Trying To Change The World

Adam Yauch aka MCA died today. He was 47 years old. I was sitting in Starbuck's when I read the news. It was all I could do to keep from crying in front of the whole damn shop. I loved the Beastie Boys as a kid and still love them as an adult, and not just nostalgically. They just kept on making great music. And "Egg Man" is one of my eldests's favorite songs.

There's that saying about the unexamined life being not worth living. I'd have to say that anybody who goes from

Roses are red, sky is blue,
I got my barrel attcha neck so what the fuck you gonna do?

to

Well on the tough guy style I'm not too keen,
To try to change the world, I'm'a plot and scheme


inside the span of their lifetime was doing some pretty powerful self-examination. And the fact that he did it in a public setting in a genre of music that's, rightly or not, not often known for evolving towards kindness, is incredibly admirable. Rap, music, art, hell, the world could use more of that.

Rest in peace, MCA. And thanks for everything.

The Happy Song

So if yesterday's post with the most was about the songs that were implanted in my brain during my childhood, then today's is about the music being drilled into the skull filler of my own children. I guess it was about a couple of months ago that my eldest started developing his infatuation with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It started with just one song, "Pin", a 2 minute bit of rocking goodness that he affectionately dubbed with the alternate title of "Dinna Dinna" because of the chorus, which goes pretty much

BOM BOM BOM BOM
BOM BOM BOM BOM
DINNA
DINNA
DINNA
DINNA

As for the rest of the lyrics, I don't know. They might be dirty or they might be telling a story from a grenade's point of view or they might be about acupuncture gone horribly wrong or the plight of a mounted insect or something else entirely. Who am I to say? Sure, it's an awesome enough song, but it's only 2 minutes, and it's the only song he wanted to hear, and, well, have you ever listened to one 2 minute song over and over and over and over and over again? It's a pretty surefire way to start building a hatred towards a song, any song. But I have to wonder, if you pushed through the hatred and kept listening, would a certain type of madness set in? Would you begin to love and need the song in a sick desperate kind of way? Would you begin to identify with its plight, like some sort of musical Stockholm Syndrome?

I have no intention of carrying out this experiment. Our morning commute's a bit longer than two minutes, so I had to expand our listening into the rest of the band's repertoire. It took a bit of doing to convince Henry that there might actually be another song that he'd like, but he came around, and I figured out that as long as it was rocking enough, he would dig it. Of course, some of the songs have a bit of profanity, so you'll have to excuse the kid if he ever refers to you as a "no good di-i-i-i-i-i-i-ick" or tells you he's got a man that makes him wanna kill. He doesn't mean it.

So now we had a bit of variety in the music of our morning commute, though not quite enough. While we were no longer listening to just one song, we were still listening to just one band, which eventually has the same affect, though it takes longer to set in. One day, I'd just had enough. Much love to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but I needed something else. I don't know why I chose it, but something else turned out to be "Gratitude" by the Beastie Boys. I popped it on, assuring the boychild that awesomeness was on the way. I watched his face in the rearview as the opening riff played. Then the lyrics. After the first verse, he asked me an interesting question.

"What's this one about, Daddy?"

Holy shit, I thought, he knows that songs can be about stuff.

"It's, uh," think Holmes think, this is important! "It's about being happy!" Oh brilliant. "Yeah, it's about being happy with yourself and what you've got."

"Like with my toys?"

"Uh..." sort of? maybe? not exactly? "Sure!"

Since then, I've always been able to work in a bit of the Beastie Boys along with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, especially when I play "Gratitude" aka "The Happy Song." I had to take the boys with me to the store this evening and it happened to come up in the rotation. When we got home, Henry walked into the house and started singing to noone in particular.

"Gratitude. And that's riiight. Gratitude. And that's riiight."

Music to my ears.

Groove Holmes

Those of you who are older than me and have already gotten used to those little "oh shit I'm not so young anymore" reminders that seem to pop up out of nowhere, you folks are free to skip this post. Or you can read it and roll your eyes or mumble/yell/slur/say something to the effect of "welcome to the party, jackass" in the general direction of your monitor. Me, I still get caught by surprise whenever one of those moments comes along, but hey, I'm a slow learner.

See the latest of these reminders came not too long ago when I was ripping our CD collection to the 'puter. As tedious as this task was, it was a lot of fun going through all of our music and rediscovering all the stuff I'd kinda forgotten about, remembering how much I liked all these albums, how some of them would stay in my CD player for days on end, particularly the ones I used to dork out to and play along with on guitar. Yes, I played the guitar along with albums. Yes, I sometimes got very into it. Yes, my first college roommate walked in on me doing it one time and I was almost as embarrassed as I would've been if he'd caught me doing the one-eyed chicken choke.

Ahem.

Anyway, one CD I ran across that did not involve any six-string abuse on my part was The Beastie Boys' "Check Your Head." This is the one that damn near everybody in my age bracket had (well, in addition to the two that came before it) because it had the single "So Whatcha Want." I remember being a teenager and buying this album on tape at some crappy music store in a mall outside of San Antonio. It was summer time and I was working as a camp counselor, and on the weekends we did what camp counselors do with their free time: get the hell out of nature and into some damn AC and proceed to act like complete social idiots because we've been out in the woods for days on end regressing into animals. I have no idea why I still have the memory of this album purchase, but hey look, there it is. "Check Your Head" has always been my favorite Beastie Boys album, hands down. It's the one where they seemed to figure out that they could do more than just party music....which of course, as a teenager, I didn't give a shit about. I was like, "Make with the rappenin' cuz that's what's happenin!" But over time I came to appreciate just how great a piece of work this album really is, in large part due to all the little funk jams they tossed in there, especially the one that bears my name.

So the "oh goodness me I'm an old freak" moment came when I realized that this album came out in 1992, thus making it fifteen fucking years old. Fifteen years. Damn. Maybe I'm just surprised because to my ears, it seems to have aged pretty well.