Recently I heard the news that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys had passed away from cancer. I’m not usually one to feel affected by celebrity deaths, but for some reason I felt the need to post a brief “RIP Adam Yauch” as my Facebook status. Then over the next couple of days I noticed many of my friends on Facebook also posting their sad feelings about MCA’s passing and sharing articles about his achievements. I started to realize that Mr. Yauch’s passing touched me deeper than I originally thought. For me, the moments and feelings created by the Beastie Boys’ music added up to a substantial collection in my core. I first experienced their music as a teenager. I was a Chinese-Canadian girl growing up in (at the time) white bread North Vancouver listening to 3 Jewish hip-hop artists from Brooklyn. It seemed so implausible, yet perfect in its contrasts. Suddenly it was clear in my mind what it all meant, and the memories played out like a TV montage scene.

I clearly remember swinging on a playground’s swing set with my best friend at the time. We were in high school, probably around Grade 10. It was night time in the summer. We had impossibly skinny legs and the start of laugh lines on our young, shiny faces. He and I did not have a care in the world (well, nothing more troubling than the usual teenage angst). As we swung in the cool, evening breeze we belted out “Fight For Your Right (to Party)” at the top of our lungs. I can not tell you the last time I felt like that, so free and intangibly youthful.

Fast forward a few years. I bought “Paul’s Boutique” on cassette and it lived in my little Mazda’s tape deck for awhile. The plastic casing was yellow instead of your standard black. It was so cool to look at. I would play “Hey Ladies” over and over again. As I sped en route to my university exams I would have comical images of platform shoes, bull whips on the dance floor, and pimp daddy disco outfits. And I would want “more cowbell” many years before that phrase was a common punch line.

I clearly remember watching some concert footage of the Beastie Boys when I was a bit older. I recall being astounded by their technical brilliance and vocal choreography. To hear their music was entertaining. To watch their impeccable timing of their rapping was nothing short of mind-blowing. An unappreciative listener/observer might think they were just yelling willy-nilly into their mics, but “waaaaaaay harder than it looks” comes to my mind.

I did not see the Beastie Boys perform live until many years later. I think it was around 2003 at the Pacific Coliseum. I went with my dear friend Farshad as part of our ongoing mission to see musical ‘legends’ perform at least once during our life time. The boys were now men but the crowd was definitely a younger demographic. They still had it: the energy, the skills, and the adoring love of their (mostly male) fans. The bromance crushes ran deep for Mike D, Ad-Rock, MCA, and Mix Master Mike. I loved their crowd-pleasing song line-up and dinner theatre-like approach to their performance. It still stands as one of my favourite live performances that I have ever attended.

And you can imagine my joy when I first moved in with Robin almost a decade ago and I was consolidating our music collection. I found the Beastie Boys’ Anthology “The Sounds of Science” amongst his CDs. I was now half-owner of all their hits and quickly claimed it as my own.

But everything has changed now. The Beastie Boys are minus their MCA. He is no more. He was 47. And I am 40. The young girl swinging through the summer evening is so far away from me. On the weekend I happened to be going through some clothes in storage and I found my Beastie Boys concert t-shirt. It is pink and quite threadbare (and quite tight I might add). I don’t think I’ll be wearing it again any time soon, but I’m going to hang on to it. I’m not a pack-rat, but I believe in hanging on to certain things that have a special meaning, no matter how random they appear to be to a casual observer.

Then just today I stumbled across a YouTube video of Coldplay’s recent concert tribute to Adam Yauch. They sang a clear, melodic version of “Fight For Your Right.” It sounded amazing and the slow-downed version allowed me to really hear the lyrics. I caught my breath when I heard the last lines of the song as if it was my first time hearing them: “Don’t step out of this house if that’s the clothes you’re gonna wear/ I’ll kick you out of my home if you don’t cut that hair/ Your mom busted in and said, “What’s that noise?”/ Aw, mom you’re just jealous it’s the Beastie Boys!”

I am clearly no longer that teenage girl, happily screaming out the lyrics to this quintessential party anthem of my grad class. No, now I am the mother, the meddling matriarch, the buzz-kill for every free-spirited youth. It does not seem possible because if I close my eyes I can feel that breeze in my hair as I swing high into the night sky, I can see my friend’s smiling face which is also a reflection of my own, and I think I can hear my voice as I sing about fighting for my right to party….

RIP Adam Yauch. I never met you and obviously you never had any idea that I ever existed. But I promise that one evening this summer I will push my kids on the playground swing set and serenade them with your music. They will probably protest and think I have gone crazy but in the end we will laugh and swing into the night and your music and influence will live on for the next generation….