There are songs that swell up inside of me with their simple graceful beauty and melodious majesty and I listen and I listen and when it reaches their brilliant conclusion, I'm left to declare, I must write about this song. Such is the case with Them's gorgeous version of Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."
I was a junior in high school, 1996, the first time I heard the ringing interplay of organ and guitar notes that form the hallmark of this version of the classic Dylan song. Only, it wasn't Them I was listening to. It was a song by Beck. Jackass, off of his seminal album, Odelay (possibly one of the greatest albums of the 1990s). I became instantly infatuated with this sound. A sample, I learned from investigating the tiny congested liner notes inside of Odelay. It read something to point that Jackass contained a sample from "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," by Bob Dylan. I did not yet know of this Dylan song. I was not the Dylanphile I am now. But the sample, used so prominently and effectively throughout "Jackass" sent me to the record store to buy Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. I had to hear his original. I had to hear this sample in its natural form.
I arrived at the album's ultimate song, track 11, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" but there were no organ notes, no delicately plucked electric guitar. It was sparse, classic acoustic Dylan (I would fully realize a few year's later)with his perfect annunciation of each devastatingly beautiful line like, "Yonder stands your orphan with his gun/Crying like a fire in the sun," which all lead to his somber, repeated, declaration - that it is indeed all over now, Baby Blue. As heavenly as the original is, is it blasphemous to say that I like the cover more?* I mean, just listen to the Them version. The aforementioned organ, the guitar, the waltzing bass line, and the power of Van Morrison's voice, the way he plays those vocal chords like Coltrane played the tenor sax. He's got a vocal range that frolics from raspy desperation to howling back to tender resignation.
No. I did not find the delicious sample from "Jackass" on the Dylan original. I was left to wonder, back in those days before every answer was just a Google search away, where did this sample come from?!
Years later, much after I had forgotten about this silly quest, I was watching Julian Schnabel's biopic of Basquiat. In a scene with the actor-version Basquita and his girlfriend, played by one of all-time favorite actress crushes, Claire Forlani, are in her apartment painting, THERE IT WAS!. The organ and guitar sample I had been waiting to discover. In its original version.
White Whale! Dr. Livingston, I have found you!
*On a similar note, could anyone say that Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower is superior to the Jimi Hendrix Experience's cover? Nay.
Dylan welcomed the world into his song with the ancient archetypical greeting laid down by minstrels and folksters and voices of protest that had echoed down the wind for years and years.
The anthem begins. If there ever was a song to capture the moment of the early 1960s, it would be this song. Dylan's "The Times They Are-A Changin'" is a song that can both fit perfect into a spot, say 1964, and then transcend beyond that spot so that when some teenager in 1998 stumbles across it, it still sounds present.
It's the opening track for Dylan's third album, also called The Times They Are-A Changin'. Released in January of 1964, this collection would be the both the climax and the conclusion of his protest song period. His next albums would find him experimenting with ever-encrytping personal symbolist poetry, and soon sonically with electric instruments (with infamous and world shattering results). This is the last album where Dylan would wear they storyteller of society hat. His last Woody Guthrie pose. By 1963, Dylan was the undisputed king of protest music. One mask he would soon tear off and set into the fire.
Come gather 'round... The storyteller has a message for you. One last time. Admit that things are changing, and that you should change too. An anthem call to get on board the train of change or else by left behind in its coal-burning dust.
But I'm no child of the 1960s. I came of age in the 1990s. I cannot relate to those who staged sit-ins amidst the fists and spit of centuries of hatred. I can try and protest, but I usually stay home instead and read. or listen to Dylan. For me, as with anyone with memories of being a rebellious teenager, I can still relate to one specific golden line aimed at parents, "Don't criticize what you can't understand, your sons and daughters are beyond your command, your old road is rapidly aging..."
Why does this song still grab me? I am a history teacher. It might be the history teacher in me that has always been drawn to this song. I see with ease the context this song sits in. The Civil Rights movement. The bifrth of the anti-war movement. The free speech college protests. The transformational years before 1968 exploded.
Is this song about the inevitability of change happening on it sown, or is it an invitation to ride a wave and join the movement? To affect change?
When did Dylan record it? October 1963. One month later, John F. Kennedy would be assassinated in Texas. What does that do to the dreamer? To the agent of change. Dylan would say that "they are trying to tell you Don't even hope to change things."
Could JFK's assassination have killed the change agent in Dylan? Could it be what pushed Dylan out of protest and into poetry? Something I've been wondering lately...
The first sound that bombards you on the new Japandroids album, Celebration Rock, is the far off explosions of high up fireworks. It sounded odd at first listen - when do you ever hear fireworks without seeing them? When you can only hear fireworks, what then do you see? I see fourths of July from years past, gone, burned all up. Running around with the sparklers of serene childhood and tossing into the air the Budweiser cans of wild youth. Of celebration. Not in a patriotic, God bless America sense. More of a Let's Celebrate Today! Tonight! This Summer! Celebrate surrounded by friends because this surely cannot last forever.
"We down our drinks in a funnel of friends, We burn our plans down to the end!" from "Days of Wine and Roses"
The Japandroids album is perfectly named. Each song rings and rocks as celebrations themselves. Fist shaking, wild dancing celebrations. And even though it is a 2012 album that fits well in 2012, the songs, just like the fireworks, make me nostalgic.
The music. The songs explode in their own colors and patterns just like each singular firework that makes up the collective show. There are no subtle, sleeping songs here, just as there are no quiet fireworks. The tone is set from the booming opening song "Days of Wine and Roses", through standout tracks "Fire's Highway," "Younger Us," and "The House That Heaven Built," right up to the closer, "Continuous Thunder." It is rare to hear a band of just two people rocking so fucking loud. And you want to rock along with them. Sing along with each "WHOAH-OH-OH-OHHHHHH!"
The attack of their songs, shredding distortion, riffs and chord changes remind me of Husker-Du, with the hooks of Superchunk. The choruses remind me in the best way of the post-punk of mid to late 1980s American Underground bands, meeting the harder, louder indie rock of the 1990s. All of this combines to create one of my favorite albums of 2012.
The first I ever heard of Hot Chip was back in 2005 in a Myspace message (remember those?) from Devin. It read:
Here is what I am listening to right now - Hot Chip, Cut Copy and Quantic Soul Orchestra.
That was the entirety of the message and I appreciated it s brevity. It allowed me to more quickly fire up my music downloading service and do some suggestion-inspired, new music investigation. I started with Hot Chip, and while I do like Cut Copy, Hot Chip was the prize in this trio recommendation (Quantic Soul Orchestra issome nice background music. Nothing life-changing).
I downloaded "The Beach Party" off their first full-length Comin' On Strong (2005). It was a nice sample of the soft electronic grooves, laptop funk and silly lyrics ("I'm like Stevie Wonder but I can see things") that constituted, I would later learn, the entire Hot Chip debut album. I did purchase it. One of the greatest surprises in buying an album is when you realize that the rest of the record is better than the the song that compelled you to make the purchase. My three standout tracks are "Shiny Escalade," "You Ride, We Ride. In My Ride," and "Crap Kraft Dinner." They may also be the most understated tracks on the album. They're soft. Less funky. Less electro-party groove. They are electronic beds to lie upon, close your eyes and float away. Smiling. There was a week in the spring of 2006 when I played "Crap Kraft Dinner" everyday. Seriously. It still stands as my favorite track by Hot Chip, despite all of their sonic and tonal evolutions. The velvet keyboards and saxophones underneath the fragile voice of Alexis Taylor always remind me of those sunny spring days, me lounging outside my Redondo beach apartment, surrounded by the high fence and Hot Chip.
"Crap Kraft Dinner":
Then in 2006, The Warning was released. I was hooked on the Hot Chip. It was a no-brainer purchase. And I wasn't disappointed. The Warning was everything I could have hoped for in a follow-up album. Hot Chip developed their sound, pushed new electronic boundaries and noises and fabricated even more catchy hooks. It's one of those albums that when you listen to it for the first time, you cannot wait to hear what the next track will sound like. An exciting whirlwind of sonic pleasures. The songs are faster, louder, and denser than those from the debut album. But no matter how loud Hot Chip gets, the tenderness in their songwriting, the moments when you almost feel a tear forming in your eye, still shine. This is abundantly present in the standout track, "And I Was A Boy From School" - "We tried but we didn't have long/We tried but we don't belong." This album formed a soundtrack for my wild, exciting, self-destructive party summer of 2006. Each night as Esther, Phil and I got ready to head out to some Hollywood party we would blast and dance to The Warning. And each hard, hungover morning, as I wallowed in a bit of self-loathing I would play the closing track "No Fit State." (I'm in no fit state/I'm in no fit shape.)
"The Warning" (I have no idea who these kids are making this video. They're not Hot Chip. Cool video anyways.
Hot Chip hit its highest point musically with their third record, Made in the Dark (2008). As with any great band that manages to captivate my attention while they are still recording, hot Chip managed to grow in their song-writing, production, and the overall, indescribable feel in their music. Made in the Dark sounds like it is a greatest hits record. But it's not. It is the summation of everything Hot Chip could do, would do, and should do. It is rare to hear such magnificent actual song-writing in electronic music (maybe I need to study more electronic music). Make these songs acoustic, strip the sonic layers (a Hot Chip Unplugged!), and the songs would still simply be wonderful. When the deeper, soulful voice of Joe Goddard appears pleasantly (always pleasantly) in songs like "Ready for the Floor", you have to just smile and say Yes, this IS Hot Chip ("You're my number one guy!"). This album also has the special distinction of being the first Hot Chip record to be released while my wife and I were together (weird sentence, and still together!) - not even yet engaged.
"One Pure Thought"
So if Made in the Dark was Hot Chip's highest point, my description implies that their latest two releases fall short of the zenith it established. It's not that bad, I mean come on, Made in the Dark is fucking fabulous. 2010's One Life Stand is still a good album. But it's different. And again, it's not a bad thing. Bands do need to try new things on each subsequent album to hold my attention. On this album, Hot Chip put on full display their house music influences. The soulful, laptop-Stevie-Wonder-fun is missing, though. It is replaced by a danceable, engaging, though somber set of songs. Obviously highlights are the two singles, the title track "One Life Stand" and the superb Depeche Mode reminiscent "Take It In." I just feel that the rest of this somber album does not extend much further.
Take It In (PS. I made this video)
A new Hot Chip album is still an automatic purchase for me. This year the London boys released In Our Heads, another Casio (think a bit of Chromeo somewhere in the track "Night and Day") and house-inspired set of songs. All touched with still a taste of somber love. I hate when I become one of those music snobs who says that a band's new album cannot compare to their previous output. So I won't. I was not as impressed with it upon my first listen. But In Our Heads deserves several listens to appreciate its feel. Every time I hit play on this album I find more to appreciate. "Flutes" is simply sublime. All seven minutes of it. I'm going to hold off on saying any more about In Our Heads. I need to listen to it for the rest of the year to get a better grasp of what Hot Chip has done here. I wonder where this album will end up on my year end list...
My
eyes strained, bleached as the Arizona ground around me, following the stretch
of highway out to the horizon, where the top of the blacktop met the bottom of
the rose dusk sky. I knew it was time to pull over and find a place to sleep for
the night, to rest my weary eyes, and to ease my clenched fingers that had
gripped the steering wheel of the rented beige Impala (with the key surprise,
discovered in the desert, a faulty air conditioner). These tight vices grasped
the molded vinyl wheel ever since I had left Santa Monica that morning.
Priority number one was to find some way to escape the oppression of July’s
desert heat, still tyrannizing even though the sun was making its last call,
dipping behind the mountains.
I
exited Interstate 40, and found my way back to Route 66, the mother road. There
I found a stretch of generic motorist hotels, familiar cousins of any stretch
of motels off any interstate. Super 8. Motel 6. Comfort Inn. I coasted past
these until there appeared exactly what I had set out to see – the soft,
humming, bright like a circus smile, neon sign of the old Route 66. It read: Motel Arizona. Vacancy. Pool. Perfect.
I
pulled into the near empty parking lot and found the t-shirt in the back seat I
had abandoned somewhere around Barstow. I procured the room for the night from
an elderly woman in the tiny, outdated clerk’s office. $20. Quality. I could
tell she wanted me to respond with more than one word answers to her colloquial
questions, but I didn’t have the verbal strength. I had not spoken one word
since embarking on my trip ten hours earlier, now was not the time to start. Instead,
I set myself on cruise control. Destination – the swimming pool.
The
pool was silent, the whole area empty. It was after 10:00 pm. The pool had been
closed for over an hour, according to the stained sign hanging from the gate. From
above, moonlight reflected off the surface of the water. From below, dim pool
lights lined the aqua-blue plaster walls. Dotting the water top were hundreds
of tiny black dots, the remains of flies, poisoned by the chemicals meant to
clean, floating. I dove in from the pool’s edge, headfirst, piercing past the
flies, touching the bottom and let buoyancy slowly bring me back up. Night
swimming deserves a quiet night, alone. The cool caress of the water was the
rush of pure refreshment I had craved throughout the day spent in the
sweat-soaked driver’s seat. There are few things in life as simple and
wonderful as a swimming pool. Floating on my back across the water. Tiny waves produced
from my feet treading, staring up at the low moon. I let the stress of driving
nonstop sink away into the chlorine-scented water.
At some point, I crossed
the street to the 24-hour AMPM and bought an imitation pork-rib sandwich (a
guilty pleasure) and a six-pack of Heineken and took them back to the pool
area. With my feet dangling into the water from the pool’s edge, I devoured my
gas station dinner and contemplated what the next day of driving held for me
and if I would be lucky enough to find myself ending the day, solitary and
swimming.
An important
question, no doubt, proposed by my mom to me, aged 14, on the way home from the
Temecula library after picking up a reserved copy of Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I suppose that the answer
would be Yes. Only a very “weird” 14 year old would ask that our
middle-of-nowhere library specially request a copy of an abstruse piece of
literature from Riverside County’s central branch. I did not respond to my
mom’s question and, looking back 18 years now, I do not think she expected an
answer. In the passenger seat of our family minivan, I strapped on my seatbelt
and cracked open the clear plastic-sleeved, massive hardcover novel. I never
completed Gravity’s Rainbow. Not even
close. I think I got 15 pages into the 760-page total (I would make a second
attempt to dive into it again, later in life. I think I may have gotten 30
pages in). Pynchon’s 1973 so-called masterpiece was just a bit too weird for
me. All I can remember from the book is something about professors, missile
diagrams and bananas. Although, the bananas could be from Ulysses, another novel that despite two well-intentioned attempts
to read, at two very different points in life, kicked my ass and sent me
packing. Just like Gravity’s Rainbow.
Should I try to read it again? Wise men say that the third time is a charm. But
wise men can be pretentious idiots.
The
only thing weirder than Gravity’s Rainbow
could be the reason why I wanted to read that thing in the first place. An
article in a music magazine claimed that supposedly Kurt Cobain might have been
reading Gravity’s Rainbow while
writing the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That seems pretty far-fetched now.
I cannot make the connection between the two. But the point is that I can
remember trying, in futility, to find this mystical connection then.
On
April 8, 1994, the news broke. Kurt Cobain committed suicide. An electrician
who was at Cobain’s Seattle home discovered his body. He had been dead for
three days already. My memory of the moment I heard the news is still vivid. I had
turned on the radio in my bedroom and the final minute of “All Apologies,” the
final track from what would be Nirvana’s final album, In Utero, was playing. The song ended and the somber voice of the
invisible DJ living in the speakers almost whispered, “His music always sounded
sad to me, but today, and from now on, it will sound much sadder. We here at
the station have just received news that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain is dead
from an apparent suicide.” Then everything went silent. I think. The DJ with
the ubiquitous DJ voice said nothing else. Maybe the music started again. Or
maybe, for just a few minutes, nothing happened anywhere in the world, and I
sat on my bed in disbelief and silence, everything else around me on pause. Like
that scene in The Graduate when
Dustin Hoffman is sitting at the bottom of the swimming pool, utterly silent
underwater, until the gentle plucking of a guitar’s pure isolated notes begin,
the intro to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.” Or I could be
remembering everything wrong.
Nirvana
was the band that made me fall in love with music. Everything changed after
April 8, 1994. Now I wanted to read everything I could about Kurt Cobain and
the suicide. I wanted to track down everything Nirvana ever recorded. My hair
grew longer. Nirvana t-shirts and thrift store cardigans dominated my wardrobe,
emulating Kurt Cobain. Nirvana became something to study. I tore through
Michael Azerrad’s Come As You Are,
and bought every magazine that had Kurt Cobain on the cover. I spent all of my
allowance on used CDs, records and cassettes of any band connected to Nirvana,
especially any listed as an influence. I checked out Gravity’s Rainbow and returned it on time, defeated. This was my
first, but not the last, instance of hero worship.
In the beginning
of this year, Cloud Nothings, a Cleveland indie rock band released their third
album, Attack on Memory. At first
listen, it seemed like more than memory was under attack. Gone was the indie
power pop sound of their releases from last year. It was replaced by a wall of
angry guitars, layered with distortion. While many indie bands are playing with
more electronic sounds and sensibilities, bands like Cloud Nothings are skewing
more to the sounds of the 1990s. Some songs are short, compact bursts of raw
energy. Some songs drone on and on, endless sonic barrages. However, on every
song, Dylan Baldi’s voice is the same. His howling “I Thought! I Would! Be More!
Than This!” on “Wasted Days” infiltrated my memory. It is a rasp of desperation
tearing through the music. I had heard this rant of angst before. Only Kurt
Cobain wailed like that. It made sense to learn that Steve Albini, the producer
of Nirvana’s In Utero, produced this
album, a bridge to discover, leading the way back to the 14 year old me.
Psychologists
declare that memory is the process that encodes, stores and retrieves
information. In the third process, retrieval, we must locate our memories and
return them to our consciousness. Music has always been my strongest stimulus for
involuntary memory retrieval. Others say that smell is their strongest sensory
cue. That has never been the case for me. Probably because I have a deviated
septum. Through music, moments thought forgotten manifest themselves.
Memory is persistent, or at least so says, Salvador Dali. The Cloud Nothings may desire
to attack memory, but that is useless. Memory lies back, awaiting the call of
stimuli to attack us. I very rarely listen to Nirvana anymore, but thanks to
the yowling of Attack on Memory I am
transported back to my bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. Cradling my
guitar, head turned at an odd angle to better hear the stereo, as my clumsy
fingers fall over the frets in an offbeat imitation. I do appreciate the new
Cloud Nothing’s album for its own merits – it is a solid album. I also
appreciate it for the way it cuts through linear time and space, and I’m 14 and
32 all at once. Paging Dr. Freud. I’m holding Gravity’s Rainbow, I’m trying to wrap my mind around the suicide of
an idol, and I’m trying to make sense of how songs summon memories. Memory
strikes back. And I’m forced to write about it.
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 4th, 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 4th 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.
