The Beastie Boys...pretty much every song

Here's where the system breaks down, the very construct through which I frame my usual blog updates (the "song standing in for an artist's entire catalog") falls apart (as indeed it would for the Beatles, despite my earlier appreciation of "Do You Want To Know a Secret?"). To try and boil down the Beastie Boys to one song, merely one out of the hundreds of great and near-great songs they've ever done? Madness.

Sometimes I wonder if my love for the Beasties at this point in my life is akin to my love for a contemporary of theirs, R.E.M., in that at this point it's more about nostalgia for a time when both were at the "top" and I was too young or distracted to appreciate then what I appreciate now (i.e., the fact that both groups made some of the best music of their or any era, and both groups are now in the past tense, R.E.M. through simple exhaustion and the Beasties through the loss of Adam "MCA" Yauch). Fact is, when I was a kid my uncle Heath (who isn't much older than me) had tapes of the Beasties, Public Enemy, Ice-T, and other late Eighties/early Nineties rap luminaries that he was seemingly listening to endlessly, and I absorbed the music on its own terms without knowing anything about many of the issues some of the more socially conscious acts were discussing (why would anyone want to kill a cop or fuck the police, anyway?). I look back on the hip-hop from that time with fondness, even as I acknowledge that it might not have much relevance in a post-Biggie and Tupac world.

I guess I'm showing my age when I say it, but I can remember a time when white guys doing rap was controversial, or at least ridiculous thanks in no small part to "the Vanilla Ice occurance." Some buddies and I were talking about Snow, a Canadian rapper who made it big off the impossible-to-decipher "Informer" at around the same time as Ice was setting back the idea of white-guy rap for a decade (Eminem was the first credible white rapper since the Beasties). The Beastie Boys didn't fall into the trap of "acting black" (by which I mean "acting like white kids thought blacks acted, with no basis in reality"), and I'm pretty sure they're more than happy to have had a nearly-thirty-year run in music, not always at the top but never out of the spotlight, but I can recall that "Sabotage" aside, there was a run there when they didn't make as much noise, and I think it can be because perception was that their act was run out. I concede that my knowledge of hip-hop history is lacking, but I feel like the Beasties kinda scaled back around the time that Nirvana broke open the world for grunge. They never went away, of course, and I have the last album they put out, with the sure-to-be-classic "Make Some Noise" (the music video of which could rival "Sabotage" as one of the funniest of all time, and also a Beastie-Boys-anthology in highlight form). I also have the "Sounds of Science" anthology, "Licensed to Ill," "Paul's Boutique," and "Check Your Head."

"Sounds of Science" was a birthday gift from my mom for my twentieth, she took me to Wal-Mart and let me pick out a CD and that was the one I gravitated towards. She's always been supportive of my musical education as such, helping me purchase the Beatles' second "Past Masters" CD and a copy of "Pet Sounds" (though she was bewildered by my sudden interest in the Beach Boys). I remember declaiming loudly at the time (because I had been listening to the CD on the then-new scanning machines that pumped a few songs at a minute's time into headphones which would render you temporarily deaf until after you'd paid for the CDs) that rap was really the "black man's music," but the Beasties were more appreciative of that than other white artists because they didn't try to "sound black." I think I got a nasty look from a black guy at the Chinese restaurant we went to after Wal-Mart, when my deafness (and def-ness) hadn't worn off yet. I assure you, wherever you are, sir, I meant no harm.

I think when it comes to race and music, we have what can best be described as an interesting amount of cultural appropriation without necessarily credit being given in this country. Elvis is the clearest example of a white man who found success appropriating the "black sound" of blues and R&B alongside his country roots, but he was altogether more respectful of the black musical experience than such paragons of bad taste as Pat Boone. When I read Alan Light's excellent oral history of the Beasties, the whole question of authenticity did come up, and I know people who hate the Beasties because they can't get around the thorny question of why it is that a predominantly black form of musical expression first achieved mainstream success via the very white three young men from NYC who played court jesters on their debut album. Nevermind that they then spent the rest of their career redefining the genre, expanding its musical boundaries and helping it spread around the world in their own small way. For a lot of people (including David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello in their otherwise great book "Signifying Rappers"), the Beasties will always be musical carpetbaggers, all but wearing blackface as they rob from the very mouths of the black artists who came before them.

I understand that point of view, but it doesn't jibe with mine. I don't know what it says about me that the Beasties are my favorite rap group, perhaps it's a sign of my secret racism that is unknown to me at this time (but of course, everyone has a little prejudice in them. I like to think of my prejudice as being directed against the Swiss, simply because no one else has ever expressed such a bias and I want to be unique). I like Public Enemy, Jay-Z's big hits are awesome, and anyone who can listen to LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" and not want to start a riot is dead inside. I love musicians who happen to be black (as opposed to the possibly racist "some of my favorite artists are black!"), but I also love white musicians as well. I was first drawn to considering music as something other than background because of the Beatles, and so guitar-and-drum rock and roll is my first love. It took me years to consider the Beasties and R.E.M. in my pantheon of good music, simply because I couldn't recall a time when they hadn't been around. The joy of discovery that came with the Velvet Undergound, or Joy Division, or Al Green, wasn't there until I hadn't gone years without hearing the Beasties or that Athens, GA.-based band.

I have never been a rap albums kinda guy (I still think of it in terms of singles, because listening to the often heavily edited songs on the radio is the way I was exposed to a lot of it), but "Paul's Boutique" is a must-have for any music fan. "Check Your Head" has to be close to must-have. "Licensed to Ill" and "Hot Sauce Committe Part 2" I've not given much time to lately, but I doubt I'd be skipping over a lot to get to "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" or "Make Some Noise". Like I said, to write solely about one song, be it how "Fight For Your Right" reminds me of my childhood or "Hey Ladies" and my lack of ability with the opposite sex, "Shadrach" and my Southern Baptist childhood, or any myriad of possibilities, well...that's when the format crashes, the "does not suffice" message comes into my brain because I can't reduce it to one or two songs or an album that (like "Boutique" whenever I used it as "keeping me awake at five in the morning" driving music, in this case to and from my job as a hotel's breakfast bar guy). It's not possible. But I sure as hell can meander down many a path to try and convey why a group that a lot of people either love or hate (very few neutrals when it comes to the Beasties, it seems) means what it means to me. You care about music, art, life, if you are alive at all. And I care about the Beastie Boys. I wish MCA were still around. I look forward to buying the rest of their albums, at intervals so I can appreciate each one. I plan to pass on this love of the Beasties and other things that I care about to others, any hypothetical children that I might have with the woman I still believe I haven't met yet (or maybe I have; see again my mention of how I suck at girls in various updates) or simply to my nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. Who the hell knows? Anyway, go listen to the Beasties, even if you think they're poseurs. You're wrong, but you won't be convinced of that until you listen to them with open ears. I can't tell ya which song will open yours, you have to figure that out on your own. Have fun with it.

Lou Reed, "Goodnight Ladies"

And so 2013 is almost at the end here, as I write this. It's certainly been a year, that's for sure...

At the end of the calendar year, it's always bittersweet to think back on the people we've lost, whether on a personal level or famous people who passed away. I'm fortunate in that none of my immediate family passed this year, as far as I can recall. But I did lose some famous people that I'd rather not have lost. The two that spring to mind immediately are Lou Reed and Roger Ebert. I've written about their passings before now, so I won't belabor the point except to say that both were pretty important to my pop-culture education.

2014 should be interesting; I'm taking my sweet time applying for grad school, but I'm working on it. I'm trying to get in for the fall of 2014, if I don't get in for that then I'll try again for the spring of 2015. I've had my share of wage-slave jobs in the real world, where a degree doesn't mean as much as you'd like it to. I'll do it as long as I have to, don't get me wrong; but I would like to actually use my degree to achieve something.

Jeopardy's online test is in a week, I've registered so I'm hopeful that I do well enough to be re-invited to try out for the show like I was in August of 2012. The try-out location closest to me was Savannah, Georgia, which is closer than New Orleans and another city that I've never been to (as far as I know). I don't want to get ahead of myself, but if I do get to go to Savannah I have to say I don't really know what there might be tourist-wise worth checking out. The ball's in Savannah's court to blow my mind like New Orleans did a year ago, if I get to go.

And so adios, 2013. There were some highs, there were some lows, but through it all I had my faith in Scientology to get me thru (just kidding). Adios to Lou, Roger, Peter O'Toole, Elmore Leonard, and a whole slew of other people who are now front and center in end-of-the-year montages of "those we lost".

Wrapped Up in Books: My Year In Reading

I did a lot of reading this past year, but then I did a lot of reading last year; it's kinda my thing. But I feel like noting some of the memorable reading experiences I had this year. Some books that I read were great or good; others weren't so much whether I finished them or threw them away after reading only a few pages. Here then are just a few of the books that took up valuable time that could be spent otherwise.

Let me begin with where last year ended, with my purchase of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. In terms of "things to cross off my bucket list book-wise," this was massive (I also want to tackle the great Russian writers someday, but not today). For such a weighty tome with a difficult reputation, the book proved surprisingly fast-paced and easy to get through, even though it took me six months of on-off reading. And yes, the white whale is just that, a whale...unless it isn't.

Charles Portis has been a recent addition to my personal canon of "authors whose every word I must read" (the others being Graham Greene and Walker Percy). I came across a copy of the great-if-obscure The Dog Of the South at a used bookstore (this was a great year for me to indulge in my pursuit of bookstores to spend money at, as my groaning shelves would attest). Speaking of Greene, his last novel The Captain and the Enemy goes on the list of "well, now I can say I read it." It's not up to The Power And the Glory, but it'll do as a last statement from the writer whom I've come to believe wrote more truthfully about the twentieth century than anyone else.

And speaking of Percy, Lancelot is a fantastically twisted mindfuck of a novel. I heartily recommend you seek it out.

So far, the list is a lot of books that didn't come out this calendar year; older books caught my fancy at used bookstores (the 2013 books weren't likely to be there, except as just-slightly-less-than-retail prices). Don DeLillo is someone whose works I've only taken nips and tucks at before, apart from a college assignment to read White Noise. Great Jones Street was the first book of his I've read for fun all the way through; it will not be the last. Saul Bellow is similarly someone whose work has yet to interest me enough to seek it out, but I came across Humboldt's Gift for a buck at a library book sale and decided it was worth it. David Foster Wallace is a Melville for our time, in that he wrote a book with a reputation for gargatuan heights of literary fancy (Infinite Jest). I decided to stick with something a little easier to digest, a short book he co-wrote about hip-hop circa 1990. Signifying Rappers may not have always made sense (especially with its dismissal of the early Beastie Boys), but it was one of the best music books to read when it was reissued this year.

Music played a big role in four of the books I read this year that did in fact come out this year: Questlove had the most interesting musician's memoir in Mo Meta Blues, while Rob Sheffield continued his trilogy of music-as-conduit-for-memoir with Turn Around Bright Eyes. Nathan Rabin went on the road with ICP and Phish in You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me, while Chuck Klosterman took on the notion of villainy in pop culture with I Wear the Black Hat. Sports also played a role in my reading this year: Phil Jackson's Eleven Rings lead me to his previous memoir Sacred Hoops. Basketball also played a role in the best deal I've ever scored at a Goodwill store: Bill Bradley's Life On the Run for ten cents. Bradley and Jackson were both part of the early-Seventies Knicks dynasty, and for some reason that's been my favorite basketball team to read about lately. Bradley could've been president; Jackson did become the coach with the most championship rings in NBA history. Football is another sport I like reading about, and even though he went to the much-hated-in-my-heart Georgia Tech, Bill Curry wrote possibly the best football book I've ever read in Ten Men You Meet In the Huddle.

I like to read books in fits and spurts, but sometimes a good one gets going and before you know it, the clock on the wall is several hours past where you thought it was. I read Robert Hilburn's Corn Flakes with John Lennon in a day. Same with Elmore Leonard's 52 Pick-Up (I picked it up after Leonard's death; I can be a bit of a literary necrophiliac when someone famous whose work I've never read dies). James Watson's The Double Helix went by quickly, too, though I think I let it rest a night before I finished it. I took a week to enjoy Richard Ford's The Sportswriter. Will Leitch's God Save the Fan was a bargain find at a bookstore where I enjoy a good streak of luck, as was Will In the World, a biography of Shakespeare that is worth seeking out.

Pat Conroy came back around into my life, almost twenty years after I had to read The Prince of Tides and tried briefly to get through his other novels. My Losing Season (about his stint as a Citadel cadet and basketball player) was informed by the evolution of his relationship with his abusive father, while My Reading Life was about a shared passion with myself (books and bookstores). It was a kick to see a familiar name (Bill Koon, one of my favorite professors at Clemson) mentioned in Reading Life, strumming a guitar around Paris in the Seventies.

Not everything I read was bought; my worn-out library card can attest to that. I read a Shakespearen take on Star Wars: A New Hope, Larry McMurtry's interesting Walter Benjamin At the Dairy Queen, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, and many more. Probably the biggest thrill for me was getting Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge and then finding myself powering through neary five hundred pages of paranoia, conspiracy theories, and private-detective genre fiction in less than a week. It's easily my pick for book of the year.

Finally, a book that was a gift: Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. If there is a patron saint of rock criticism, Bangs is it: his back-and-forth with the now sadly deceased Lou Reed is indicative of the love-hate relationship we all have with our favorite artists in whatever medium. For sheer exuberence with just a hint of chemical assistance, he's hard to beat. No one can really ever write like him, but I'd like to think that someday an anthology of my most misbegotten Internet work over the years (much of that done on websites that are defunct now, but I'm sure that nothing ever gets lost online) can be cobbled together and put together in an attractive fashion (preferably while I'm still alive; posthumous literary fame isn't really something I'd aspire to). Writing about music is something I enjoy doing (obviously), and I hope I can make a living at it or at least indulge in it as a distraction from some of the more mundane aspects of modern life. Lester Bangs got a shout-out on one of R.E.M.'s best songs; it's hard to beat that.

My apologies to any authors whose work I've left out (now I feel like I'm getting the wrap-it-up cue) but you know who you are, whether your books helped me get through the year or whether they just wasted my time for a brief period. As long as I can remember, I've been a reader, and I don't see much of a chance of me hitting Literacy Rehab any time soon. It's an addiction, to be sure, but it's probably one of the healthier ones.

Spencer Davis Group, "Waltz for Lumumba"

Note: I had a longer post prepared, but some dick stole the chair that sits in front of the computer on the fifth floor of the college library and my legs are killing me, so you'll have to settle for this.

Anyway, Nelson Mandela died, and as you might expect when a beloved international figure about whom very little in the negative can ever really be said, someone in South Carolina managed to cock that one up by saying or doing something negative in response. You may or may not be aware that we have a county by the name of Pickens, after the Revolutionary War general of the same name. That county has a sheriff whose actions last week (refusing to lower the flag in honor of Mandela, despite the executive order from "socialist Kenyan gay-marriage-arranging Obama" to do so). What's disturbing about this is not the nincompoop's reasoning ("Mandela was a great guy but hey, he wasn't an American") but the fact that in an online poll, a lot of people in the state agree with him.

Morons...I'm surrounded by morons.

First off: Nelson Mandela did more with his little pinkie finger to change the world for the better than many of us are likely to achieve in double the lifespan that he achieved (95 years old; police suspect foul play). Secondly, to say that lowering the flag for non-Americans is somehow not done is plain old stupid. We don't do it often, but in this case I think it's merited.

The sheriff, whose name I won't mention here because a.)I don't want to give him any more free publicity and b.) I've already forgotten it, is playing politics, appealing to the base (and I do mean "base") of his potential voters come re-election time. They'll remember this guy, for sure, and I'm sad to say they might re-elect his sorry ass because of it.

At any rate, I was moved to crank up "Waltz for Lumumba" over the weekend, off the Spencer Davis Group's greatest-hits CD. The SDG was the springboard for Steve Winwood, another in a long line of "white British guys who love blues music and emulate it in their vocal delivery," and he's one of the best ones. "Waltz" is an instrumental, however, and I'm guessing most people today don't know that Patrice Lumumba was the first democratically elected president of the Congo (and the first president of that nation to be assassinated, because the CIA didn't like his close ties to the Commies). Lumumba went down in 1961, if I recall correctly; between that time and Mandela's release in 1990, most of Africa was in the hands of dictators propped up by the CIA (as a bulwark against the Soviet menace) and brutal to their own people. Mandela kept South Africa from becoming a racial bloodbath by bringing people together. Whatever he did that led to his time in prison, he came out of it a much better man than anyone would've expected from a guy locked up behind bars for close to thirty years. That's enough of a legacy to shame any Podunk asswipe hillbilly sheriff, even if he is from my state.

People will forget this dipshit sheriff in time, Nelson Mandela will never be forgotten. Tell me which one you'd want to honor with a flag at half-mast.

John Lennon, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"

I'm about to piss off a roomful of college students studying for exams and trying to do so quietly, but I must be heard!

I was in the mall earlier today when I came across Yet Another Beatles Book That I'll Probably Read (YABBTIPR, for short). It was written by Mark Lewisohn, who is kinda "the guy" when it comes to in-depth, exhaustive "John had ham and eggs for breakfast on March 12, 1967" style of Beatles reportage. Fact is, I've read books like that before, even after reading the ones I consider "definitive" (i.e., Shout! or Bob Spitz's The Beatles:A History) and will continue to do so. I loves me some Beatles.

Christmas is around the corner, of course, and I couldn't be happier to not want a damn thing that is being touted as "the go-to tech gift" or some other such nonsense. Perhaps I'm still bitter about "the computer-killing incident" of 2012, but I honestly don't feel that same urge to get an Xbox or Playstation or PlayBox or XStation that a lot of my peers do. I'm wary of any Steve Jobs-related merchandise (and that includes the recent tell-all by the mother of his first child, which I saw in a bookstore and groaned aloud about the title: The Bite In the Apple. Little obvious, don't ya think?). My tech-savvy friends may brand me a Luddite for thus behaving as if games and toys of an electronic nature mean nothing to me, but it's the truth.

That being said, I suppose if you'd asked me a few years back if I wanted an Xbox or so, I'd have said yes. Truth is, I love technology for sure. I just think that, with a few exceptions, I could probably be good without it. Or at least the sort of super-smart-phones that I see everyone using at social gatherings to let people know that they are at said social gatherings, while ignoring other people who are also using their phones at social gatherings to let their friends know....I just went cross-eyed.

Happiness does not lie in a tablet, or an iPad Mini. They're nice things to have, I'm sure, but I just can't get my enthusiasm up for anything like that. I spent close to four hundred dollars on a new laptop, and I rarely use that (granted, I don't have Word installed on it yet, but anyway). Give me a good hard-copy book (none of your Kindle nonsense!) and some good tunes on a CD, and I'm set.

So if anyone is thinking of getting me anything for Christmas (I mean family, for sure), don't get me anything that requires an MIT degree to set up and program. Better yet, use the money that you were possibly gonna use for me and donate it to a worthy cause. Maybe help pay for iPads for kindergartners, for instance. Or world peace. You know, whatever works...