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Music
It’s Called Gratitude
Your daily musical reminder to take a look around, now and again
Expressing it to yourself or to those around you is one thing. Publishing an article about it without sounding like a privileged dickhead is another.
So I’ll start at the most natural place — with the Beastie Boys. In 1992 they blew my college sophomore suburban mind up with their third album, Check Your Head. They went in a completely different direction from their previous albums: drums, bass, guitar, vocals that they played and a healthy serving of scratching and samples and no bullshit. They had to, they would have turned into a joke otherwise. Instead of white boy frat party rappers, they became post punk power pop pioneers and that’s how they are remembered. Rightly so. The album I’m talking about featured such powerhouses as “Jimmy James,” “Lighten Up” and “So Whatcha Want.” But for me, the standout is four songs in, “Gratitude.”
The plain fact is that while grunge and Britpop were the flavour of the day in the early 90s for fans of rock music, the Beastie Boys were making completely different music. That, however, is neither here nor there.
What’s important is that on this song, they took a moment, looked around their charmed NYC existence and reminded their legions of white…
