Ill Communication

            MCA is gone - 1/3 of the Beastie Boys. The world knew he was sick since 2009 with throat cancer. But I thought I heard somewhere that he was recovering. It was relieving and comforting to all of us Beastie fans when they released Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, last year. We hoped he had beat back the malignant cells that formed in his throat. I enjoyed the album. I thought MCA sounded great, especially in his random lines stolen from Dylan throughout the album. This was the comeback. Right?

            On May 4^th, Adam Yauch died. The cancer had spread. Just a month prior, I had blasted Hot Sauce Committee in my apartment while cooking up some sort of delicious dinner for my wife to be greeted by when she got home from work. By the time the CD was finished, so was dinner. I put the disc back into the case to reassume its position at the tail of my ridiculously long and anally organized music collection queue. It did not enter my mind that the next time this, or any Beastie Boys album, would be played in my stereo MCA would be dead.

            I did not listen to any Beastie Boys records on May 4^th while I cooked dinner (I did post the Body Movin’ music video on Facebook with a “RIP MCA” tag, but anything more than that would have been too much). When my wife got home that night I told her that MCA died. “I know," she replied, just two words that matched the same level of sadness that I felt. Of course she knew (she always knows all of the entertainment news before me). On Facebook, in her own RIP MCA post, she commented, “Only 47 and such a huge piece of our generation’s soundtrack.” If you’re our age (32 on 5/4/2012) then you know exactly what she means.

            The Beastie Boys were never my favorite band or anything like that, but we all loved them. Their songs really do form a soundtrack to our lives. Imagine a movie being made of my 32 years on this planet, (kind of like a Forrest Gump but without that same set of mental challenges). In each era you would hear a choice Beastie’s track in the background. It’s not the foreground. It’s not out front. It’s behind the dialogue, behind the action, setting the scene and leaving you with a certain feeling.

           

Scene 1: 1986

            In November of 1986, I was in elementary school in a town on Long Island, New York. And Licensed to Ill broke. To us suburban white kids, the Beastie Boys were our introduction to rap music. My first memories of MTV include the video to “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)”. These three rude white kids were drinking beer, throwing things and pissing off senior citizens. They were not singing, they were shouting, over nasty music and a loud beat. To a seven year old, this was all very exciting. I can remember a dance performance at school. There were about twenty, skinny, white older kids flopping about on a stage, to “Fight For Your Right.” Were they break-dancing?

A few years later, I would leave New York and move to California with my family. When I try to think back to what childhood was like in the 1980s on Long Island, the Beastie Boys and Licensed to Ill jumps up in my mind. Maybe we were all just confused, little, suburban, white kids, equally attracted to and scared by, the black culture that came from New York City. The Beastie Boys seemed safe enough then.

Scene 2: 1992

            The Beastie Boys entered my life again in 1992, when they released Check Your Head (I don’t know how, but I totally missed Paul’s Boutique - that one won’t appear on the soundtrack). I was in middle school in the suburban desert that is Temecula, California. Things were changing - music, style and fashion, extracurricular activities. Nirvana had already kicked Michael Jackson off the top of the Billboard charts. It was the dawning of the new 90’s alternative fad. The Beastie Boys had changed too. Now they were playing their own instruments. They were still rapping, but the music now sounded much more like an alternative rock band than a New York rap crew. Their clothes changed too. And ours changed with them. All of us white kids began wearing the baggie, skater jeans, screen-printed t-shirts and beanies that we saw the Beasties wearing in the “So Whatcha Want” video. All the boys bought new skateboards. Check Your Head was inserted into every Sony Walkman.

Scene 3: 1994

            The video for “Sabotage” came out of nowhere and smacked all of us right upside the head. What was this we were watching? A movie trailer? A new mock-70s cop show? Are these the Beastie Boys in disguise? Everyone remembers this video. It inspired Halloween costume parties for the next two decades. We all rushed home from high school classes to turn on MTV and hope to catch the video.

            May, 1994. Freshman year. High School beginnings, accompanied by a new Beastie Boys’ record, Ill Communication.

Scene 4: 1997

            In 1997, I graduated from Temecula Valley High School. During that last spring semester, the old Beastie Boys’ songs made a comeback. At lunch, the student body would blast “Girls” from Licensed to Ill across the campus. The Southern California desert noon sun was shining and reflecting off sunglass lenses and the bleached blonde hair of the students, as was the unfortunate style then. This silly song from our collective childhoods was now transplanted into our self-important 17-18 year old lives. We all sang along. At night all the parties, and all the parties’ stereos would be blasting “Brass Monkey”. We all sang along. This was old school for us. Was it subconscious, regressive, motives that made us play songs from our childhood, to lead us into adulthood? Or, perhaps, to keep us from it?  

Scene 5: 1998

            Hello Nasty dropped in 1998.We all turned 18 this year. It seems extremely ridiculous (and frankly embarrassing) now, to look back at how excited we all were to get into 18 and up dance clubs in San Diego county. This shows you how exciting Temecula was for teenagers. The only important memory of my first night in an 18 and up club, the Icehouse in Escondido, was hearing “Intergalactic," the Beastie’s brand-spankin’ new track, blast throughout the black lit warehouse dance floor, and seeing friends who I had not seen since we gradated high school the summer before. We all sang along, “Inter-galactic planetary, plan-etary inter-galactic!” and it was just like we were all back together at those high school parties.

Scene 6: 2004

            One more scene to think back upon. It was Halloween night, 2004. I lived in Redondo Beach, but we were in Hermosa this night. My brother drove up all the way from Temecula to come up with my friends and me. His costume – a Beastie Boy cop from the “Sabotage” video. At one of the bars we visited that night, the prefect song flew out from the vibrating speakers – “Check it Out” off of the newest Beastie’s album, To the 5 Boroughs. As soon as the first line was rapped out by MCA, my brother took off into a wild dancing fit. I could not stop laughing. It was the type of fun that only brothers can enjoy. The Beastie Boys made that moment perfection.

Thank you, Beastie Boys. Thank you, MCA