racing to the red light

Founding member of the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch aka MCA, has died. He was 47.

I didn’t realize this until today. Besides music, he had expanded into film lately. His film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories produced the excellent documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop” about street artist Banksy, which I highly recommend.

License to Ill was such a great album. So was Paul’s Boutique and Ill Communication.

I remember when License came out, I was in elementary school. I liked it because the songs had funny lyrics but the music was good, not goofy. 

The record, which I had, featured the tail of a private jet with the Beastie Boyd’s logo, but when you opened the record sleeve, the rest of the picture showed the crumpled forward part of the plane crashed into a mountain. We thought that was pretty clever.

Truly a sad day. RIP MCA.