RIP MCA
Growing up I didn’t listen to a lot of non-radio music. I wasn’t one of those kids that was listening to some cool band or some band that my parents hated. I don’t have any nostalgic feelings about any bands I listened to in middle school or whatever. So I didn’t really know about or get into the Beastie Boys until high school. I probably heard the name before but had no idea. ‘Hello Nasty’ came out and I remember one of my friends listening it to on the way to a summer league basketball game. I remember liking it very much but being confused a little too. There are bands that sound like this? Who is this? I like it.
I’m sure sometime later that summer I got ‘Hello Nasty’ for myself and was on the way to becoming a fan. The timeline here could be a little jumbled but later that summer when I went on a church work project in NYC, I got this issue ( I got the Mike D cover)
I can’t really overestimate how influential this issue of SPIN was. Alan Light’s oral history of the band was like uncovering a whole other place / region / planet that I wanted to know all about. Stories about forming the Beastie Boys, people who toured with them, the G-Son studios, the Sabotage video, how they named their album ‘Hello Nasty’, I wanted to know all about it. I devoured it with a zeal that was only once reserved for baseball cards or sports stuff. Really the first time I cared about music and all the stuff around it. There are some many things I still remember from that issue.
Anyway, I got ‘Paul’s Boutique’ after reading that issue and ‘Check Your Head’ and ‘Ill Communication’ from Columbia Records in the mail (!) and was pretty much hooked from then on.
A huge result of getting so into the Beasties was getting into other groups because of them, ATCQ, The Roots, etc and then what that led to. Reading about all the samples used on ‘Paul’s Boutique’ led to learning about a ton of other groups. I got into the Bad Brains because of how much they meant to what the early Beasties were. Ok, no I didn’t but I knew who they were at least and that was the important part!
Since I got into the Beasties late, I never knew them as the snotty, beer-throwing assholes that did ‘Licensed to Ill’. I only knew them as a group who did it, later regretted it and moved on from it, which I imagine would be tough to do today. They were really fucking popular being these characters and everyone would have had no problem if they kept it up. Except they didn’t do that, they went on to make one of the best hip hop albums ever.
B-Boy bouillabaisse
-I have three Beasties t-shirts, everyone else is tied for 2nd with one t-shirt
- I had a ticket to see the Beasties and Rage against the Machine then Mike D fell off his bike and broke his shoulder, tour postponed, then the RATM bassist decided to climb up that thing on the VMA’s and then they broke up. So no tour.
-I got super drunk and sang “Hey Ladies” and someone recorded it
-I always kinda understood why people rush out and buy cds and dvds when someone dies but I think it’s weird but one the first things I thought this morning was I wanted to get that Criterion collection of all their music videos, so pot kettle black, whatever.
- I got tacos from Tacos Villa Corona because Anthony Bourdain went there but also to walk by the G-Son home base.
Part one in a one part series of things too long for 140 characters.
While talking with a superior at work, I had the following conversation:
Me- “…yeah, my wi-fi is pretty shitty at my apartment right now so I …”
Co-worker- “I didn’t know you were married”
Me-…
Me-“Wait, what…no, I’m not married, I said my wi-fi was shitty… did you think I said my wife?”
Co-worker- “No…I don’t know.”
Me- “No, I don’t have a shitty wife”
atencio:
Key & Peele: Flicker
This is my favorite sketch of the season, and by far the one I spent the most time on in post-production, trying to get the timing of the edit and the music just right. One of the things I love about Keegan & Jordan is the way they heighten situations, and how they can take a simple joke to such ridiculous places in the writing, then have the acting chops to back it up. When I direct comedy I try to keep everything in a scene as grounded in an appropriate reality as possible, so the chance to make something so stupid be as self-important as this was, well, it’s the kind of thing I love making the most (see also Il Gatto). I know that because it’s a six minute sketch, it’s not exactly internet-friendly, but if you have a little free time, I’d love you to give it a watch, preferably in fullscreen and at a relatively loud volume.
If I had talent or the ambition, I’d write a lot about my favorite album from last year, The Monitor, and my favorite album from this year, Manhattan Murder Mystery - s/t. They were my favorite albums to play at dangerous volume, banging on my steering wheel when driving home late at night from work, looking forward to blaring them when I got home when I could slug beers and eat shitty food. And drink more beers.
Would I listen to either on the way to work or in the middle of the afternoon? Maybe once in a while but probably not. Probably because neither album would hit home like it did at 12:30 a.m or 1:15 a.m or later, with increased levels of alcohol intake.
Is this something to apologize for? Or discredit the merits of the albums just because I like to listen to them in my ‘fuck everybody, i hope we run out of natural resources because we don’t deserve it” state of mind?
How many songs get spins because they are dumb and people lose their shit because they like them when they are drunk, dancing with their friends, taking arm length facebook photos at the club? I don’t have exact stats on this but I’m pretty sure it’s a fucking lot.
How different is it to like an album when you are in the “Fuck it, I’m drinking” mood compared to the “I’m drinking!!! fuck it, lol!” mood? Should it be different?
What to make of these little seedlings and the next step is where my lack of talent and ambition are a hindrance.
aquariumdrunkard:
download this bootleg …
1 Talent Show
2 ‘Round And ‘Round (Chuck Berry)
3 The Ledge
4 Can’t Hardly Wait
5 September Gurls (Big Star)
6 Another Girl, Another Planet (The Only Ones)
7 Within Your Reach
8 Left Of The Dial
9 Alex Chilton
10 Nightclub Jitters
11 I’ll Be You
12 Bastards Of Young
13 Talent Show
14 Answering Machine
15 Anywhere’s Better Than Here
16 Another Girl, Another Planet (The Only Ones)
17 Here Comes A Regular
18 Achin’ To Be
19 Waitress In The Sky
20 Don’t Ask Why
21 Unsatisfied
22 I’ll Be You
23 I Will Dare
Let’s say you are on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr and you say, “What I’d really like is some more Tumblr followers”…is that kind of like saying “What I’d really like to do is direct”
I went to see The Henry Clay People tonight because I learned they were playing for free as part of the Culture Collide Festival in Echo Park.
After arriving, I saw someone who may or may not have been in the band but they said “Don’t make any New Year’s Plans” so that was cool.
Then HCP played and it was ragged and tuff and fun. They played some new jams, some old jams and some in between.
It was a lot of fun and then Joey Siara pointed me out and said I was gonna count off their song ‘Working Part Time’. I’ve been to a bunch of HCP shows and someone usually has counted it off.
But I’ve never done it. Today I did, it was rad. While it wasn’t quite as rad as when the elder Siara bro told me to jump into the pool at CityStock ‘09 or when The War on Drugs dedicated ‘Taking the Farm’ to me the last time they played the Echo, it was still pretty sweet. And while I don’t like to bring up the fact that I work everyday since one of my jobs is real easy and is basically just watching sports, the fact that I haven’t had a day off since at least early August and tonight featured me counting off a song called ‘Working Part Time’ on a day where I worked at nine after getting home after one from work and have to be in at eight tomorrow, well it meant a little more than the usual.
On a Saturday Night
Heard “Chris Christie” about 20 times just now on the Colbert Report and now this is the only thing I can think of. And the fact that it only has five views is near criminal.
