I don’t know how I feel about The Beastie Boys. I want to love them like I used to, or at least part of me does, but something about a video like this makes me feel… weird.
It’s not that it’s bad… and you can tell these are three dudes who have lived life doing what they love, and that is awesome! However it still feels weird watching three guys in their mid-forties that I grew up listening to act like this – the faux fists-in-the-lens, hands in and out across their chests, old school rap gesticulations. It just seems… corny and maybe a little outdated. I don’t know… but now there’s this and I have to say… I want to believe again!!!
To be honest, my falling out with The Beasties used to have its origins in what occurs to me now might just be hearsay. Back in the day there was a certain Chicago morning talk dj douche bag who I couldn’t stand from day one. At some point said shock jock supposedly interviewed Adam Yauch (MCA) and Mr. Yauch, by that time a very different from person from his old school self, especially insofar as they way he approaches the subject of women, supposedly denied a bunch of his band’s old school antics, i.e. the giant hydraulic penis that accompanied the boys on stage when they opened for (of all people) Madonna during the License to Ill period. Now, I never heard this for myself, I just took it as fact from whoever told me about it. And maybe it is fact, but maybe it’s not. Regardless, sometimes maybe we look for reasons to distance ourselves from musicians or public figures who meant something to us in a younger stage of development simply as a defense mechanism – you know, to protect us from the personality paradoxes that often occur with aging. In keeping with this honestly bizarre human conundrum I latched onto shit-talking the Beastie Boys based on this one facet of possibly bullshit information and all but washed my hands of them.
In reality it now seems obvious that what was really going on was indeed something akin to this: The Beastie Boys were integral to a certain time in my life – a time where the person I was stopped being the person I am. In keeping with the psychology of aging I not-so subconsciously found a reason to distance myself from something that felt like a defining soundtrack to that other person’s life**. It’s weird I know – and it’s not as though Yauch isn’t just like the rest of us (myself most definitely included,) in that as a human being he is prone to and should be forgiven for spouting off and occasionally saying/doing things that he might regret later. At any rate, I guess this post has been good because I seem to have worked out my issues with the Boys (time to put Paul’s on – and disturb my neighbor!)
Anyway, I guess I didn’t mean for this to become a fucking psychology lesson, I really just wanted to say that after seeing the above trailer for the new Fight for Your Right Revisited video, I doubt I’ll buy Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, but I definitely feel as though I’ve finally laid my ridiculous baggage with the Boys to rest and can safely look back and say, yeah – all the best to you guys! This short looks fantastic***!!!
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* The actual video to the song is similar to this but was removed from youtube by EMI for copyright issues. Still, this gives the same idea.
** Scientific fact: Approximately every seven years every cell in your body has changed, thus indeed making you a completely different person (physically at least – what that physicality has to do with our consciousness is a whole ‘nother bag of apples)
*** Even Mr. Ferrell is a welcome face here. Imagine my surprise!