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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 3597
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 Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 11:57 am Post subject: Adam Yauch obituary |
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So, so sad. In my opinion a loss equal to the late great Bill Hicks.
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Adam Yauch obituary
Husky-voiced, witty member of the hip-hop trio the Beastie Boys
Alex Rayner
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 5 May 2012 16.04 BST
Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, seen here in his native New York in 1987. Photograph: Lynn Goldsmith/Rex Features
In his late teens, Adam Yauch - "MCA" of the Beastie Boys – did not look the type to be an effective rapper. Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC suspected when they met for the first time that he might be an actor put up by the TV show Candid Camera. How else could he account for a white performer who, along with his bandmates Mike "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz, coupled the carefree character of punk with the clownish one-upmanship of hip-hop?
Yet though McDaniels was apprehensive about their first tour date together, in front of an all-black audience in Georgia in 1986, "the crowd loved them, because they weren't trying to be black rappers... Real recognises real." Starting from their own experience made Yauch, Diamond and Horovitz white rap stars, with eight albums selling a total of more than 40m copies in a career that lasted for a quarter of a century. Yauch has died of cancer at the age of 47.
Thanks in large part to Yauch's husky voice, dry humour and sophisticated political outlook, fans moved on from the band's early declared enthusiam for beer and pornography to appreciate their sharp satire and pop sophistication. Away from the microphone, Yauch made documentary films and videos, and was a Buddhist supporter of Tibet. Everything he did was accomplished with disarming integrity.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Noel Yauch, an architect, and his wife Frances, a schools administrator, Adam was inspired to form a band after seeing the hardcore punk band Black Flag. The Beastie Boys - also including his high-school friend Diamond at the start – performed their first concert on Yauch's 17th birthday, with him playing bass guitar. A year later they recorded an eight-song EP, but then broke up.
While he was studying at Bard College, 90 miles to the north, Yauch developed a new line-up, the hip-hop trio with Diamond and Horovitz, and then dropped out after two years of his course. Their debut rap record, Cooky Puss, came in 1983.
Though little more than a syncopated phone prank with some rock guitar, this brought them to the attention of the rap-label boss and producer Rick Rubin. He added AC/DC-style riffs to the Beasties' cocky lyrics, and secured them a support slot on Madonna's 1985 Like a Virgin tour.
Their stage set, which included a 20ft hydraulic penis, drew tabloid press coverage, and their pairing of guitars with rap lyrics gave them access to radio play on suburban rock stations. Having begun as something of a prank, the band's first album, Licensed to Ill (1986), went on to become the fastest-selling debut release in Columbia Records' history, selling more than 750,000 copies within its first six weeks and topping the Billboard chart. The hit single from it, (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party), served as a rallying cry for the young and rowdy everywhere.
Following label disagreements, the band briefly relocated to Los Angeles, recording Paul's Boutique (1989) there. Though commercially less successful, this heavily textured album allowed the trio to shake off their juvenile reputation.
Yauch converted to Buddhism in the early 1990s, after travelling to Tibet and Nepal. The Ill Communication album of 1994 has him rapping a Buddhist vow, and that year he co-founded the Milarepa Fund, to promote awareness of the unjust treatment of native Tibetans by their Chinese governors.
The following year he met his wife, fellow activist Dechen Wangdu, at a talk given by the Dalai Lama at Harvard University. They married in 1998, in a traditional Tibetan ceremony, but with Yauch's favourite hardcore punk band, Rancid, playing at the reception. Milarepa promoted a series of Tibetan Freedom Concerts, and marked the tenth anniversary of 9/11 by organising New Yorkers Against Violence in aid of victims of violence.
Under the name of Nathanial Hörnblowér, Yauch directed many of the band's videos, including So What'cha Want (from the album Check Your Head, 1992) and Intergalactic (from Hello Nasty, 1998). In 2008, he co-founded Oscilloscope Laboratories, a film production and distribution company, responsible for releasing independent films such as that year's Wendy and Lucy and We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011).
Oscilloscope was also the vehicle through which Yauch filmed and released his documentary, Gunnin' For That No 1 Spot (also 2008), following the stories of eight high-school basketball stars as they prepared to enter the professional sport. As he made clear to me in an interview for the Guardian, the financial, racial and regional differences between them, brought out before they received the media training that went with endorsement contracts, gave it a political edge.
Bogged down at the time in remixes and multiple collaborations was the Beasties' eighth album. Eventually it was released as Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (2011), and widely regarded as a welcome return to form. Their six albums up to and including To the Five Boroughs had each sold at least 1m copies; the purely instrumental seventh, The Mix-up (2007), won a Grammy award.
Yauch was diagnosed with cancer in a salivary gland in July 2009, and was unable to attend the Beastie Boys' induction into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame last month. He is survived by Dechen, his daughter Tenzin Losel and his parents.
• Adam Nathaniel Yauch, musician and film-maker, born 5 August 1964; died 4 May 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/05/adam-yauch
http://www.beastieboys.com/
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RIP, MCA.
atm  |
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bri
Joined: 16 Jun 2006
Posts: 2890
Location: Capacious Creek
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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47 years old...fuckin' a....I usually don't care when "celebs"
pass on...this was just out of nowhere. |
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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 3597
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 2:40 pm Post subject: |
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Makes me feel mortal, where's my long life portal? Can't locate it, ain't able to make it. Can't shake the pain from my brain.
Not restin', as I feel no peace, no lease on life.
What a loss but the boss don't give a toss, just another 180 IQ out of the queue.
Now what? Justin Beibler? Lady Gaggus?
I need a 45 and I ain't talkin' vinyl.
Once a brat but, I smell a rat...
atm |
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Continuity
Joined: 16 Jul 2006
Posts: 1662
Location: Municipal Flat Block 18A, Linear North
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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Cancerous spit gland did for him? Bummer.
RIP, Ad. 
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hawkwind
Joined: 19 Jan 2006
Posts: 689
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| Posted: Sat May 05, 2012 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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So optimistic ... yes ATM ... cancer sucks!
- Hawk
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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
Posts: 3597
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| Posted: Fri May 11, 2012 2:08 pm Post subject: Beastie Boy Adam Yauch: not just a celebrity activist |
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Beastie Boy Adam Yauch: not just a celebrity activist
My brief encounter with Adam Yauch taught me that he was a musical pioneer, a champion of independent films, and a man who was true to himself
Hadley Freeman
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 May 2012 19.59 BST
Comments (150)
Adam Yauch performing with the Beastie Boys in 2004 at London's Wembley Arena. Photograph: J. Quinton/WireImage
As is only right for a man who packed such diversity into less than half a century, it is impossible to choose just one detail from the career of the Beastie Boy Adam Yauch that sums up why his death last week at the cruelly young age of 47 feels so especially sad.
There's his film company, Oscilloscope Laboratories, which was behind some of the best indie films since its inception in 2008, including Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop and the breathtaking documentary about Maurice Sendak, Tell Them Anything You Want. Or there's the very funny 30-minute movie he made last year in which he satirised his own image, Fight For Your Right (Revisited). Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and Elijah Wood play the Beastie Boys, circa 1987, having just left the video for (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) and acting as bratty and hedonistic as the Beasties were thought to do then and, undoubtedly, did.
Then there was the letter he wrote to the New York Times in 2004 after it ran a poor review of the video he directed for the Beastie Boys' song Ch-check It Out. He wrote using the same memorable pseudonym he favoured when he directed videos, Nathaniel Hornblower, a man of indistinct nationality and such indomitable self-belief he may well have been the inspiration for Borat. I don't want to spoil the pleasure you'll derive from reading the letter in full by selectively quoting it so let's just say this is surely the only time a letter featured in the New York Times had berated the paper for its fondness for U2 and told the editor that he owed the writer a goat.
This last anecdote, with its caperish cleverness, strikes me as the second most telling one about Yauch. We'll get to the first soon but before that, the music. Growing up in New York in the 80s, the Beastie Boys felt like the soundtrack of the city, with that very Lower East Side mix that they coined of rap, rock and sampling. It is a rare day that I don't listen to Pass the Mic, So What'cha Want or Shake Your Rump at some point.
"In those days, hip-hop was truly from the streets, and everybody rapping was black. All of a sudden, these punk rock white kids crossed into hip-hop with the shock of Jackie Robinson in reverse," Public Enemy's Chuck D once said of the Beastie Boys. And because they never pretended to be anything but "punk rock white kids", they taught hip-hop fans who weren't black, who weren't from the street, that they shouldn't play act at being anything other than who they were when listening to hip-hop.
They weren't revolutionary, as Chuck D said, they were evolutionary.
Yauch's vocals are easy to recognise, the husky belt among the yelps of Mike Diamond and Adam Horowitz, and he generally has the best lines: "What's running through my mind comes through in my walk/True feelings are shown from the way that I talk"; "If you try to knock me you'll get mocked/I'll stir fry you in my wok/Your knees start shaking and your fingers pop/Like a pinch on the neck from Mr Spock."
The Beastie Boys were hilarious, talented and arrogant. But that was just the beginning of Yauch. As well as setting up his film company, he became a sensitive and effective political campaigner, organising concerts for the people of Tibet and victims of 9/11.
So for me, the most tell-tale Yauch anecdote comes from his acceptance speech at the 1998 MTV awards when he took to the podium to speak out against – calmly, and without any smugness – America's racism against Muslims.
One can sneer at celebrity activism and, heaven knows, I have indulged in that in my time. But this prescient stand of Yauch's came across as heartfelt and could hardly be seen as self-serving.
Three years before 9/11, racism against Muslims was not exactly a credibility-enhancing topic in America. But then, I'm biased. The truth is, I liked Yauch a lot more than I do most celebrity activists, because of his work, yes, but also because of his personality.
About six or seven years ago I was in LA for work and stuck at some dreadful celebrity event. I was the only non-famous person and so, as night follows day, absolutely no one spoke to me.
Except one person.
Adam Yauch was there and, seeing me standing awkwardly in the doorway, came over and said hello.
We chatted about how much we both missed New York, how weird we both found LA, how one never got any proper food at these things, and he then went out of his way to make sure I got something to eat.
Taking pity on my obvious jet lag, he then sorted out my ride back to my hotel. He shook my hand and said goodnight and, I'm sure, never thought about it again.
But I did, especially whenever I stood in a doorway, ignored at another celebrity event.
There are few celebrities – few people, for that matter – as kind as Adam Yauch.
Not long after, he was diagnosed with cancer and the man from the band of eternal teenagers began to age, too soon, too quickly.
The comedian Ben Smith, better known as Doc Brown, also met Yauch, on the street on a trip to New York when he was a 16-year-old hip-hop-obsessed British teenager: "He shook my hand and talked to me and my mum like he knew us. The guy was a true gent when you think about how many fans he must have met on a daily basis," he told me.
It's easy to get over-sentimental about celebrities when they die.
It's even easier to mock that tendency as silly self-indulgence.
But Yauch was not just a celebrity: he was a musical pioneer, a champion of independent films, a man who was true to himself. But, most importantly, Adam Yauch was a real mensch.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/08/adam-yauch-not-just-celebrity?commentpage=3#comment-16052410
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RIP, MCA
atm |
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whej
Joined: 17 Mar 2010
Posts: 258
Location: The Former Republic of the U.S.
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| Posted: Sat May 12, 2012 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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I was never a huge fan of the Beasties (not my style) until one night at a friends house I heard "The In Sound From The Way Out!!" Whoa! Fused Jazz and Pop overtones in an instrumental album. Made me rethink the talent these boys from the five boroughs really had. I have The Mix Up as well and love them both.
Peace and thanks for the music Adam. See you in the stars man.
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