music: Beastie Boys: Check Your Head
My very early musical listening habits were not of my own devising, it was simply whatever was on the house stereo. I can’t remember most of it, save Peter and the Wolf. Around middle school I started developing my own tastes in music, and was split between the raw energy and power of hard rock (Def Lepperd’s Hysteria) and the funkiness of hip hop (Parents Just Don’t Understand). I was, like so many suburban kids, lost in a world of Top 40, because my sole inlet for new music was the radio. Once I got to summer camp, and could sample the musical tastes of way cool college students, my horizons opened up, and when I was 11 or so my ears were graced by three guys who found some middle ground between rock and hip hop. That was it for me for a while. AdRock, Mike D, and MCA became my first band crush, and it lasted clear through the end of high school. In terms of raw energy, varied style, fun, and catchiness, nobody could top the Beastie Boys.
The trio from New York CIty put a spell on me something serious in my teens. Beyond being able to bridge the gap between two styles of music that I’d been digging, the Beastie Boys represented something really important. Here were three guys, three white guys, three Jewish white guys, rapping over live instruments. They would do whatever they wanted, and they could do whatever they wanted, and despite it being hopelessly dorky most of the time we white kids in suburban America ate it up. The Beastie Boys were the Great White Hope for us floundering suburban kids wishing above all else that we could be down. If these three yahoos from New York could do it, then we had a shot, and we at that point refered to myself, and my friends CJ and Roger, who at the time were convinced we wanted to be Beastie Boys and not grow up.
But the B-Boys gave me more to chew on than good times and hopes of coolness. With the release of “Check Your Head” there also came incredible musical substance. I’d of course heard the 1980’s party anthems from “License to Ill,” and they were fun, but nothing could hang with the mix of hip hop, live instrument rock, and acid jazz that was “Check Your Head.” “Ill Communication” accentuated the point, and with the release of the instrumental compilation “The In Sound From Way Out!” I was completely and forever a B-Boys Fanatic. Now, ten years out of high school, the Beastie Boys’ instrumental work is what keeps me hooked and coming back for more. “The In Sound From Way Out!” has probably influenced my playing as a musician more than any other single album has. (It also would make a Beastie Boys fan out of many people who swore that they hated those three brats.) So when the Beastie Boys, now well into their forties, dropped their latest album, all instrumental, and announced a string of all instrumental shows, I knew what had to happen at all costs. I would have to dress to impress, and attend the Gala Event.
Last night, through strokes of incredible fortune, the Beastie Boys hosted a Gala Event (what they are calling the handful of all instrumental shows they are playing around the world) not five miles from my door. My buddy Adam (incidentally nicknamed AdRock, among other things) and I cruised down to the warfield, dressed to impress, and joined the three thousand or so well-dressed eventgoers (and people dressed up! Amazing!) for a night of Beastie Boys at their absolute finest. I was completely and totally hooked into it for two and a half hours, through the new instrumentals (“Off The Grid” holds high esteem), the rare punk breakouts, the acid jazz/funk grooves from the mid-90’s, and the live instrument hip hop that was offered up. It was the best concert I’ve seen in years. These guys, I am reminded, are more than dorky Jewish white guys somehow making it in the rap world; these guys are musicians who play instruments and are bold enough to leave lyrics out of their music despite all the ridiculous crap that has come out of their mouths for the past 20 years.
My band crush with the Beastie Boys never really went away. I dipped into other bands much more seriously after high school, but the Beastie Boys always had a special place in my heart. Seeing them do their thing in person last evoked me at age 15, but simultaneously scratched my more recent itch for quality groove-based rock. I had so much fun last night that tonight I think I’m going to spend way too much money to catch them again at the Greek. Y’can’t front on that.
Posted by davidtaus at August 25, 2007 05:43 PM | TrackBack