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In this Discussion
- distant_shoe May 2012
- ed_chigliak May 2012
- Leland May 2012
- Loose_Thread May 2012
- MirandaJuly May 2012
On Yauch
The passing of a guy one year younger than me, that I started following 29 years ago, has put me in a reflective mood that has lasted for several days.
Through the uncanny intervention of Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, Yauch and his artistic brothers were several of the very small number of young people in the early 1980's who made the complete transition from the revolutionary punk kid underground to the center aisle of the cultural marketplace with their values, community, identity and productivity in tact. Such transitions are necessarily complex and fraught with contradiction.
Yauch's gift, at least as it appears to me today, is that by putting so much of his trajectory in the public eye, he offers a rich tapestry of signals about how to work with the improvisation of our lives in the context of this world's vicious injustices and apparent ocean of indifference. The guy wasn't a saint or anything, just an ordinary punk punking out.
Funny story: Within my complex and contradictory social function as a parent, I had a hard time finding YouTube evidence of Yauch's work that I felt comfortable sharing with @J-dawg. I started with the Intergalactic video because I remembered a catchy groove and a sort of cheesy movie sci-fi monster movie parody. Innocent and charming enough, though really just another video. Then I loaded Sabotage but found myself explaining that it was all a joke. That their wigs were supposed to look fake and they weren't really police. They were just playing cops and robbers and having fun. Somehow I wanted to help her get to the sense of playfulness, posing and dance within their art without it being determined by the superficial appearances of young male rage. I was about 30-seconds into Fight for Your Right when I decided to pull the plug on their cornball misogyny. But thirty seconds was enough for some kind of transaction to occur. Within a minute she was impersonating the nebbishy nerd at the beginning of the video, twisting her face up to say "Do you like parties?" and then chanting, "You gotta fight!"
I'm alright with it. What else can you be?
I wanted to share my favorite readings on Yauch here.
From Sasha Frere-Jones and Questo.
Any questions?
Through the uncanny intervention of Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, Yauch and his artistic brothers were several of the very small number of young people in the early 1980's who made the complete transition from the revolutionary punk kid underground to the center aisle of the cultural marketplace with their values, community, identity and productivity in tact. Such transitions are necessarily complex and fraught with contradiction.
Yauch's gift, at least as it appears to me today, is that by putting so much of his trajectory in the public eye, he offers a rich tapestry of signals about how to work with the improvisation of our lives in the context of this world's vicious injustices and apparent ocean of indifference. The guy wasn't a saint or anything, just an ordinary punk punking out.
Funny story: Within my complex and contradictory social function as a parent, I had a hard time finding YouTube evidence of Yauch's work that I felt comfortable sharing with @J-dawg. I started with the Intergalactic video because I remembered a catchy groove and a sort of cheesy movie sci-fi monster movie parody. Innocent and charming enough, though really just another video. Then I loaded Sabotage but found myself explaining that it was all a joke. That their wigs were supposed to look fake and they weren't really police. They were just playing cops and robbers and having fun. Somehow I wanted to help her get to the sense of playfulness, posing and dance within their art without it being determined by the superficial appearances of young male rage. I was about 30-seconds into Fight for Your Right when I decided to pull the plug on their cornball misogyny. But thirty seconds was enough for some kind of transaction to occur. Within a minute she was impersonating the nebbishy nerd at the beginning of the video, twisting her face up to say "Do you like parties?" and then chanting, "You gotta fight!"
I'm alright with it. What else can you be?
I wanted to share my favorite readings on Yauch here.
From Sasha Frere-Jones and Questo.
Any questions?
Comments
I got really good at changing the channel quickly when they were coming towards the TV room.
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7900381/the-second-career-beastie-boys-adam-yauch
Sad to see him go. This one really hits me, you know? And not just because of my peripheral involvement in the cultural nexus he helped foster.
1) firstly, way back tho - illicit tape trading culture in grade school.
2) i lived and breathed pauls boutique and the first de la soul record. listening back recently its just insane all the sampling is and its sad that the artform faded, but not before those masterpieces.
3) saw them on the check your head tour. really liked that one bass riff and played it a lot on my bass.
4) how did they become as important a brand to subscribe to as nirvana to kids in the burbs getting turned on to alternative underground culture?
i think its cause they were like proto-bloggers. always pointing the way to the cooler shit you wouldn't have otherwise known about. kurt had that same thing. always using his fame to help kids find even cooler shit than their own
maybe for them its because they were white rappers and that had to be their job. if they just gloated they would have been elvis.
instead they pointed shit out and that was cool. not many people use their fame to point at anything but themselves more.
by like 93 or so i was pretty hip to the cool stuff so i didn't need the beasties any more in my life, but i have always appreciated that aspect of them as artists, that they helped kids in a pre-internet world find the good shit, through the avenues available to them (saying things on record, pictures, little things on tv, magazine, record label) and that helped alternative culture grow in ways hard to appreciate post internet.
i wonder if net babies will ever understand how important that role was..for someone to have to point you to the good stuff was an effort and that's why those guys were cool. you couldn't just youtube a lee scratch perry record, you know?
RIP dude
you raised a lot of people up!
'83's when I met the Cookie Puss 12" at KAOS. There was nothing else like it.
When I went to New York with Rock Against Racism end of '83, early '84: the hardcore kids I was with all knew them from local shows. That spring in NY was when Rock Box came out. Run-DMC. It was just everywhere, like birds chirping, like the sound of traffic. Every park had it going on someone's system. Rock Box. Everywhere. Nothing had happened like that since The Message jumped the boombox zones in every city, becoming a staple by late-82, spring-83.
I feel the Elvis call. I remember getting shit for wearing a ball cap on the #7 bus in Seattle, probably '88. The shit was delivered in the form of the slur, "F*ck'n Beastie Boys! F*ck You!"
I think they felt that tension and tried to deal with it by being humble and serious and growing the community.
It was cool to see the history and the musicological analysis in Questo's memorial. They clearly blew up the audience for all hiphop that followed. Among other acts of community building, they provided Public Enemy and The Roots with their first national tours. Even if this is all they had done, they would have been key.
*between the Boomer 60's and the web.
Best part is how the screwups on the tapes became a part of my memory of the song. Although, I've got some wonky mp3s like that too.