I Also Grew Up With These Three Guys

With the release of the book, I’ve been looking back on my fandom of the Beastie Boys since I was fourteen. The book is separated into essays and stories, so I’m inclined to imitate that form.

I had no idea what I liked or what I was supposed to like in 1986.  All the music was shitty or from the previous generation.  I hadn’t stumbled through anyone’s collections yet and found the good stuff.  At our home, we had nothing.  I had maybe ten cassette tapes including Billy Joel and the Back to the Future soundtrack.  My brother and I shared a room in a tiny apartment and we listened to the radio on his mini boombox/portable radio that sat perched on a stool between our beds. I actually remember hearing “Fight for Your Right” for the first time.  It was loud, obnoxious, and funny.  I thought it was so damn funny.  I have to assume that’s what drew me in.

By the time “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” came out, everyone knew who they were.  My friend Eric bought a tape and made a copy for me on a blank from Kmart.  Licensed to Ill on Side A, Raising Hell by Run DMC on Side B.  And after I got that tape, that is all we listened to.  I’m not exaggerating.  We would walk to school with our little knock-off Walkmans and listen to one side, flip it over, listen to that all the way through, then back again.  It was new, it was rap, and it was for us.  I loved it.  It is and will remain the only thing I gave a shit about in junior high school.

One thing needs to be mentioned.  People from every sphere loved this thing.  (The white kids, anyway.)  The jocks, the surfers, skaters, rich kids, the metalheads.  Even a few girls.  That never happened.  All the groups in school had assigned music, and it was rare that those genres overlapped.

As for the legacy of that very obnoxious album, I must admit I didn’t understand irony or anything tongue-in-cheek.  I thought they were having fun, and I spent zero time analyzing the lyrics.  The band would later regret a lot of the dumb shit on this record, and it is embarrassing, but if it took that bawdiness to stick out as something other than Phil Collins or whatever Ratt was up to, I sincerely do not care.

The album faded around the end of 1987 or so when hairspray metal was in its glory.  That, and west coast rap was coming along to completely splinter hip hop into a thousand sub-genres.  I turned to classic rock and eventually alternative or indie rock, because I’m white and that’s what you did.  Like everyone else in America, I began to forget about the Beastie Boys.

I read a Rolling Stone magazine in 1989 and I found a rave review for their second album, Paul’s Boutique.  (Wait, what?  They’re still together?  How?)  That same week on a late-night vide collection on MTV I saw the funky video to ‘Shadrach’.  I didn’t know what the hell was happening.  My brother had segued into NWA, Geto Boys, and whoever rode that first wave of west coast, but I didn’t give a shit about that stuff.  It wasn’t funny.  It wasn’t fun to me.  This was fun.  I bought the cassette (still no CD player at this time) and I remember it was blue.  Again, I took it on my walks.  I listened to it so many times it’s embarrassing.  I couldn’t believe ‘She’s Crafty’ became this.  It was layered and dense and had a million samples and drops.  It remains to this day my favorite record.  Period.

Check Your Head and Ill Communication arrived just when the wave of new pop music changed everything.  Now alternative music was on TV and the radio, and you couldn’t ignore hip hop anymore.  It was everywhere.  The Beastie Boys weren’t some novelty from the 80’s, they were a legit band that seemed to be the only group playing instruments, rapping and changing it up on every record.  Someone more eloquent than I said that they weren’t the best rappers or rock musicians, but they did it like no one else.

If you know anything about this group, you know they weren’t exactly prolific.  After 1994, you got records in 1998, 2004 and 2011.  There was an instrumental record in there, but I don’t count that.  My only regret is that they didn’t hit the studio more.  I understand that they weren’t those types of guys, but…you know…

I have to talk about the one and only time I saw them live.  In October of 2004, they performed at the St. Pete. Times Forum in Tampa, FL.  My brother Matt and I bought tickets and come hell or high water we were going to make this show.  The day of the show, I didn’t have a car to drive to Tampa from Orlando.  My car was in the shop.  Matt was to drive.  Then his car crapped out. I began to lose my mind.  I knew this would be my only chance. (My previous opportunity dashed by a canceled Lollapalooza gig.) This was life, and life was a steaming pile of shit that wouldn’t let me have this one thing. Luckily, Matt borrowed a car from his ex and we made it on time.  It was awesome. It was everything I wanted, and we were close to the stage. I knew every word to every damn song.  First song ‘Egg Man’, last song ‘Sabotage’.  That’s how you wrap a fuckin’ show.

I still have that tour shirt.  I only wear it about once a year.

My kids knew who the Beastie Boys were before pre-school. (Just the cleaner tracks.)  Almost about every mix I ever made for anyone had at least one Beasties song.  I snuck an instrumental onto my wedding reception mix.

From collecting tapes to records to CD’s to MP3’s, I’ve been a fan of music since high school. My thirst for new stuff has faded, but I still have everything on a rotating playlist in my life.  Here is where I disclose this unbelievable fact:  I have not gone a week from the day I bought that Pauls’ Boutique cassette that I have not listened to something by the Beastie Boys.  That’s around 1500 weeks. Even when I tired of one album, I put something from another in a mix tape or a CD or a playlist by them. Their unique embrace of fun and humor and sweetness and stupidity has been a backdrop for so long, I don’t know what life would be like without it.