He and His Crew Were out Breaking Windows

The passing of Adam Yauch was not exactly shocking. Several speculated that things were not going well when the Beastie Boys gained induction to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame with no word from MCA. The death, though, was news.

Paste Magazine ran an “article” on 100 tweets with hashtags like #RIPMCA. While this seems more like a copout than journalism, it is worth noting that writing journals now include instruction on how to cite a tweet in footnotes. You don’t need to cite, though, when you are just showing screenshots of someone’s twitter feed.

As I read through the entries, it was predictable how many were generic. Well meaning, to be sure, but the offerings were identical to the thoughts posted by someone else. Heck, why not just retweet someone with more followers? There were exceptions. I thought Billie Joe Armstrong and Boy George used the truncated space to reveal something personal about their view of Yauch. Steven Drozd and Krist Novolesic expressed ties as musicians by referencing bass riffs in Gratitude and Sabotage. Drozd claimed that the baselines will always be floating in space, ready to blow aliens’ minds.

These were reminders that MCA was first tied to music. My last cultural references involving him, though, were on video. Just last month, I finally saw Exit Through the Gift Shop. The film was distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories, founded by Adam Yauch. I never made this connection until after his passing when another documentary, Gunnin’ for that #1 One Spot, ran non-stop on ESPN Classics. Both were worth the time, but none equalled the inner happiness I got from a short appearance in the movie Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest. In this film, several artists weigh in on the group’s impact. Narrator Michael Rappaport interviews the Beastie Boys. Yauch says his favorite lyric comes from Electric Relaxation where “I won’t catch a hernia. Bust off your couch, now you got Seaman’s furniture.” I instantly recollected the fun I had listening to the Beastie Boys. It made perfect sense that would be the line most favored by pre 1990s MCA.

When MCA died, McVey sent me a link to a video where the Beastie Boys appeared on the Joan Rivers show. (They were the final guests on a night that included Gene Hackman, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Sam Giancana’s daughter Antoinette.) In the video, Mike D and Ad-Rock say they are 19. At 22, Yauch was the Mick Mars of the group – not 10 years older, but still the one that would eventually be the spirit guide. The evidence is seen in the video as they head to the couch to be interviewed, MCA takes Joan’s seat behind the desk.

Still frat boy rappers, as they perform for Joan’s audience they are more concerned with their choreographed falls than vocalization. There is one part where they just start laughing in the middle of a song. It is hard to believe that my freshman year of college, McVey would purchase the cassette of Paul’s Boutique and wonder “What is this mess?”

Somewhere in that mess was the change towards the group that would put out a cd where they played all their own instruments. The same band would play tours geared to call attention to the situation in Tibet. They would release a single where they played rhythm for Biz Markie singing Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

Throughout the band's existence, while the funniest rhymes usually belonged to Mike D and the master of the single entendre, Ad-Rock, MCA was the one who steered the rudder.

This was the guy who was MC to a degree that I couldn’t get in college. He dropped science like Galileo dropped the orange. He never rocked the mic with the pantyhose. He had depth of perception in his test y’all. He got props at his mention ‘cause he vexed y’all. He was sweeter than a cherry pie with Ready Whip topping. He was cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce. You had rhyme and reason, but had no cause. You had to have gall and guile to step to him because he was a rapophile. He was too sweet to be sour, too nice to be mean, on the tough guy style he was not too keen. To try to change the world he would plot and scheme.

I don’t think there is any merit to the ‘What type of tree are you?” lines of psychoanalysis. But if you asked me which type of Beastie I am, the answer is MCA. He was the Beastie I could envision most having a drink with at a neighborhood bar. He was the one who wouldn’t bat an eye if I ordered a Coke. Even Kate Schellenbach would probably deride me for that.

The maturity and challenges faced by them from Licensed to Ill to Paul’s Boutique to Ill Communication to Five Boroughs matches what we all go through. I was a sophomore in high school, college freshman, grad school dropout working in my third month of my first real job, and returning to that same job after a layoff when each of those albums dropped.

Today, I am still working at the same place. Yauch, as Jeffery Ross eloquently tweeted, finally got to Brooklyn. He seemed to not only do so gracefully, but also as he predicted in song. To quote MCA, "There I'm gonna die, gonna die one day,‘Cause I'm goin’ and goin’ and goin’ this way… I'm going out first class, not going out coach."

Here's to none of us going out coach.