RIP MCA

First of all, Hello Nasty was the shit. I don't care who you are or what you're doing, fuck that, it was the shit. I don't think there was anything else that year that I heard that was in any way close. That album on repeat was golden for me, and "Intergalactic" was the fucking song to get hyped to. If they'd have released the same album this year I'd probably be just as happy with it. That's more than a decade late and I would've still bought two copies.

I only heard, outside of my own music playing, three Beastie Boys songs on Friday. Lots of people, of course, didn't have a clue who MCA was. Squares, hipsters, you name it - the critically uncool didn't know about anything and weren't the least discouraged. One car, at least, drove past me blaring "Fight For Your Right"* which I can't disagree with at all. I wasn't going to party on Friday, but anyone who was should have at least heard that song. If not: for shame. (*"No Sleep Till Brooklyn" is arguably a better anthem but I'm not going to argue about things I love anyway. That would be childish of me.

There's not much to say. Literally any other place on the internet will give a detailed biography send-up, information about Adam Yauch, tell personal stories and all that. Even Wikipedia put up the news. So there's nothing to do but cast this tiny, shitty, sloppy blog post into the void, with a few words of praise.

Fucking righteous, awesome music that never wore out its welcome by anyone with an open mind and a working set of ears. Sick rhymes and flowing, all around illest contender.

It seems like the true end of an era. To say there are or were no bands like the Beastie Boys is ignorant, but they were still unique. Nobody else ever wrote a song called "Egg Man", for example. If there was, it was either in another context entirely or it was ripped off of the original – or it simply wasn't as good.

That's all, then. There's at least one Beastie Boys album I haven't listened to, and I guess it's time to take that final plunge, except I have to wait at least six months to buy it at a mainstream record store, and at least a year at independent record shops. Otherwise I just know the looks I'll get.


That's a shit Friday, right there.

Reviewing Fog

Fog is a musical group (it is I assure you) or project (look it up) or whatever highfalutin concatenation. If I was stubborn and vain enough to try and review the group I would be forced to review at least three albums. On a blog, and I don't profess to know much about those, three album reviews is virtual suicide. You might as well bake bread, or bet on Political Maverick Jack Layton.

Please take a moment and note how both alternatives are good ones.

Now to properly review an album, you have to state with methodical correctness who authored it, who published it, and the year it was published. If you are a particular rebel you will open with a quote from a review of another type of art. Then you move on to comparing it to other albums that it sounds like. Once you have completed that torturous step, you get personal.

Break out some adjectives and make a good time of it: after all, you've broken the album down into a series of ethical and musical and historical components to make it relatable. Plus you've already established your judgment by your tone, and most of your thinking audience has already agreed or disagreed with you. Then you write a paragraph about how the album sits in the context of the times as you see them, and when you attach it to a particularly noxious news story they come and sit on your legs and stuff hot peppers into your nostrils.

Since I'm reckless and generally a sloppy blogger I will raise the stakes and tell you I can review Fog's first two albums in only one image. The album names (so you can be conscious of the true extent of my wager) are the eponymous "Fog" and "Ether Teeth":
 

You're all welcome

Some Thoughts re. Music, Pt.1

Hell, everyone made such a big deal of the Exile on Main Street re-release this past summer (or was it the one before?) that you'd almost think it was being released for the first time and that the Rolling Stones were still kids shooting up heroin in dirtied, sleepy rooms. People were getting so excited that all you had to say was "Turd" and someone would shout at you, "Turd on the Run, man! Wicked song." all seriously. Drunks for the most part or poseurs I suppose.

Bruce Springsteen released the re-release of Darkness on the Edge of Town just recently, people shat. And hell, it's Bruce Springsteen, so you can't really complain or you'll be branded a communist, but what's worse, a communist with no sense of fun. I can take the first part of that insult very well, but I do have a sense of fun. It's just mostly dormant until I get some momentum.

Why am I writing about two completely different (sure, music journalists, sure) musical entities? Because the Stones had Sweet Virginia, which was an awesome song. Follow this line of logic: Awesome song + cover version by established artist = Sweet Virginia covered by Springsteen. It wouldn't even be an experiment because we know how it would end. We don't need an hypothesis for this one. If only good things happened more often...

Instead of re-releases. Oh, sure. They're great things. Maybe sound has to be shoehorned now and then, I don't know. Maybe roughness is unacceptable in the era of auto-tune and overproduction. Again, I have no idea what. I just like to say a thing or two about some things, now and then, on a blog, because I am a sloppy blogger, and that's exactly the sort of thing a sloppy blogger does.