Friday 4 May 2012

RIP Adam Yauch.

I was lucky enough to see The Beastie Boys live on the Ill Communication tour. I think it was in 1994 at Wolverhampton Civic Hall. The entire band were awesome.

For a young whippersnapper who was very much into his hard rock/metal (the other gig I remember most about that time was Therapy?) it was strange going to see a hip hop band. The energy and vibe of the band was on another planet. I remember sweating my arse off as I moshed, if mosh is the right word at a hip hop gig, to the classics of the time. Sabotage, Sure Shot and Fight For Your Right To...Party were all anthems to the crowd. Then me and my buddy Ant left the arena about 11pm to find that about a foot of snow had fallen while we were in the gig and all the public transport had been cancelled. Many hours of wandering Wolverhampton in the snow in our thin tops followed. I remember we decided it was wise to have a snow ball fight near Beatties and managed to set off the over sensitive alarms of the nearby windows.

We probably could have froze to death waiting for my dad to drive the 13 miles to pick us up.

And it would have been worth it. To this day they are one of the best live performances I have seen. Technically not as gifted as some of the others but the sheer energy of the performance was contagious.  The bass line of Sabotage was the trigger for a ridiculous frenzy, and it is that bass line that serves in my mind as the best obituary to Adam 'MCA' Yauch.

His contributions to music in bringing hip hop to the main stream (we will ignore how superficial much of the modern stuff is) and in creating the hard core sound that reinvented the band in the 90's mean he will always be a legend. It is fitting that the Beastie Boys were admitted into the Hall of Fame before he passed away.

Sabotage

RIP Adam.

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