Skip to main content

Pass the Mic



Adam Yauch, founding member of the Beastie Boys rap/rock group, passed away yesterday aged 47. He leaves behind a wife and daughter. Also left behind are a plethora of mourning fans and devotees. Along with Yauch, a piece of our modern pop culture has died.

To tell the truth, I was not a Beastie Boys fan. I didn't dislike them, per se, just never got into most of their music. So it goes. Of course, it's hard to be a child of the '80s and avoid their influence. The Beastie Boys are icons of that era, and have earned much respect. Just last month, they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by LL Cool J and Chuck D. Yauch was too ill to attend the ceremony.

The group is closely intertwined with a memory from childhood. It was a 5th grade field trip to visit the historic sites in Springfield. As we rode the yellow school bus the hour or so to the capitol city, a classmate named Brett regaled us with this new-fangled thing called a Walkman. Inside of it was the cassette tape of the Beastie Boys' 1986 album License to Ill. The Walkman, with its awesome little tunes playing through the headphones, was passed around and sampled by almost all of us. We would briefly jam to tracks like No Sleep Till Brooklyn, Girls, (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party), and Brass Monkey.

Yellow school buses, field trips and Walkmans are a part of my life left behind some years ago. They represent the past. But Adam Yauch and the Beastie Boys were still here, a living connection to that past. Now, Yauch joins the field trips and Walkmans.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing).  It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....
Post a Comment
Read more

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.
5 comments
Read more

She's Madonna

Today we're going to talk about something very important. We're going to talk about Madonna. "Madge," as she's affectionately known around the gay scene, has been making music for over thirty years. I grew up with her songs, many of them pop classics. In recent years, it can be arguably said that her popularity has waned a bit. During the past decade, Madonna has put out seventeen singles. Of those, three have charted in the US Top 40. Ten Failed to chart at all on the Billboard Hot 100. We now have at least one possibility offered as to why Madge's chart power is waning: Ageism. At least, that's what Diplo (just, Diplo), a producer of some of the tracks off her latest album, thinks . I know it's difficult to be objective about something you've worked on -- whether you were the producer or the artist -- but, as a listener/fan, I have to say that Madonna's most recent work has simply not been that good. Still, we'll hear what
Post a Comment
Read more