No other band defined me musically more than the Beastie Boys. I’m not going to get into a non-winnable argument about whether they were or were not the best band ever (I’ve seen this happen time and time again in college with my friends. There is never a resolution and in turn people end up pointing speakers at each others doors and blaring their favorite band at an ear shattering level). But if you were to ask any of my friends, “What is Dan’s favorite band,” without hesitation I’m pretty positive 99% would say The Beastie Boys. This hasn’t wavered since I was 12 years-old when myself and a friend of mine memorized the lyrics to Paul Revere at a school field trip on a hike in Alliance Redwoods.

The Beastie Boys were a band that defined my high school experience with Check Your Head. I played that album continuously in my first car, over and over to much of the chagrin of my fellow passengers.

In college, the Beastie Boys were my first concert I ever went to. Most people sheepishly answer when they are asked “what was your first concert” and the answer is “New Kids on the Block” or “Stryper”. Proudly I answer: “The Beastie Boys, DJ Hurricane and Bad Brains at the Bremerton County Fairgrounds in 1995. It was the Ill Communication tour and 6 of us from University of Oregon packed into a car and drove the 3 hours up and 3 hours back that day. It was the highlight of my freshman year in college.

Over the years, music has always been something that I have used to anchor me or fill time. Some people read books, some read comics (err, I mean graphic novels)… I would always listen to music; and Beastie Boys were always the band that I would come back to. Comfort food for the ears.

When I started working at KNRK in 1998, the second gig I had for the radio station was the Beastie Boys concert at the Rose Garden for the Hello Nasty tour. When I started doing my own Punk/Hip-Hop show, The Warped Hours, I would always have at least one Beastie Boy song on my playlist. Back in 2005, I invited a some of my friends, and listeners to vote on their top 10 Beastie Boys songs. I used that, along with a scoring system to create the following “Top Beastie Boy Songs” 1-33. I look back on this list and would probably jostle a couple around, but here’s the list:

1. So What’cha Want || Check Your Head
2. Shadrach || Paul’s Boutique
3. Sabotage || Ill Communication
4. Looking Down The Barrel Of A Gun || Paul’s Boutique
5. Pass The Mic || Check Your Head
6. Shake Your Rump || Paul’s Boutique
7. Jimmy James || Check Your Head
8. Professor Booty || Check Your Head
9. Sure Shot || Ill Communication
10. Fight For Your Right || Licensed To Ill
11. An Open Letter To NYC || To The 5 Boroughs
12. High Plains Drifter || Paul’s Boutique
13. She’s On It|| Licensed To Ill
14. Stand Together/Blue Nun || Check Your Head
15. Hello Brooklyn || Paul’s Boutique
16. Root Down || Ill Communication
17. Paul Revere || Licensed To Ill
18. Alive || The Sounds Of Science
19. Body Movin’ || Hello Nasty
20. Time To Build || To The 5 Boroughs
21. Shes Crafty || Licensed To Ill
22. Hey Ladies || Paul’s Boutique
23. Super Disco Breakin’ || Hello Nasty
24. Get It Together || Ill Communication
25. Egg Raid On Mojo || Some Old Bullshit
26. Flute Loop || Ill Communication
27. Just a Test || Hello Nasty
28. The Brouhaha || To The 5 Boroughs
29. Cooky Puss || Some Old Bullshit
30. Heart Attack Man || Ill Communication
31. The Negotiation Limerick File || Ill Communication
32. I Don’t Know || Hello Nasty
33. Beastie Boys || Some Old Bullshit

If you have Spotify, I created this as a playlist for you to listen to and enjoy. || Weblink to playlist

In 2004 I was at the radio station when I got a note from my Program Director, Mark Hamilton, to come into his office. When you work in radio, that’s always a little anxiety producing, to be summoned into the PD’s office. He called me in to let me know that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys was doing radio interviews and he wanted me to be the person from the station to interview him. I damn near soiled myself. I eeked out “of course, that’s awesome…” or something to that effect. He then said, “great, he’s calling in 30 minutes.” Not a lot of time to prep. I will attempt to dig up my interview I did with MCA and will put the pretext on it… it wasn’t my finest of interviews. If anyone has done interviews, they can tell you phone interviews can be tough in making a connection. It can sometimes be tougher when you know the person on the other line has already done 25 of these “phoners” in the same day. Combine that you’re actually a fan… it can make for a rough interview. Thankfully he was a pro and it went ok. Stay tuned for that audio. I’ll update this post when I find it. **UPDATED with audio** Adam Yauch 2004 radio interview on KNRK

So, after hearing the news today that Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys passed after being afflicted with cancer for the past 2+ years I felt a sadness that isn’t unique, but was for me. Having a public figure you are attached to, one that you have grown up and formed bonds and memories around, to leave. You know that you can never recreate your youth, but this solidifies that passage. There won’t be new Beastie Boys Albums, there won’t be any more tours. I won’t be able to have my son’s first concert be the Beastie Boys (hopefully it won’t be Justin Beiber-esque)… I do still have a crate full of white label pressings of Beasties records that I can pass on, my numerous t-shirts and XL Brooklyn Dust Elephant hat and will do my damnest to educate him on the finer points of why they were such an influence on our generation. So, while people argue which band was the greatest, these guys were the greatest band in forming who I am.

RIP Adam Yauch. Thank you.

I landed in Miami after an extensive trip (12+ hours) and the weather is awesome. I’m here for the 2008 NBA Marketing Meetings. All the team gather with the league to share best practices about marketing basketball. I went last year to New Orleans and it was pretty cool…

This year, we started with a formal meeting where all the teams representatives hung in their own little groups and talked amongst themselves. It was cool cause in our little huddle was Greg. As in Greg Oden. He came down to be on a panel with some of the all time greats (Dr. J, Bill Walton) more on that to come. Also in the crowd was Amhad Rashad (go DUCKS).

I was introduced to Bill Walton. He’s just as tall in person as you expect, and is extremely cool. Seriously, he looked me in the face and said, what you guys have in Portland is great. We had something special in 1977 and what is going on now is amazing.

The Trail Blazers group gathered into cabs and headed to South Beach where we had an AMAZING dinner at WISH. Todd Oldham did the design… cool, you know it. Then headed to Mangos. Crazy good looking Puertoricans were dancing on the the bar. It was a good time by our group, some hung longer than others, but all in all, it was a good night for the first night of the meetings.

You might be asking yourself,  what the hell goes on there? Well, we’ll do a lot of different seminars in our own respective field. I will be going to Database Marketing, Marketing, Ticket Sales and Retention. Ther are community outreach, player development, public relations and other seminars that go on. I think these meetings hold a lot of water when it comes to brainstorming and furthering ideas for the teams and the league.

One topic will be one that is close to home, social networks. We don’t have the solution for social networking, but no one does. That is the beauty. Do we have the best website out there. No. But no one does. Seriously. Everyone should improve their sites and their interaction… and that is why we are here to discuss and refine. In addition to talking through what these sites can be, we are relaunching our social network, to strive for more. To strive for better. Fans deserve it. Our team deserves it. The internet deserves it. That sounds boisterous, or extremist, but you need to push to do better. Seriously.

I will try to twitter during the meetings… and maybe blog. I know, they’ve been rare. But I will make an effort.

Oh yeah, my little boy (Jack) is getting all growns up. Check out “Jack Lives Here”. He’s started to pull himself up. Crap, that means he’s about to walk.

Here’s a ticket deal for all who come to my blog (as a little thank you)… Get 50% off tickets for the Clippers game (this Saturday 3/31) and the Sonics game (4/14). The yellow seats are pretty good for $25.

Click here to get your ticket deal… now you can’t say I never gave you nothin’.

Ok, this is “bar none” my favorite time of year for sports. There are people who love every Saturday and Sunday during fall for Football (ehem, my wife). I do love college football. I love the NFL and all the stress fantasy football brings me. But these next three weeks pumps adrenaline into my system constantly. I just watched Virgina Commonwealth beat Duke. I would never… repeat NEVER watch a Virgina Commonwealth football game.

I am a fan of Colin Cowherd, I remember the days at Entercom, early in the mornings seeing Colin wander the halls during a commercial break with his paper coffee cup asking people if they thought waffles were better than pancakes. Recently on his national radio show on ESPN Radio, he brought up the fact that college football wouldn’t benefit from a tournament like college basketball. His argument is a valid one. The tourney makes the regular season in college basketball virtually obsolete. The only time of the year people care about it is during March. Where as college football gets great ratings throughout their regular season.

Where I disagree with him is it isn’t the tournament that makes the regular season obsolete, it’s the amount of games that makes the regular season obsolete. Most teams first 10 games are against non factor opponents and don’t really garner any attention. In college football every game counts towards your quest to the national title or at least a bowl game.

What I like about the tournament situation is, the amount of teams that COULD be in the final four is larger. Of course, at the beginning of every sehttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifason, college football teams could say the same thing (Virgina Commonwealth maybe has a shot at the national title game for football if they win every game). But that isn’t the case due to the voting system. Boise State went undefeated, but didn’t a shot at the national title shot due to rankings from pollsters.

Do I have a solution. No way. I know that I love this time of year! And will be checking my two bracket entries every 10 minutes. Here are my two entries in case you want to heckle me for picking bad picks. The Brown Shark || The Moldy Hair Clog.

A blog post about March Madness would be complete without some sort of “waste of work time” reference. So here ya go. Also, mind you, I’ve talked to people at work during march madness that I rarely talk to normally. There is something to be said about building camaraderie.

Yes, a lot is going on. Launching social network (we’re at half our goal for fan sign-ups in 10 days), a win streak (2 games, trying to make it 3 tonight, does that constitute a streak?), a trade (former Duck Freddie Jones for Juan Dixon) and the normal game stuff we have going on… it’s Friday and time for Portland Coffee.

Stephen Landau started this up here in Portland (I understand Russell Davies gave Stephen the idea to start this up)…
Stephen usually hosts, myself and Shannon will be hosting this week, as Stephen will be at the traveling with his family. We’ll be at Tiny’s from 8:30am until whenever really. I usually have to bail due to a weekly meeting at 9:30am, but people mingle, debate, inspire and get cracked out on Tiny’s Coffee.
Hope to see you guys at this coffee or a future one. Fridays, 8:30am.