2012
i strap on my ear goggles and i’m ready to go
maura @ 6:33 pm
Gosh, last week was headspinny. I took the day off on May Day so I could go to The Free University of NYC (more on that soon), which was a blast. Then there was a giant leak in the room outside of my office, with associated custodial activities. Then I came home Friday evening — after a day of meetings with no time for Twitter — to the news that Adam Yauch, better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys, had died of the cancer he’d been fighting for a couple of years. I guess I hadn’t been paying much attention lately, though I did note that someone on my Twitter stream said he’d skipped the Beasties’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last month, and I wondered whether that was a bad sign. Which it was.
I have a lot of other things I should probably be writing right now, but I’ve found myself unable to stop thinking about writing a post about MCA. I love the Beasties, always have, and I’ve found myself oddly affected by this news all weekend. Maybe it’s because I never found the chance to see them play live, despite their long career. Maybe it’s because I’m not that much younger than MCA was, and my (only) kid’s not that much younger than his (only) kid. Maybe all of that.
It’s totally cliche, but the Beastie Boys were my first introduction to rap, as I’m sure was true for lots of other white kids in the suburbs in the ‘80s. In high school my musical tastes had evolved from a serious Duran Duran crush into the typical late teens mopey Cure/Siouxsie/Smiths/New Order kind of thing, with a smattering of punk rock/hardcore on the side. Not Top 40 radio but nothing too out of the ordinary (and I hadn’t yet gotten the mixtape from my English cousin that would push me over the cliff into indiepopland).
Then the Beasties came along with their white boy rap about NYC and White Castle and booze and girls and it was so different and weird and awesome. None of my friends really liked them; looking back now I’m not sure why I did, either, especially in those very sexist early days. But the fact remains that I did, and to this day I can still recite many of the songs on Licensed to Ill from memory. And, not that I’m a huge rap fan or anything, but they were certainly my gateway to rap, the reason I have the first Public Enemy record, for sure.
When we first moved to NYC we lived just across Houston Street from the Def Jam Records office on Elizabeth, and we would sometimes see a Beastie or two in the neighborhood. I followed along as they continued to release records and move into their more enlightened and less sexist phase. MCA’s usually linked most closely to that; he’s the one with the line in Sure Shot about respecting women which has been oft-repeated in the past few days. And along the way I still never managed to see the Beasties play live. Most of my friends weren’t really all that into them, if at all, and I don’t like going to shows alone, so I went to lots of indiepop shows (and a reasonable amount of more mainstream pop kinds of shows, too).
We grew up more and moved to Brooklyn (no sleep til). Sounds of Science, the Beasties’ double-CD hits record, was among the few records I could listen to while writing my dissertation, and pretty much the only non-instrumental music (because you can’t, you won’t, and you don’t stop). Sure Shot is still a go-to inspirational song for me, as I’m sure it is for lots of folks: the music and lyrics are a perfect fit, and it never ceases to make me feel like I can do something I don’t want to do (lately that’s mostly exercising). Last night we watched the video for Sabotage with Gus, who thought it was hilarious.
RIP, MCA — you’ll be missed.
3 comments on “i strap on my ear goggles and i’m ready to go”
Thanks Luke, and thanks for tweeting all of those articles about the Beasties and MCA, makes for good reading.
[…] of musical form, and a pivitol fixture in the coming of age of many CUNYites – Maura Smale articulated the feelings of many of us here on the Commons in a fitting tribute to […]
Great post, Maura. This loss hit me harder than I expected it would, too, for a lot of the same reasons you note. Though I’ve loved the Beastie’s for 25 years, somehow this past weekend has made me love and appreciate them all the more.