Never have I wanted to love an album more, and felt such resistance from the album itself. I knew it was good, and trusted in my brother, himself a musician and the God-like Arbiter of Cool to young me, but Paul's Boutique was basically screaming at me that I wasn't ready for it. That it was too good for my ears. This feeling of letting down a classic album carried over into a weird fear for me for years afterwards, where I wouldn't listen to any classic rock or anything because, I dunno. I didn't want to disappoint it, I guess.

High school now, "Sabotage" is out and is crazy types of fun. My friends and I often eat lunch at a diner across the parking lot from the school, and their jukebox is full of Lawrence Welk and the like, save for Ill Communication. Every time we went there, I'd immediately put "Sabotage" on, which seemed to be mixed at about ten times the volume of everything else, and drive out the old folks with it.

Then I spend the Summer of '98 in a program at USC, and one of my friends insists on us getting a ride from someone out to a record store on (looks it up) July 14 in order to score Hello Nasty the day it came out. Again, crazy fun, ambitious party-music. I'm starting to get into it, but it's not the thing that intimidated me back in the day. This is something else. I can breathe easy around it.

Senior year, my friend Sarah, whose tastes were far beyond mine, mentions not being able to find Paul's Boutique in our small Oklahoma town. Hey! I have that one! I loan it to her, of course, since it's not like I'm listening to it. She died in a car crash not long afterwards, and it's not like I was going to try to ask for it back.

Fast forward to the past year. I'm driving my friend Trevor up from DC to Brooklyn to party with my NY friends for a few days, and he's burned Licensed to Ill for the trip. FOr the first time, I hear it in it's entirety. People call it punk-rap. I knew that. I always assumed it was because of the guitars in "Fight for Your Right" and "No Sleep 'til Brooklyn."

It isn't. Obviously. Rubin's production is so spare and minimal as to sound frankly amateurish, so there's that, but more than anything, Licensed is the flat-out snottiest record perhaps ever recorded. I'm suddenly an actual fan, but this is still clearly juvenile stuff, aggressively so, in fact. Then Trevor pulls out his burned copy of Paul's Boutique. Being a good little hipster, I instinctively proclaim with glee that that's their best one, despite my history with it. But traffic is getting worse and I'm more distracted and I don't really hear any of it while it plays, and Trevor loves Licensed to Ill more so he's not as enthusiastically singing along as he was before. It passes in one ear and out the other.

Then, this afternoon, Trevor sends me a message asking, "are you ready to have your day ruined?" The news hit me like a brick. I haven't been this affected by a celebrity death since Phil Hartman's murder. I tried to compose an FPP, and realized I had no idea what to say, and just kept refreshing until somebody else's inevitably came up. I wrote what I wrote above, meaning it, I think, at the time. Everyone knows Paul's Boutique is perfect, after all.

I drove around today. Altnation on Sirius/XM had ceased normal programming and spent all afternoon just discussing the impact of Yauch and the Beasties, taking caller after caller to talk about growing up with them. This one a 19-year-old girl for whom "Intergalactic" was the first song she memorized as a child, the next one a 50-year-old Southern man who saw the Beastie Boys get booed off the stage opening for Madonna on the "Like a Virgin" Tour. Tons of people meeting MCA at different points in his career, and how warm and approachable and awesome he always was.

And I start to tear up. I tell Trevor, "I'd gotten to the point where I thought the Beastie Boys could never to anything I'd disapprove of, but then MCA has to stay punk rawk right to the bitter end." The thing about the Beastie Boys is that they're not supposed to do this.

So I get home and I download Paul's Boutique and hear it for the first time the way I was supposed to. There's a famous line in The West Wing where Bartlet says, "I didn't think I could be surprised by music anymore." Holy god. I was finally ready for it.

How was I supposed to appreciate "Sound of Science" before I'd fallen in love with Abbey Road? How could I adore the mastery of "Shake Your Rump" before I'd learned to understand break-beats? How could I truly "get" "B-Boy Boullibaise" until I was at the end of my own self-imposed exile from my Brooklyn home, soon to finally return?

I can say now with correct ka-knowledge, Paul's Boutique is perfect. And in the interest of returning to the 12-year-old netizen I once was:

WE GOT THE BOTTLE YOU GOT THE CUP

okay now I'm kind of crying again
posted by Navelgazer at 4:52 PM on May 4, 2012 [58 favorites]




Metafilter's own? I asked him once if that was really him, and got the reply: "Only in my mind, edverb, only in my mind." Which, honestly, seemed like exactly the sort of thing MCA might say if he wanted to remain quasi-anonymous. I still wonder.

Rest in peace, Adam Yauch. Congratulations on graduating from this life, you lived it well, you will be always missed, and always remembered.
posted by edverb at 4:58 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


I caught the Beastie Boys at Lollapalooza '94 in Vancouver.

I only remember two things from that day. A girl kissed me in the Rain Tent after I offered her some water, and the Beastie Boys blew the fucking doors off that place and completely stole the show.

Those poor Smashing Pumpkins that went on next, they had nothing.

Paul's Boutique, Check Your Head, and Ill Communication are on the menu tonight. RIP MCA.
posted by i_have_a_computer at 5:07 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


It's so alien that the death of a man I never saw or knew in life could affect me so much. This is a really terrible way to be reminded of how much the Beastie Boys have come to mean to me, and to our culture. My shock and sorrow took me by surprise today because, although I've enjoyed their music, I'm not a superfan by any means. But their presence, and the possibility of future albums, future music showing us a new future and a new way to be, even if it wasn't totally and precisely our favorite thing, was always there, maybe even taken for granted. Now it will never be again. I feel like I just noticed that one of the handsomer, funkier buildings downtown had suddenly disappeared, replaced by a pile of ashes and a void.

Too soon. Much too soon.
posted by skoosh at 5:12 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by motty at 5:17 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by marlys at 5:19 PM on May 4, 2012


I see you lookin' at me sayin' "How can he be so skinny and live . . . SO PHAT?"
posted by theredpen at 5:20 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by tribalspice at 5:22 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by arha at 5:23 PM on May 4, 2012


I can very distinctly remember the first time I heard 'Sabotage' it was on MTV (accompanied by one of the all time great music videos). 13 year old me was thinking "This is the greatest thing ever." They've been a pretty constant musical companion over the years. Gonna be badly missed.
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:25 PM on May 4, 2012


In memorial of Adam "MCA" Yauch, I have created the MCA:

Take a tall glass and add 2 ice cubes
1 oz spiced rum
1 oz triple sec
1 oz amaretto
1 oz Collins mix
2 oz OJ
fill to top with lemon-lime soda (7-Up)
posted by tribalspice at 5:25 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Rest in peace. Thank you for the good times.
posted by gt2 at 5:27 PM on May 4, 2012


When I worked in Tribeca a few years ago I saw this grey-haired dude riding a longboard down Greenwich Street, like, 4 times before realizing he was one of my idols.

So glad that 19-year-old me spent those precious $12 on Paul's Boutique instead of Gish. It changed my life.
posted by swift at 5:29 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by whir at 5:40 PM on May 4, 2012


The Beastie Boys are the one band I can think of that EVERYBODY around my age (32) likes. I mean, even the Beatles, you'll always have that one contrarian that's all "aw they're overrated", but not the Beasties. I had a copy of Check Your Head on tape in high school that completely disintegrated it got played so much, because it was always the one album everyone agreed on. "Sabotage" (with that fucking MONSTER bass riff) will come on a jukebox and you'll hear a "hell yeah!" without fail to this day. I guess what I'm saying is this really, really sucks.

"People come up to me and they try to talk shit? / Man, I was makin' records when you were suckin' your mother's dick!"
posted by DecemberBoy at 5:42 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


As a lifelong fan, all I can say is thanks.

Thanks Adam.
posted by The Power Nap at 5:44 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I am truly heartbroken.
posted by Nathanial Hörnblowér at 5:53 PM on May 4, 2012 [16 favorites]


.
posted by monkeymike at 5:54 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by hooha at 5:59 PM on May 4, 2012


Hello Nasty was pretty much my soundtrack for the China part of my three month term in Asia as a college senior. A guy I had been great friends with, but had since drifted away from, was also on the trip, and he had Hello Nasty on cd. I hadn't really ever listened to a whole album by that point, just heard the singles, but the album blew me away. Pretty much any time we were on a bus or train (and we were, a lot) I was listening to that album.

Dammit.

.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:00 PM on May 4, 2012


INTER-GALACTIC, PLANET-ARY!

Adam, you fuckin killed the mic for 30+ years, from Polly wog stew to now.

GODSPEED! Rock on.

Much love.
posted by roboton666 at 6:05 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


That sucks. Rip
posted by Flex1970 at 6:05 PM on May 4, 2012


I wish I was chillin' like Bob Dylan, but I got those B-Boy MCA blues...
posted by Skygazer at 6:07 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


To me, a child of the '80s, the Beastie Boys seemed forever young. They've just always been around, making good music. So sad.

.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 6:13 PM on May 4, 2012


Re-posted from my friends at Clean Needles Now, the Los Angeles syringe access program:

"We are so sorry to hear that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has died. He was an early champion of needle exchange and friend of our founder Renee Edgington. The early benefit concerts they played for us helped create a public conversation about Harm Reduction beyond the AIDS activist community. We are so grateful for everything he and the Beastie Boys did for us and wish his friends and family the best."
posted by gingerbeer at 6:18 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


Oh, man, two more things..

Drove off for lunch today and put on "Pass The Mic" and experienced something I'd never experienced before - feeling genuinely sad during a Beastie Boys song. I've felt many things because of their songs, but never sad. Wow.

One thing that I loved about MCA was that he let his hair go grey naturally ("I've Got More Rhymes Than I've Got Grey Hairs/And That's A lot Because I've Got My Share"). He never tried to look younger than he was - or in fact like anyone other than who he was.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:19 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


For those of you on spotify, here is a live version of Gratitude.


Here is idolator with his ten "nastiest" verses.
posted by Divine_Wino at 6:22 PM on May 4, 2012 [2 favorites]


I am truly heartbroken.

I'm glad you're still breathing, Nathanial.
posted by edverb at 6:30 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


This is the first obit thread on MeFi that I read in its entirety, every single post/comment. I dislike MANY OF YOU a lot, lot less.
posted by war wrath of wraith at 6:34 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I can't type fast enough nor do I have the energy to try to explain here what the Beastie Boys have meant to me over the past 25 or so years, but.....

Adam, just know that this 42 year old pregnant lady is sitting in her house crying tonight, listening to you rhyme, and trying somehow to thank you for meaning more to her life than she can possibly ever, ever explain to anyone. A few of her friends know, and they're the ones who have called her today and emailed her to say they are sorry.

I never met you but you changed my life in really sweet ways, and have been the soundtrack for my life for the majority OF it, and I thank you thank you for that.

Strapping on my ear goggles now.

.
posted by tristeza at 6:40 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


I just listened to Paul’s Boutique all the way through, on the boombox not the studio monitors, and rang the "Hey Ladies" promotional cowbell at the appropriate time.
posted by bongo_x at 6:40 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by pompomtom at 6:42 PM on May 4, 2012


This is fucking bullshit.

.
posted by the painkiller at 6:48 PM on May 4, 2012


You think this story's over but it's ready to begin.


Right?
posted by Brak at 6:50 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Skip to around 6:40 here in this video of the Beastie's 1998 MTV video vanguard award.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:57 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


Paul's Boutique was the soundtrack to many a Sunday afternoon spent at Nightbreak on Haight St.. Being not quite legal but busty and cute, I always managed to get in, not so much to drink but to dance. Hey Ladies brings back a full-sense memory of the smell of cigarettes, cold beer, my dress sticking to my sweaty back from non-stop dancing and the heat of indian summer being chased away by chill of the fog rolling in.

RIP Adam.
posted by echolalia67 at 6:59 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


Tonight I know I am older and sadder.

.
posted by meinvt at 7:03 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


I've been watching the Criterion edition of their videos this evening, and the one for Ricky's Theme made me especially sad because they all play old guys, and MCA never got the chance to be an old guy. It's a shame, he would have been great at it.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:09 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


Cancer is playing a part in my life at present. More than one of my loved ones had it. This has hit me hard.

Cancer is such a ruthless bastard.
Goodbye MCA, you can't, you won't and you don't stop.
posted by tomcosgrave at 7:14 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


.
posted by caclwmr4 at 7:20 PM on May 4, 2012


It's weird knowing how many people everywhere are thinking about how old they've become today.
posted by neuromodulator at 7:25 PM on May 4, 2012 [11 favorites]


.
posted by drworm at 7:28 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by cman at 7:38 PM on May 4, 2012


Adam Yauch deeply affected my life (at least) twice.

I was talking to my dad recently about how lucky I feel that hip-hop started to blow up when I was about 10-11, because it gave me music for my parents to hate. And that is important! But License to Ill was something else. License to Ill wasn't just crude non-music. It was SCARY. These were white boys rapping about guns and beer and sex and drugs. It offended and frightened mom! How cool is that? Anyway, the album was banned from the house, but the Paul Revere 12" somehow made it in. My friends and I would argue about who got to be which Beastie as we recited it over and over and over again in the back of the school box.

So thanks, MCA, both for scaring my mom and for being a part of a musical movement that was mine as well.

Years later, I was a militant atheist in my late twenties. At some point I realized that, despite my Unitarian Universalist upbringing (does that shed any light on the earlier story?) I had no idea what this Buddhism thing was at all. But holy crap, those Tibet concerts had some amazing lineups! If all those musicians were down with it, that had to mean something. And if the coolest of the three coolest musicians in the world was not only cool with Buddhism but PRACTICING it, while remaining impeccably cool and funny and dope as hell...well, that's interesting. So I ordered the thinnest, best reviewed book on Buddhism I could find on Amazon. And this time my life really changed.

Adam was Tibetan Buddhist. I'm Zen, in part because there's a center near my house where I first took meditation classes. After sewing my rakusu on and off for a year, I'll finally be taking the precepts at a jukai ceremony next month. The Buddhadharma is kind of my life, and I wouldn't be surprised if I end up being a Zen priest eventually, although, y'know, I'M NOT ATTACHED TO THE IDEA OR ANYTHING.

So yup, I can say that Adam Yauch, more than anyone else I can think of other than my dumb self, first opened the gate to what has turned out to be my life's path. Weird, huh?

I could write a post twice this long about how much I respect the B-Boys' music. I have some sadness that Adam died, but everyone dies, and I'm so so so so happy that he lived.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 7:52 PM on May 4, 2012 [20 favorites]


Fast moving thread so this might have been posted already but

?uestlove rambles on and shares some memories
posted by Sailormom at 8:15 PM on May 4, 2012 [4 favorites]


.
posted by MrBobaFett at 8:20 PM on May 4, 2012


MCA was my favorite because those were my initials as a kid.

One day, most likely in 6th grade (early 1987), on a rare walk home from school, I saw a cassette tape on the ground. It was Licensed To Ill. I'd already known about the album, and here it was, albeit in bad shape, as half the tape was pulled out and tangled. I picked it up gingerly, took it home, and fixed it. :)

I also vaguely remember a Rolling Stone article about them around the time of their first tour. The article mentioned them visiting Graceland.

I gotta pull out my CD of Licensed to Ill and actually listen to the whole thing for the first time in probably 20 years.

RIP, MCA.
posted by luckynerd at 8:23 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


Three great Beastie Boys mashups by the Kleptones:

Break

Listen

Battle Sequence
posted by dr. fresh at 8:29 PM on May 4, 2012 [5 favorites]


First post ever. Joined because of this awful thing. Going deaf with my cans on, listening to them with my cans on. Thanks to whomever posted the East Village Radio mix of them somewhere up there.

There's other Beastie Boys songs I like better, but those are too fierce. This one has a mellower, darker sound, and it opens with MCA. So, it seems fitting. RIP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpsvBvwRuf0&ob=av2e

He did grow and mature. Proof? This now-heartbreaking pic of him with his daughter, Tenzin Losel:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3idyiGk8H1rqkji8o1_500.jpg
posted by old_growler at 8:51 PM on May 4, 2012 [12 favorites]


Like Joey Michaels said earlier, the cognative dissonance of sadly listening to the Beastie Boys was one of the more surreal bits of this awful day.
posted by Occula at 8:55 PM on May 4, 2012 [3 favorites]


I want to post one more time here, because I'm in a reflective mood and I hope it might say something about Mr. Hornblower and about me:

I'm a fucking New Yorker to the bone (to the bone… the bone.. the bone), I was born on 14th st. in 1975 and I grew up downtown, the axis of Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown*. Now my life has taken me all over the place and I'm not living in NY at the moment, but I'm back visiting my dad (on Strong Island) and he's going through some shit, maybe Alzheimer's, maybe dementia, maybe general oldness and I've gone through some shit in the past two years and my dad, who was always my rock -in good ways and bad- is adrift in his own mind and in the world and sometimes he needs to be comforted and talked to, he just needs to hear a voice that he knows give him some love and express compassion for his condition. Point being:

I'm not a religious person, but I have an interest and in the course of my going through shit in the last two years I've come to appreciate some of the things I've gleaned from Buddhism, I've done a little reading. Yesterday my dad (who also is generally irreligious, but has also found some insight and comfort in Buddhist philosophy, if not spirituality) was having a bad day and I was given the gift of being able to sit with him and talk about some concepts of Buddhism as it related to both of our general mindsets and I remembered something a very hip old lady told me last year when I was in need of some compassion. I was going on and on about my misdeeds, misadventures and maladjustments and she said "Well, did you learn anything?" and hurt and angry and self-pitying and angry as I was I was able to say "yeah."

And that question made me much more aware of the fact that I had the gift of life and the gift of choice and the chance to change. And asking my dad that question took him out of the loop of neurological misery he was in for a moment and he felt better because he has learned something.

So now this dude dies, young, too young, a public figure, a New Yorker who played music that was a large part of my childhood (hip-hop and hardcore) and he had some contact with Buddhism and learned and changed his ways and seemed to be on a path of compassion, way more than mine, and he's gone off to wherever we go off to and maybe if he is asked in wherever that is (this is a metaphor here and maybe it isn't) "did you learn something?" Well, I think Adam Yauch gets to say "Yes I did."

all this New York stuff is coming up because I'm listening to "An Open Letter to New York" by the Beasties and it's tugging at me.

What I'm writing smells mawkish to me, but I'm going to post it because I'm feeling it sincerely. I love my dad and I'm fucking sad MCA died, but I'm super glad he left his mark.
posted by Divine_Wino at 9:03 PM on May 4, 2012 [19 favorites]


.
posted by evil_esto at 9:03 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by rodmandirect at 9:03 PM on May 4, 2012


I'm with you, evil_esto
posted by rodmandirect at 9:04 PM on May 4, 2012


I scrolled back. It was These Premises Are Alarmed (Sorry, don't know how to hyperlink usernames, but thank you so much nonetheless),
posted by old_growler at 9:10 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by dougzilla at 9:13 PM on May 4, 2012


Growing up in the cultural wasteland that is central Illinois, the first time I heard the Beastie Boys' License to Ill at 14 years old was something akin to the first time other people heard The Beatles, Hendrix, Elvis, or Nirvana  The Beasties were, from that point on, a constant part of the soundtrack of almost every dumb thing I got into...  Paul's Boutique is still on regular rotation in my life. I'm not usually very affected by deaths of celebrities or artists, but this one truly saddens me, more than I could have imagined.
posted by jbelshaw at 9:18 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


For a long time, all I knew of the Beastie Boys was "Fight For Your Right," which was the jock/party boy anthem when I was in high school. Which means that I rolled my eyes and promptly ignored it and the Beastie Boys as a whole.

About 10 years later, I'm on a road trip with a gang of friends -- some of them who've been friends from when THEY were in high school, here in New York -- and so they're all Beastie Boys fans, partly because of the local-guy pride thing. And they put on "Sabotage", and I am impressed. "They've come a long way since 'Fight For Your Right,'" I quipped.

But then I got home and was idly reading that week's Time Out New York. And there was an exchange of letters in the letters-to-the-editor -- I guess there had been some retrospective of their music in a previous issue or something, and a reader had written in to express their distaste for some homophobic/misogynist language in their earlier lyrics; I don't even remember any more. Because the magazine had contacted Adam to ask for a comment on the letter -- and he wrote back owning up to it. His response was in the vein of "yeah, you're right -- we were young dumb kids who didn't know any better, and you're absolutely right to call us on that and we've been feeling bad about our earlier lyrics lately." And I thought, "Wow, they really have come a long way since 'Fight For Your Right.'"

An impressively lived life, sir.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:22 PM on May 4, 2012 [6 favorites]


The only celebrity deaths that have effected me more were Kurt and DFW. Sorry to fall into a predictable Metafilter theme on my second post that will label me. But ,listening to "Egg Man," and don't really care.
posted by old_growler at 9:24 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by scharpy at 9:31 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by Meatafoecure at 9:34 PM on May 4, 2012


At some point I had heard that he had become a Buddhist, but it was around the time that it seemed to be 'the in thing' for celebrities in LA and New York to become Buddhist, so I never thought much about it--oh, look, another celebrity's gone chasing off to Asia after the next new old thing.

But I was really struck by this bit from the Chicago Tribune's obit:
"Shortly after we put out 'Paul's Boutique,’ I really started thinking about our lyrics and how they affected people. I just began noticing more and more how lyrics that I viewed as just joking around had a longer lasting effect on people, myself included. I never smoked 'dust' (PCP), but kids would come up to me citing our songs: 'Yo, I heard you talking about smoking dust in your song and we used to smoke dust all the time and listen to your music.'

"There are a lot of lyrics on our first two albums that talk about carrying guns or being disrespectful to women. We looked at it as a fantasy, a cowboy movie, but I began to realize those things have a deeper effect, where people actually think that's who we are. And in some cases, you kind of become that, a caricature of yourself, your image."
Everyone gets old. Everyone dies. But not everyone grows up. Adam Yauch grew up, and wasn't afraid to show it.

MCA was a fabulous artist, but we have also lost a fabulous person.
As Erin Potts, his Milarepa partner once told the Tribune, Yauch "showed that at any point in your life, good or bad, you can turn it around. None of us are perfect, but we all have the ability to say, 'I can start living my life right now to help other people.' "
QFT: lattiboy: "This upset me much more than I would've imagined....."

posted by FlyingMonkey at 9:37 PM on May 4, 2012 [14 favorites]


High plains drifter

.
posted by panaceanot at 9:41 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by drklahn at 9:43 PM on May 4, 2012


I've never been this stunned by the death of someone that I did not know personally. I heard as I was leaving work tonight, anticipating a long weekend. My friend Michelle posted about it on Facebook, and when I read it, I got numb and weak. I was going to tell you all why, but this is not the appropriate forum for me to write the novel of my lost youth. I will say this, though:

The Beastie Boys have been my soundtrack. OUR soundtrack...Playing basketball with Mike, who was a dunking beast...wrecking that car with Eric...setting off that fire extinguisher with Kenny and Patrick..Surfing on that truck, and ending up in the emergency room...driving from Jacksonville to DC with Mike, Eric, Kristy, and Jules to see the Tibetan Freedom Concert, and when that poor girl got hit by lightning, and they had to cancel the Saturday, and the Beasties coming out on stage and begging the very agitated crowd for calm and peace saying that they understood that not everyone had tickets for both days, but please, please, remember that this is not just a concert, it is about peace and freedom, and the crowd responding with warmth and love and everyone leaving peacefully....These moments, and so very many more, have been informed by These Three Kings.

More later...I gotta cry now.
posted by Optamystic at 10:03 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.

Rest in peace, Adam.
posted by flippant at 10:29 PM on May 4, 2012


.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:37 PM on May 4, 2012


Thanks for getting me through two, if not three, fun and awful summers.
posted by Occula at 11:03 PM on May 4, 2012


It's funny how people that you never really know can have such an effect on you. I never knew MCA, hell I was never a huge or hardcore fan of the Beastie Boys. But they were always there. Not actively there in the foreground, but they always existed as a thing, as something that just simply was. I suppose there are lots of things like that for every generation. But damnit, this was one of them for me, and this really sucks.

One of the (many) things I find depressing about getting older is the knowledge that I will see most or all of the famous people I admired growing up, die. This is part of that, except that cancer decided to make things stupid. People that die at this age are supposed to do so because of previous drug use, or current drug use; stuff like a heart attack or a stroke or just a plain old OD.

Fuck this.

.
posted by Bonky Moon at 11:07 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by Cycloptichorn at 11:07 PM on May 4, 2012


.
Since this tape with some guys pranking a Carvel Ice cream store landed in my tape deck.
posted by From Bklyn at 11:40 PM on May 4, 2012 [1 favorite]


It's a shame so many people still associate the group only with their Fight for Your Right days (like CNN has). That quote about him realizing the impact of his lyrics on his fans reflects such maturity and thoughtfulness, something lacking among so many superficial image-conscious entertainers who couldn't care less. His calling out of misogyny in Sure Shot just seems so quaint now.

At least there'll be a whole lot of people discovering and re-discovering Beastie Boys now.

This year's music-related deaths (including Clark and Cornelius) have reflected such a diversity in popular music of years past, while today's chartbusters are increasingly formulaic and lacking in heart and soul. And don't get me started on what's on MTV right now.

"I'm feelin' good to play a little music. Tears runnin' down my face 'cause I love to do it."
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 11:54 PM on May 4, 2012


I stayed away from this thread all day and just tried to focus on work, but now that everyone's asleep I can finally let it out. As mentioned above, this is Douglas Adams level sad - it's fucking me up. Off to make some discs, might go through this again.
Absence of light, indeed.
posted by hypersloth at 12:07 AM on May 5, 2012


Speaking of MTV, here's the second half or so of a great documentary they did in '98, which came at a great time for people like me who only discovered them after Hello Nasty.

Slim chance they'll find some time to squeeze it in on one of their many networks this weekend, but it's the least they could do.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:14 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by dirigibleman at 12:17 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by sarcasticah at 12:18 AM on May 5, 2012


Also this. Here's a direct link to the samples list.
Sigh. Fuck.
posted by hypersloth at 12:18 AM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wow. I agree with everyone. I'm just so sad. Paul's Boutique was (and still is) such a big part of my life. I regard it as one of the best albums ever made, and there were probably times when I would have had a physical fight with anyone who disagreed. My friend Matt and I drove about 40 minutes away to a record store to buy the album on the day it came out. We had been fans of Licensed to Ill in middle school and shit, man, it took like 3 more years for that album to come out, so we were READY. The store opened, we got our tapes, and went to the car. We opened them to find that they were marbled! Matt's was blue and my was green. That was exciting in itself, but what happened next was an experience that I wish that even half of the people that really like this album could have had: We had no context for what happened next. Let me say that again. There was nothing to prepare us for what was about to happen. It was as if we were like two members of one of those tribes that had never been exposed to modern society and instantly found ourselves face to face with new york city. We were both music lovers with a range of tastes that few 16 year olds normally have to begin with, so I'm sure that helped us to deal with what was about to happen. We popped his tape in the stereo, and started to drive off - remember, it starts off quiet though...so Matt stops the car to check the stereo and the tape. For the next hour or so that was the last time that the car moved at all. We looked like 2 versions of the RCA dog, looking at the car stereo and back to each other as if either could explain what was happening to our brains at that moment. Bits and pieces from records that we had heard in our parents' record collections - references to strange things from my childhood like OTB and Ballantine Ale samples of sound effects and songs - used not as a background dressing, but, as in the case of Johnny Cash, the Ramones, Loggins and Messina, and a whole shitload of others- the sampled bits of those songs were used as part of the verse!!! Slack jawed awe and blissful confusion are the only memories that I have of that time.
... Once again, remember; Nothing sounded like that before. Sure there was rap. By 1989, it had even matured to the point where just "rapping" wasn't enough. Vocal styles developed, beats were more complex, the "songs more cohesive and we weren't unfamiliar with sampling...but the difference between looping a James Brown drum break and what the Beasties and the Dust Brothers let loose on the world that day? Night and day.
When it was almost over and To All The Girls came back on, it was like the perfect bookend. I remember us both laughing. We didn't know WHAT THE HELL WE JUST HEARD but it was the most amazing thing ever (note: we were not high) (yet). No one else had ever heard anything like this either..we immediately played it again on the way home, and that album was probably the only thing I listened to that summer, and I've probably listened to it a thousand times since.
That's the part that I still can't wrap my head around all these years later. Because of TV then, and the internet now, we're a lot more aware of the other things that are out there in the world, and even if we don't choose to expose ourselves to them, less and less things take us by surprise. Undoubtedly there are others who may have had this experience and perhaps can explain it better than I.
I guess I'm just thankful to have had that experience. I'm thankful for that music that I love, and for Adam who was a part of that. Reflecting on this tonight has made me a lot more thankful, but no less sad.
Thank you, Mr. Yauch.
posted by horsemuth at 12:19 AM on May 5, 2012 [15 favorites]


Oh no.

So sorry to hear this. RIP Adam.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:57 AM on May 5, 2012


"Namaste"

A butterfly floats on the breeze of a sun lit day
As I feel this reality gently fade away
Riding on a thought to see where it's from
Gliding through a memory of a time yet to come

Smoke paints the air swirling images through my mind
Like a whirlpool spin beginning to unwind
And I stand at the edge cautiously awaiting as time slips by
Carefully navigating by the stars in the sky

And I sit And I think to myself
And on the horizon the sun light begins to climb
And it seems like it's been so long since he shined
But I'm sure it was only yesterday

Namaste

A cold chill of fear cut through me
I felt my heart contract
To my mind I brought the image of light
And I expanded out of it

My fear was just a shadow
And then a voice spoke in my head
And she said, "Dark is not the opposite of light.
It's the absence of light."

And I thought to myself
She knows what she's talking about
And for a moment I know
What it was all about.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:09 AM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


know / knew ...
posted by krinklyfig at 1:11 AM on May 5, 2012


One more thing. Many skilled musicians work a lifetime and may never develop their own memorable style (or at least one that is greatly different than others in their field). For instance, I probably can't tell the difference in guitar styles between Johnny Winter and Roy Buchanan, despite both being considered great guitarists, where certain other bands/guitarists can develop and own multiple distinct styles that, while separate from each other are still unique and identifiable to them.
The Beastie Boys are the same. Perhaps even more unrelenting. They created it, wore it and then moved on. If you were hoping for licensed to ill part 2, sorry here's what we're doing now. You can come with us or not, but we've already done that. We're not hanging around, we have other places to go and they don't involve going backwards. I have tremendous respect for that and beyond the band, Adam really seemed to personify that as well. Musician > Activist > Filmmaker...? If the universe didn't put a stop to it, he might well have done everything.
posted by horsemuth at 1:14 AM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


Hmm unfortunate editing. That the Beastie Boys are different was my point.
posted by horsemuth at 1:16 AM on May 5, 2012


Well, it looks like the non-mobile version of Youtube comes up with Part 1 of the documentary here. And another guy has the rest from Part 2 on.

Drove off for lunch today and put on "Pass The Mic" and experienced something I'd never experienced before - feeling genuinely sad during a Beastie Boys song. I've felt many things because of their songs, but never sad. Wow.

Pass the Mic was becoming my favorite lately, and was the first song I listened to after I got out of work. It was indeed very sad, but when I got home and played their Sounds of Science anthology on the stereo, the sadness kinda drifted off, and I was back to happily rapping along (as best I can). I'm sure I won't be the only one. I guess that's the power of music.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 2:54 AM on May 5, 2012 [3 favorites]


.
posted by jonclegg at 3:22 AM on May 5, 2012


Bah.

.
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 3:34 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by Lina Lamont at 4:44 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by scunning at 5:03 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by Kinbote at 5:25 AM on May 5, 2012


Lazaruslong, it seems (from the obits that describe his medical care and mention that he died in a hospital) that he did pursue conventional medical treatment as well as following the dietary and prayer advice of Tibetan Buddhist leaders and monks/nuns...so it doesn't seem that alternative medicine is a factor...just cancer that was originally thought to be treatable but turned out not to be.
posted by Wylla at 5:31 AM on May 5, 2012


I have a shirt that has the Check Your Head album cover on front. Anyway, one time a friend who clearly hadn't heard of the Beastie Boys was looking closely at my shirt then looked up at me and asked if that was me in the picture. I said no but you better believe I was grinning inside.

Because for all the stupid, superficial reasons--in the mind of one person other than myself--for that moment I had achieved my greatest ambition: To be a Beastie Boy.

RIP, MCA. I'll never be like you but I'll never stop trying.
posted by porcupine at 5:48 AM on May 5, 2012 [6 favorites]


MrTaff (Tibetan) and I are really sorry that such a wonderful advocate for Tibet is gone. I would hope that if such things were possible, he would have a good re-birth. Vale.
posted by taff at 6:01 AM on May 5, 2012 [5 favorites]


Like just about everyone else here - I was stunned yesterday when I found out. I knew he was sick, but I just figured he was getting better. And...I guess I never really realized that there was a chance that he wouldn't get better. It wasn't even an option. But now here we are, with one less bit of awesome on the planet. And I honestly still can't believe it.

RIP, MCA. You made me a better person through your music, and your example. Fuck.
posted by monkey!knife!fight! at 6:22 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by runincircles at 7:02 AM on May 5, 2012


Looking back, 3 cheers for the awesome BB sample on Straight Outta Compton's "8-Ball"

Plus, super cool to sample Schoolly D's very recent "Gucci Time" ("Lookin' at my Gucci, it's about that time") in "Time to Get Ill."

The joke was on those who wrote them off as some hip-hop minstrel show.
posted by porn in the woods at 7:13 AM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


I took my younger brother to see the Beasties on the Paul's Boutique tour. When he and his buddies were freshmen in high school, they went out for Halloween as the "Sabotage" guys. Of course Casey was "Nathan Wind as Cochese", and his first AOL sign-on was some variant of Cochese.

I hope Casey's holding out okay right now.

.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:15 AM on May 5, 2012


I meant to type the Ill Communication tour there. Casey's cool, but he's not THAT cool.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:15 AM on May 5, 2012 [2 favorites]


.
posted by bstreep at 9:32 AM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by Jikido at 10:34 AM on May 5, 2012




I thought this was sweet: Coldplay's Beastie Boys tribute from their Friday concert.
posted by bleep at 11:47 AM on May 5, 2012 [12 favorites]


My mom was telling me that she'd been watching the news and, though she understood that it's tragic for anyone to die at 47, she just didn't understand why a Beastie Boy was generating so much coverage. I showed her this thread, the first she's ever read on Metafilter, and she called to tell me "Ahh, I get it now." Thank you, everyone, for all the heartfelt and heart-wrenching comments that answered so much better than I could. I hope Adam's mom and dad and wife and daughter happen across this thread someday, too.
posted by argonauta at 1:44 PM on May 5, 2012 [6 favorites]


Played "B-Boy Bouillabaisse" for an hour on repeat this morning, and holy shit, hip hop was never more fun, avant, and creative than this sprawling masterpiece. I have had to defend this record to so many new wave squares it's ridiculous.

This hits me in the gut just like when Jam Master Jay was gunned down a decade ago.

Tonight's BBQ is going to be wall-to-wall Paul's... with Public Enemy's killer "Party For Your Right to Fight" on the side.
posted by porn in the woods at 3:47 PM on May 5, 2012 [2 favorites]


Well, f the waterworks were being kept back pretty much before, that sweet rendition of You Gotta Fight, For Your Right to Party, has pretty much opened up all the taps...

Yeesh....
posted by Skygazer at 4:44 PM on May 5, 2012 [4 favorites]


i.e., the Coldplay link above.
posted by Skygazer at 4:45 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by myopicman at 4:53 PM on May 5, 2012


Damn that Coldplay moment was great. Thanks.

Just a general, wide-angle broadcast thanks.

.
posted by mediareport at 4:57 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


.
posted by SisterHavana at 4:57 PM on May 5, 2012


I thought this was sweet: Coldplay's Beastie Boys tribute from their Friday concert.

Only Chris Martin could turn Fight For Your Right to Party into a dirge.
posted by jokeefe at 6:15 PM on May 5, 2012 [4 favorites]


I have been spending way too much time thinking about why this is hitting me so hard. I think part of it is because MCA was such a cool guy, but part is that the Beastie Boys have always sort of pinned a little piece of my past in the present. With his passing, I can feel that part of me sliding forever into the past. I knew some parts of my life were gone forever, but I didn't feel it until yesterday.

The rhyme "I got more rhymes than I got Grey Hair/And that's a lot because I got my share" seems amazingly poignant to me today. I feel like I am never going to be able to listen to "Sure Shot" without getting choked up.
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:18 PM on May 5, 2012 [8 favorites]


Tribute from Thom Yorke at Radiohead's webpage.
I was very sad to hear the news of Adam Yauch's death yesterday.
We looked up to the Beastie Boys a lot when we were starting out and how they maintained artistic control making wicked records but still were on a major label, and the Tibetan Freedom Concerts they organized had a very big influence on me personally and the way Adam conducted himself and dealt with it all impressed me a lot. He was a mellow and v smart guy. May he rest in peace.
posted by jokeefe at 6:19 PM on May 5, 2012 [1 favorite]


I thought this was sweet: Coldplay's Beastie Boys tribute from their Friday concert.

When the Beasties had to pull out of All Points West in 2009, Coldplay did this version of that song. I'm not a big Coldplay fan, but that performance really stuck with me at the time, and it's good to hear that they let it fly again when it was appropriate.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:58 PM on May 5, 2012


The Roots played some Beastie Boys songs on Fallon last night.
posted by drezdn at 7:41 PM on May 5, 2012


did my mourning when i first heard, but for the record





.
posted by liza at 7:59 PM on May 5, 2012


I remember in junior high and high school EVERYONE loved the Beasties. Regardless of whether one preferred rap or rock; popular music or alternative. Popular kids and not popular kids. It was one of the few things that everyone agreed on, and that was really the start of the Beasties being one of those groups that was all about unifying people.. tolerance and bringing people together rather than tearing people apart.. or simply, mindlessly sporting controversial lyrics just to push boundaries and rile people as is common in popular music. They may have started out fighting for our right to party, but somewhere along the way they just started fighting for rights, which is something that a lot of celebrities and rock groups claim to do. Well, Adam actually did it. A great many of their songs have really positive lyrics that challenge and defy stereotypical violent or misogynistic themes.. so much of what they did musically and lyrically actually warms the heart and makes you feel a sort of unity. It's an indescribable sort of feeling, but it is something I feel every time I do listen to them (which is not as often as I really should). I think, to some point, it's actually pride that I'm feeling. I think I became very proud of who they became, Adam especially. And, it should not be forgotten, their sense of humor was wicked and, oh! the pop culture references thrilled me! I was in awe of the wall-to-wall pop culture references, really.

That's musically, but personally Adam must have been incredible human being. I remember when they were still snotty punks making headlines for causing trouble (or what we considered 'trouble' in those days.. boy, it seems kind of funny to think of parents really considering them a threat compared to what's out there today!). His political activism and spiritual awareness was remarkable, and, once again, I felt a sort of pride because his love and tolerance always seemed so genuine. I was sad when it was announced that he had cancer years ago, but I was just thinking about him not long ago, thinking he must be doing well. His passing was a shock (he was so young!), but I suppose not really. It seems cancer gets all the best people. I wish him peace.. and I wish peace to all the people who knew and loved him. And, I wish peace to all his fans.
posted by Mael Oui at 8:50 PM on May 5, 2012 [5 favorites]


words fail

.
posted by bashos_frog at 9:06 PM on May 5, 2012


Really? Adam Yauch? Shit. I echo the sentiment of the first comment in this thread.

.
posted by not_on_display at 9:50 PM on May 5, 2012


Red Hot Chili Peppers tribute allegedly from last night. Starts around 2:52.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:20 PM on May 5, 2012


(also, its just the instrumental portion of "Whatcha Want")
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:23 PM on May 5, 2012


Adam Yauch does "Imma let you finish" 15 years before (and way more entertaining than) Kanye West.
posted by dirigibleman at 11:50 PM on May 5, 2012 [4 favorites]


Adam Yauch's connection to Bob Dylan.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:59 PM on May 5, 2012


.
posted by zaelic at 12:27 AM on May 6, 2012


.
posted by FuzzyVerde at 12:33 AM on May 6, 2012


.
posted by MeiraV at 9:46 AM on May 6, 2012


♫ ♪ ♪♫ ♪ ♪ he is a sad loss. Kids and I all loved him!

.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:38 PM on May 6, 2012


Two MCs, one had to go...

We'll miss you, Adam.

.
posted by shortyJBot at 6:36 PM on May 6, 2012


Now I feel bad for swearing in front of argonauta's mom.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 4:05 AM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]


Ha! No worries, These Premises Are Alarmed. I'm pretty sure she said "Holy fucking shit holdkris99." too.
posted by argonauta at 6:10 AM on May 7, 2012


"I'll give a little shout out to my dad and mom
For bringing me into this world and so on."
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 12:09 AM on May 8, 2012


Now here's a little something that you might not like.

.
posted by Quantum's Deadly Fist at 2:21 AM on May 8, 2012


Paul's Boutique today. Well, at least the last time the Google Van drove past.
posted by zamboni at 1:03 PM on May 8, 2012




This was actually kind of cool - someone assembled a mashup of MCA's opening lines in nearly ever Beastie Boys song.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:20 PM on May 8, 2012 [1 favorite]


Late, but echoing everyone, damn. Thought he had beat it. Fuck cancer.

.
posted by cavalier at 8:16 AM on May 10, 2012






This is an idea that has been floating around in my head for a few months, and for obvious reasons, I got around to realising it this weekend.

Each dot represents one word of the song. The colours represent who is saying that word.


cooky-puss liked this

Awesome.
posted by Big_B at 1:15 PM on May 10, 2012


"The time has come for you to seek the Path. Your soul has set you face to face before the clear light ... and now you are about to experience it in its Reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum, without circumference or center ... At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state ...Look towards the light"

Tibetan Book of the Dead

RIP MCA
posted by karst at 7:17 AM on May 11, 2012 [4 favorites]


Nathaniel Hornblower Lives!
posted by scody at 8:51 AM on May 15, 2012 [2 favorites]




Aw shit, sorry Scody.
posted by angrycat at 9:38 AM on May 15, 2012


heh, no worries. I like your description better!
posted by scody at 9:42 AM on May 15, 2012




... and this is the 3rd time someone linked to the video. It's not a mirage.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:27 PM on May 16, 2012 [1 favorite]


for anyone still following this thread -

ad-rock and mike d give interviews about MCA.
posted by nadawi at 3:52 PM on May 23, 2012 [4 favorites]




Finally saw that tyke-reenactment of Sabotage. Those kids did a great job, though it might've been even funner if they had squirt or dart guns instead. And I kinda wonder if I'd have realized what they were doing if I were passing by them in those getups.

And I forgot to mention this earlier, but one of my favorite things about the original video is that Yauch's "Sir Stewart Wallace" plays himself, and is portrayed as a bad guy. I'm guessing his knighthood wasn't revoked as a result.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 4:49 AM on May 28, 2012


Nice collection of MCA tributes and memorials from around the country.
posted by scody at 1:00 PM on May 29, 2012


« Older Cats and peacock   |   popcorn & hawaiian snack noms Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments