From 1987 until 1992 I wrote a column in Monitor Magazine called "Pump Up D'Angelo". It started out as a gossip column and morphed into ... into ... I'm not quite sure. It lurched between satire, opinion, rant, and subversive fiction. These days you'd call it a Blog, so here I am back again. I'll publish new thoughts, old memories, and (when I find them) old columns from last century....
~ Nick D'Angelo
From the archives: a Creem article from May 1987... when The Beastie Boys took over the earth… written by Chuck Eddy and reposted here for posterity without permission.
“They took the doors off their hinges and moved them around. They flooded two floors with the fire hoses. They plugged up the toilets and destroyed the furniture. They terrorized the other guests. They were just having fun.”
—Stephen Davis ”Hammer of the Gods,” 1985
At 32 minutes past two the morning of 16 January 1987, two Beastie Boys broke into my West Hollywood hotel room and dumped a wastebasket of extremely wet water on my head, my bed, the carpeting and my Converse All-Stars. (I’d stupidly left the chain-lock unsecured, and I suppose they bribed the night clerk into giving them a key.) Earlier that evening, after Pee-Wee Herman had visited their dressing room and before they appeared on Joan Rivers’ show, the Beasties were tossing parsley at me, dropping ice cubes in my hair, and “dissin’” (graffiti-artist lingo for “saying bad things about”) my brown socks and flannel shirt. I interpreted all of this to mean that they did not like me. But I don’t feel alone. Just days before, they’d been evicted from the Sunset Marquis for throwing chairs out their window into the swimming pool. And that week, they’d also become the first group ever to be censored onAmerican Bandstand—Dick Clark, who’d put up with Johnnies Rotten and Lydon in past episodes, apparently determined Adrock’s mid-song crotch-grab was just too much. The Beasties had previously been banned from the Holiday Inn chain after they’d cut a hole in the floor of one suite to serve as a passageway to the one directly below; they’d been banned from CBS Records headquarters after allegedly ripping off a camera at a label party. And MCA brags that he punched a Bay Area Music interviewer in the face not too long ago. These guys are total jerks, and they’ve got the fastest-selling debut album in CBS history. MCA, real name Adam Yauch, says he’s skimmed through “Hammer of the Gods,” a book that depicts Led Zeppelin’s early career as one massive, Satanic orgy, complete with fishing for sharks out hotel windows and sicking the prize catches on baked-bean marinated groupies. “It happens that we are living up to that reputation, but it’s not intentional,” MCA tells me. “We respect what they did. They were the only band that never buckled under to their label, and they sold more records than anybody.” Beastie Mike D, whose stage handle is shortened from Michael Diamond, is wearing a Houses of the Holy T-shirt. The first noises you hear on the Boys’Licensed to Ill album are John Bonham’sdrums, lifted from Zep’s mega-swing classic “When the Levee Breaks.” I ask Mike D what his favorite LP of 1986 was, and he answers Led Zeppelin IV.
There’s a feeling I get… When I look to the West… And my spirit is crying for leaving… Made up my mind To make a new start Goin’ to California With an achin’ in my heart.”
—Page & Plant Led Zeppelin IV, 1971
Upon arriving in Los Angles to meet the most famous Caucasian rap trio in the history of Western Civilization, I found that their record company has sent a limousine to the airport to pick me up. I’m taking one of those huge black ones where the celebrities can look out but the peons can’t look in, and of course I’ve never even touched one before, and I thought it was obscene. The driver gave me the scenic route down to Sunset Boulevard, and he pointed out Engelbert Humperdink’s abodes, and we passed UCLA. The driver showed me this monument made of four white columns at the top of a small hill. He said Al Jolson was buried there. Like Gigolo Al, and like Bob Wills and Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones and the disco Bee Gees as well, the Beastie Boys are white people making what is supposed to be black music. Like Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote all of the Coasters’ hits and whose “Girls, Girls, Girls” MCA claims did not influence the groups very similar “Girls,” and like the Dictators, whose Go Girl Crazy anticipated punk and whose White Castle infatuation MCA claims did not influence MCA claims had no effect on his crew’s own sliders-by-the-bag fetish, the Beasties are young middle-class Jewish males chronicling the dilemma of urban-American teen hooligancy. Or rather, in the Beastie Boys’ case, half-Jewish. “Purely coincidentally, we each have one Jewish parent,” explains MCA. Adrock and Mike D, now 17 and 19 old respectively, grew up in Manhattan; MCA, 20 comes from Brooklyn Heights. MCA and Mike D “have been friends forever and were boys together,” MCA says; Adrock, a.k.a. Adam Horvitz, met the other two in junior high school. Noted playwright Israel Horvitz, Adrock’s dad, left home when the Beastie was a baby. MCA’s first criminal act was setting a print shop on fire. “All the kids from our high school listened to Deep Purple, crap like that,” Mike D says. “When you see that shit it doesn’t make you want to go out and play it.” Yauch, Horvitz and Diamond opted for the (then) unpopular alternative, dying their hair orange or shaving it off, checking out the Stimulators and Sham 69 at New York clubs, and eventually starting their own hardcore squads. “Everyone we knew was in a band,” Mike D says. “That’s what was cool about punk.” The original Beastie Boys comprised Yauch, Diamond and two more; Horivitz’ band, The Young & the Useless, would open shows. Eventually, the combos merged. After releasing the 7-inch Polly Wog StewEP on the Rat Cage label in 1982, lured by a Gotham rap subculture that seemed to parallel punk in the do-it-yourself-music department, the Beasties decided to expand their horizons. “We went into the studio and recorded 10 songs, and we did the song ‘Cookie Puss’ as a joke,” MCA remembers. “We were making fun of Malcolm McLaren, and the whole downtown art scene that was exploiting hip-hop.” A poor mix caused eight tunes to be shelved, but “Cookie Puss” came out as a 12-inch single, backed with a rasta-toasting/ Musical Youth parody called “Beastie Revolution.” The A-side was a seemingly sexist and racist stylus-scratch rendering of a pornographic phone call to an ice cream sandwich store, and it turned out to be 1983′s funniest novelty record. Rick Rubin, a club jockey whose band, Hose, did grunge-metal versions of Ohio Players and Rick James numbers, heard the disc and liked it. Beastie gigs gradually evolved from “a lot of new wave Wild-Style Burner Style music with the turntable next to the drum riser (sez MCA) to all-the-way-live rap, and Rubin produced 1985s awesome “Rock Hard”/Party’s Gettin’ Rough”/ “Beastie Groove” EP. The record kidnapped sections outright from AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and Zep’s “Black Dog.” The Beasties chanted, “I’m a man who needs no introduction/Got a big tool of reproduction.” Furthering their ironman-funk synthesis on the “Soundtrack from the Video ‘She’s on It’” single, and helped along by a distribution deal Rubin’s Def Jam Records had established with CBS, the trio burst onto MTV in late ’85. A year later, after a summer of opening for the suddenly huge Rubin-produced Run D.M.C., the Beasties were bonafide stars; within six weeks of its release, Licensed to Ill had already sold over a million copies, and was kicking its way up to the Top 20. If you go to high school or live in a college dorm, you most likely know the thing forwards and backwards by now. Licensed to Ill has pushed rap into the whitest corridors of America’s heartland, and (along with D.M.C., Metallica and the Rubin-produced Slayer) had made the future safe for dangerous teenage music, a form that seemed to have died. CBS, concentrating on Bruce S. and Michael J., has an unexpected blockbuster on its hands. And the Beastie Boys are playing their fifteen minutes of fame to the hilt. “Five years from now I might be selling used cars on the lot,” MCA says. “I really don’t give a fuck, ’cause I’m having so much fun now.” For example: I’m at the hotel, as are members of the Beastie entourage, which consists of Sean, their hepcat British manager, Hurricane, a brawny deejay who carries lots of gold junk around his neck, Cey, who has known the Beasties since childhood and now serves as roadie and astrologer and all-around nice guy, and Eloise, an overweight go-go dancer who’s supposed to look “sexy” when she strips down to her black lace, I guess, but mostly just comes off as gruesome. The Beasties aren’t there, and the limo driver says it’s time to leave for the Rivers Show. All of a sudden a luxury machine burns rubber around the corner, just missing the limo, and skids to a halt in front of the hotel gate. MCA jumps out and runs inside, and Adrock takes the wheel even though he’s never driven a stick-shift before. MCA’s done doing what he was doing, and the treacherous three are ready to go now, but they’re not riding in the limo; they’ve just rented a Town Car after getting bored with a Ferrari and a Rolls, and they don’t want their dollars to go to waste. “We ride three in the front, you in the back,” Mike D tells me. “That’s the rule.” The limousine goes first, and we follow. The auto I’m in is manned by derelicts: MCA’s wearing a wrinkled long-sleeve white button-down, a black leather jacket, and a five o’clock (or five day, maybe) beard-shadow; Adrock has an “Appalachian Basketball Camp” shirt, a red Texaco baseball cap and a light-blue windbreaker; Mike D, skinnier, and nerdier-looking than his cohorts, has a gold Volkswagen pendant, black horned-rim glasses, and an earring. Their jeans have holes, their Nikes lack laces (some new fad, I think), and I’m no queer but I know that these are not the prettiest men I’ve ever seen. Anyway, we’re chasing the limo, and Metallica’s “Battery” is blasting from our tapedeck, and the dudes in front of me are banging their heads towards the windshield as if they constituted one orgasm. They release their seatbacks so they can ride horizontally, they “accidentally” bump bumpers with the limo a few times, they shout catcalls at the usual feminine suspects. (“Before we were successful we used to stand at the streetcorner and yell at girls,” Mike D later informs Joan Rivers. “Now we can sit in a Ferrari and do it, and it’s a lot more effective.”) And the doo-wop along with the cassette, which plays the Coasters, Elvis, Roxanne Shante, Marvin Gaye, ? And The Mysterians, Stevie Wonder, and—as a tribute to their adolescent homeboys, I gather—Deep Purple.
“It becomes hard to remember that “Smoke on the Water” was never a good song and was barely a good joke— and even harder to remember that old bromide about what happens to those who don’t learn from the past.”
—Mark Moses Boston Phoenix, December 30, 1986
Afoot in our land is disillusionment like has not been seen since the Watergate years. For the generation weaned on Danny Bonaduce, awakened by Haldeman, Erlichman and Dean, and enlightened by punk and its progeny, this disillusionment casts doubt and cynicism on not only our leaders, but on the mass media that stimulate our national mood. Be a sourpuss and call it premature nostalgia if you need to, but the current interest in early ’70s rock is no retreat; fact is, punk promised more and then failed more miserably than any other rock ‘n’ roll ever has. When Redd Kross covers Kiss, when “Walk This Way” goes Top 10, when the Golden Palominos hire Jack Bruce, it’s not retreat—rather, it’s a necessary return to unfinished business. If the Sex Pistols never happened, we’d probably better off than we are now. And if the Beastie Boys don’t come right out and say this, their record certainly implies it. To me, the most amazing thing aboutLicensed to Ill‘s success is the youth of its audience. That children of the ’80s are buying it proves how universal its ideas are. Because to get all of the details, you have to be a child of the ’70s. As I’ve said, Bonzo slapping his drumkit starts off the thing. But before the vinyl’s been exhausted, we’ve also heard musical or verbal snippets from Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf,” Zep’s “The Ocean,” War’s “Low Rider,” Steve Miller’s “Fly Like An Eagle” and “Take the Money and Run” (plus they did a cool a capella “Joker” during the Joan Rivers rehearsals), Brownsville Station’s “Smokin’ in the Boys Room,” Aerosmith’s “No More No More,” Creedence’s “Down on the Corner,” and some Barry White tune whose title alludes me. It’s no accident the record starts with a song called “Rhymin’ and Stealin’” – the oeuvres of Bill Haley and Bobby Fuller and Kurtis Blow and Schoolly-D are plundered, too. But Licensed to Ill isn’t just about creative in-joke robbery; if it was, it wouldn’t be worth much. All those borrowed bits and pieces are used to make connections, to outline the perimeters of the youth culture on which the Beasties’ B-boy-brat stance depends. When I asked MCA about the lyric “sit around the house, get high and watch the tube,” he answered, “We’re not using it because it’s in a Steve Miller song. We’re using it because it’s a good line.” So in the long run, what makes Licensed to Ill a great album—one of the best of the last year, and one of a mere handful of listenable recent ones on major labels—is that it’s got great songs. First off, they sound great; Rubin is one of the few current producers out there who refuse to sell out rhythm to disco-syndrome water-torture monotony, and this album’s got his biggest beats ever. With him the Beasties could get by on their cockiness alone. But what I really mean by great songs is great songwriting, by which I guess I just mean common sense. Wiffleball bats and swirlies and Phyllis Diller and Kentucky Fried Chicken and Budweiser and Rice-a-Roni and angel dust are things we live with in this world, and sometimes even things we talk about in real life, but I’ll be damned if anybody else has ever written songs about then, and even if somebody has, they never wrote a couplet as unpretentiously jocular as “My pistol is loaded, I shot Betty Crocker/Deliver Colonel Sanders down to Davy Jones locker” or “Went to the prom, bought a fly blue rental/Got six girlies in my Lincoln Continental.” It’s all about specificity, I reckon. And when the words fall together into a fantastic delinquent anthem like “Fight for Your Right (To Party)”or a fantastic rock star rave-up like “No Sleep Til Brooklyn” (with glaciated guitar from Slayer’s Kerry King) or a fantastic ghetto-gangster boast like “The New Style,” I just can’t figure why a person would resist. If being “offended” is what bugs you, you don’t love rock ‘n’ roll.
When I woke up late in the afternoon She’d taken all the things from inside of my room I found myself naked in the middle of the floor She’d taken the bed, and the chest of drawers The mirror, the TV, the new guitar chords My remote control and my old skateboard She robbed us blind, she took all we own And the boys blamed me for bringing me home.”
A Beastie Boys representative confirmed today that Adam Yauch (a.k.a MCA) "passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer."
Yauch, who was 47, achieved fame with the Beastie Boys, but as their fame grew he directed his energy toward his lifelong passion: Buddhism and Tibetan independence. While he and his fellow Beastie Boys Mike Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) continued to transform rap music through classics like "Paul's Boutique," "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communication," Yauch helped tether the group with his rhymes about peace, enlightenment and other topics far removed from the party-rap of the Beastie Boys' early music (most notably their platinum debut album 'Liscensed to Ill"). Last month the Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where members Ad-Rock and Mike D accepted the award; MCA was unable to make it.
I saw the Beastie Boys perform live at the Brixton Academy in London on May 24, 1987. This was the infamous 'Liscensed to Ill' Tour, complete with a stage set that included a giant inflatable penis, bikini babes in cages, and copious amounts of Budweiser Beer. Their big hit at the time (the first of dozens over the next three decades) was 'Fight For Your Right (To Party)'. As a young white boy from downunder who was 'down with rap' you can only imagine the euphoria I felt being immersed in my first ever live rap show.
The following day I scribbled down a review of the show (yes, by hand, on paper) and mailed it (yes, a letter 'in the post') off to Rip It Up Magazine back in Auckland, New Zealand. Whether it got published or not I don't recall; I was still living in London - watching Run DMC, Eric B & Rakim, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and my other rap heroes performing every other month! But, as they say, you 'never forget your first' and the Beastie Boys continued to hold a special place in my heart.
Rest In Peace, Adam Yauch, or whatever it is that Budhists do. You will be missed, but not forgotten.
Photo by Laura Levine, on display at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. PIcture taken on my iPhone, April 2011
"When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty and shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up and express their anger and frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr ~
Someone posted the above on their Facebook page, a 'copy n paste' not uncommon in social media. We see something we like (a cute kitten video, a political blog, or a sentiment we want to share) and so we click 'share' or repost it. But in this case the quote is not true - well, not all of it. Yes, MLK did say "A riot is the language of the unheard" but he did not say the words attrubted that proceed it. Someone has written something themselves, tacked a bit of MLK on the end, and then sent it out into the world wide web hoping (presumably) that some people will be be attracted by MLK's name to a message he didn't actually give.
What he actually said was:
"But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard."
This (the original misquote) is not the first quote I've seen on Facebook that looked hinkey to me. There are plenty of 'quotes' that kinda sound like the person they're attributed to, but aren't actually. And even before 'social media' there were people writing lengthy missives about how quatrain x-y-z by Nostrodamus correctly predicted the collapse of the Twin Towers, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rise of Hitler - all of which is then used as proof that his next quatrain is 'warning' us that the One World Government is upon us.
Anyway, I called out the erroneous poster on the fake MLK quote and got this in reply:
Nick D'Angelo: where's your source for this 'quote'? it seems to have been rewritten, because here's the actual quote:
"But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that the... (full quote, as above)
[THEM]: Regardless of who read, copied, quoted it.....the words and message are spot on.
Nick D'Angelo: But the only part of your quote that MLK actually said was "a riot is the language of the unheard". The rest is made up. If someone wants to make sh!t up they should put their own name to it...
[THEM]: Listen Nick you little wanker.....I copy and pasted this from someone elses status because I agree with the message. If you want to obsess about who wrote the fuckin thing....do it somewhere else or say something constructive. I am in no mood to debate with the likes of you your petty bullshit....I have no idea who wrote it....I just agree with it.
[someone else] u tell em heehee if he so obsessed by it he should write a book
Nick D'Angelo: I'm stunned you think it's okay to attribute something to someone that didn't actually say what you say they said.
[THEM]: maybe a little strong...but this is a passion provoking subject and if you don't have passion then what do you become? My mother used to say quote: " We're not here to fuck spiders!" · Like · 1 person
[someone else] go mum
[THEM]: Nick.....copy and paste it into google and scour through the 318 hits of the same quote.
Hmmmm, that just means 318 other people have fallen for this BS quote, surely? And I think I am not alone in thinking this, so I must be right.
"Thou shalt not tell falsehoods in the public square"
~ Jesus Christ ~
Okay, I made that up. But this one is true - look it up on Google if you don't believe me.
"I have a dream! That one day man will not be judged by the color of his skin, but by the cut of his jib"
Since I've posted previously about my run ins with Gerry (Gerald) Otimi I thought it only fair I update you on his most recent court case. The following is via the NZ Herald website:
Gerard Otimi (left) appears in court yesterday with supporter Akarana Rewi. Otimi charged overstayers $500 for a worthless certificate of residency. Photo / Paul Estcourt
The promise of jobs and an education for their children was used to lure overstayers into a passport scam that ended yesterday with the jailing of the man who took their money. Gerard Otimi was yesterday jailed for 18 months for leading 38 people on with the false hope they could stay in New Zealand - while taking $500 for a "stamp" on their passports.
One victim, Metala Leaupepe, told the Manukau District Court she had paid thousands to immigration consultants but could not get residency. "I was exhausted in making my ... immigration application through agents and the answer was always declined."
Otimi held meetings at marae in Mangere, Manurewa and Hamilton where he told overstayers they could avoid deportation if they paid him $500 to be adopted or "whangai'ed" into his hapu. The mostly Tongan and Samoan victims also had their passports stamped and signed by Otimi, and were given hapu certificates giving them "permission to remain in Aotearoa NZ as a hapu whangai". But the stamps and certificates were worthless.
Judge Gus Andree Wiltens said the certificates "read impressively but have no real meaning". Statements on the certificate mentioned Queen Elizabeth II and used official language. "It was clearly designed to impress people with a limited level of English ability," the judge said. Otimi was found guilty of 38 counts of altering a document with intent to cause loss. He was acquitted of a further seven charges at his hearing in April where Mrs Leaupepe gave evidence.
Judge Andree Wiltens said it was not only the 38 people he had heard from at the hearing - many more had been taken in by Otimi, who targeted some of the most vulnerable people in New Zealand society. "South Auckland has a large population from the Pacific Islands who have issues with Immigration because of the fact that they can't be in New Zealand."
Crown prosecutor Chris Merrick said it was not the first time Otimi had been involved in operating a scam. He referred to his conviction on two charges in 2004 after he issued fake warrants of fitness and driver's licences.
Judge Andree Wiltens said he had been "pushing" Otimi towards home detention but because of his lack of co-operation with the Probation Service, he could not sentence him to anything but prison. He did give Otimi the chance to apply for home detention at a later date. Judge Andree Wiltens said each of the witnesses who came to court would be refunded their $500. Other claimants can apply for their share of the remaining $28,500 seized by police.
Roger Perry posted this clip on his Facebook page and it took me straight back to the early 80s when Hip Hop was all about B-Boys and B-Girls, and not Gangsta Bust-A-Cap In Yo Ass Biitch. The RSC were the most famous NYC rappers (internationally at least) and therefore role models for many in New Zealand.
Anyway, seeing this clip reminded me of the time I secured a deal whereby the #1 NZ breakdance crew (although I'm sure the Welli crews will still dispute that) The Megazoids would be the support for Rock Steady Crew's Australian tour. In the end itt never happened, which is why you never heard about it, but I suppose I can tell the story now.... (after the clip)
Shazam! was an 80s TV show that played pop music and screened midweek, in the afternoon... about 5pm from memory? It was a simple format: play some music videos and chat to which ever pop star was visiting that week. If there were no international artists in town they'd talk to a local, who invariably had a new single and video to push. For local musicians one midweek screening on Shazam! and Radio With Pictures on Sunday night was all you'd get, since your record wouldn't chart (we didn't buy our own music back then) and therefore wouldn't screen on the very very popular Saturday evening Ready To Roll show.
In the early 80s I managed a synth-pop band called Katango (taking the job over from Mark Phillips) who managed to break into the NZ Top 20 twice. Meaning we were on Shazam! twice. Well, I was only on once since I wasn't actually in the band - but I did manage to be in one clip. I played the manager - franticly trying to get the band out of the dressing room and onto the Shazam! stage. I became infamous for clearly mouthing the word "Fuck!" on air as I looked at my watch, franticly. Truth be told I didn't actually say that at all, but if people thought I did... good, Katango were now edgy synth-pop.
Anyway, this was the early 80s and this was New Zealand so even at the tender age of 21 I had no problem wandering into the Shazam! office when I felt like pitching an idea. Usually I was trying to hustle my band. The show was hosted by the affable Phillip Schofield who stayed for about two years before going back to the UK with his TVNZ show reel and landing a job there. He went on to become a huge star in Britain, and I don't think he's ever been back.
In 1984 I pitched this idea to Shazam!...
I would run a nationwide breakdancing competition, and they would film the winning teams in each region, and viewers could vote and decide who was NZ's Next Top Breakdancing Crew! Or something like that. Schofield loved the idea, and so did Shazam! producer Peter Grattan. We had some meetings, exchanged a few letters, agreed to do it, and I got the whole she-bang underway.
Naturally it didn't go as smoothly as that, and I'll tell you what went wrong in Part Two...
