Hey You Guys, The Choir!

Despite releasing an album every couple years since 1985(!) and having a dedicated cult following, it is hard to find people who have heard of The Choir.  I don't know why they are so invisible and ignored, but they have always been supported by their tight fan base (which explains why Wikipedia, with its open-contributor policy, gives the band several lengthy sections while AllMusic and their selected fleet of music writers give the band's profile only two sentences).  It could be they way they've been [mis]marketed over the years.  Too artsy and intelligent and coffee-house for the general CCM crowd, but too Jesusy for anybody else.

According to Last.fm's user-generated charts (which will wonderfully waste hours of your time) the average Choir listener tends to be very male and very 40-ish.  So I guess if you're an old guy then this band is for you.  But, as you can see, there are people like me who like Cat Power (although I'll be the first to admit I'm not a 22-year-old female) and still dig The Choir.  So... whatever.

[Er... maybe I AM a 20-something woman]

The Choir is freely offering their 2010 album, Burning Like The Midnight Sun, on NoiseTrade.  It's good.  Surprisingly good, especially for a bunch of old guys.  This isn't a re-formed Eagles halfheartedly pulling themselves together for another easy-listening go-round.  The music here is fresh and alive and not at all what you would expect from a group of guys who've been doing the same thing for almost thirty years.  Man, even U2 blanded out, but The Choir sound like they're cutting these tracks with the exuberance of a first professionally made album.

In that NoiseTrade download they also snuck in a track from their just-released album, "The Loudest Sound Ever Heard." The song has a 90's shoegazey glam vibe to it, so if you were into the Prayer Chain or Luxury then you might be into it.  I don't know if the whole album sounds that way, but I do see Leigh Nash is featured on a track, so there's that.

http://www.noisetrade.com/thechoir

Adam Yauch. MCA.

This wasn't a Cobain shot to the face.  Not a Tupac drive-by.  Not an Elvis overdose.  Not even a Bon Scott misadventure.  No car wrecks, no plane crashes.  Nothing sudden or instantaneous.  And yet we were all caught off guard.

We knew his health had waned over the years, and we knew the cancer never completely left his body.  Maybe this is something we should expect when we see somebody slowly physically deteriorating.  But it is -- still -- unfeasible to imagine a world without any of the Beastie Boys frolicking around.

For those of my generation they have always been there.  The three of them jumping around, dropping sick beats, dropping sicker rhymes, constantly amused by the attention given to them.  As we grew up we watched them grow up.  We watched them evolve from bratty Brooklyn punkers to bratty hip-hop gurus to bratty music godfathers. Our lives had a varied soundtrack, and the Beastie Boys were a significant part of it.  

We still have the songs and the videos and the wacky interviews, but as MCA departed so too did the Beastie Boys.  The Beastie Boys without Adam is like The Beatles without... well, take your pick.  When one is removed what remains is noticeably incomplete.  

There will be a slew of unreleased material on the way as well as re-mixes and re-imaginings of existing BB material, but we won't have any more all-new studio albums.  No more new addicting hooks that bounce around in our heads for days.  No more big chunky beats that make us feel like pimps as we thump that stuff from our Honda Civics.  And nothing more from MCA and the mesmerizing unique way he slings out his rhymes.

But, like I said, we still have a large library of Beastie Boys music, and when we start missing the guy we can always bust it out.  And we will.  We'll bust it out LOUDLY.