So this is an interesting thing. When I found out Friday afternoon that Adam “MCA” Yauch, founding member of the Beastie Boys, had passed away, it hit my heart like someone had ran up to me unexpectedly clobbered me in the chest. Chris and I had just arrived at the hotel we would be staying at during our anniversary weekend in Fort Collins when he received a text message from his friend asking if we had heard the news. 

We hadn’t. And, right then and there, we sat down together and started reading through the news on our phones, various tweets from fellow fans and mourners for MCA and heartfelt outreaches to the remaining Beastie Boys. In shock and sadness we  talked and talked about the different things we were reading and what a tragic loss this is. One tweet that meant a lot to me was from Chef Duff Goldman. He wrote, “The world just lost some flow today. RIP MCA. This one really hurts.”

In fact it hurt really bad, and that surprised me! I say that because this is the first time I have experienced the loss of such an important figure in music history, but particularly one who I grew up appreciating pretty much from junior high onward. This was someone I knew, but actually didn’t…when you spend the most (musically speaking) influential years of your life listening to and respecting someone such as MCA and the Beastie Boys, I think its safe to speak for my generation at large and say that such a loss as this one is a real blow. I heard a DJ on the radio, Friday, compare the Beastie Boys to the Beatles of Generation X-ers. I think I couldn’t have said it better myself.

I know the world just lost Dick Clark recently and that was significant in a right that I can’t begin to touch, but somehow it didn’t reach my heart like this one on Friday. I know I’m not alone when I say that emotion was hard to hide. During our lunch outside on Saturday, Chris took this picture, and posted it with some of the lyrics to Paul Revere:

The sun is beating down on my baseball hat
The air is gettin’ hot the beer is getting flat

I’m sure I don’t need to go on about the details of how great and influential the Beastie Boys were to us, I won’t begin to claim that I was a die-hard fan, either. I didn’t know when their birthdays were or where they grew up, or when they toured Colorado. But I did know what trailblazers they were for early hip hop music and their talent was off the charts! Any time I heard them anywhere, I couldn’t help but move and rub my arms of the goosebumps they promoted. I even had my kids dancing to Intergalactic. I can’t  ignore the stirring thier music creates inside me, nor help but move when I hear it.

Perhaps I remember my parents grieving the loss of influential pioneers of music in their generation, and in my youth, thinking what not a big deal it was to me…I just didn’t understand. But now I do. And this is why I call it interesting. Because I know what that feels like now.

I loved how the music that was played at the restaurant/bar that we were at Friday night with our friends played the music of the Beastie Boys exclusively. I love how, when we greeted one another and asked if the news had reached each other yet, that we all shared the same heavy heart and respect for the situation. I love the outpouring of love that is being felt throughout the community of Beastie Boys fans everywhere. This morning I walked down to Chris’s office only to see him watching this video from Coldplay from a show at the Hollywood bowl Friday night. What a way to start this cold and rainy morning than to watch this tribute with Chris and feel the tears well up and roll down our cheeks. I just had to talk about it. If you were even the smallest fan of the Beastie Boys, please take 4 minutes and watch this. For me, I couldn’t have asked to watch a better tribute or experience such solid closure.

 

 

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