The weekly playlist wraps up the previous seven days across the Far Out website and brings it all together into one handy place. Whether this is a thirst for new tunes or an old favourite with a landmark celebration, here is the one-stop-shop for all your music needs.
This week sadly marked nine years since we lost Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, the founding member of The Beastie Boys, who passed away, aged 47 in 2012. Along with his bandmates Michael ‘Mike-D’ Diamond, and Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horowitz, they collectively changed the course of hip-hop by bringing it to more ears than ever before.
We looked at how the trio helped bring rap to a mainstream audience who were previously devoid of the genre before their 1986 debut, Licensed To Ill, ruffled feathers and changed hip-hop’s perception. Before The Beastie Boys, hip-hop was an underground secret. Kids growing up in parts of America, which may have only been a two-hour drive away from Brooklyn, remained unaware that a burgeoning scene was forming just a stone’s throw away with Def Jam Records in the Big Apple.
Licensed to Ill’s accessibility meant the trio became adored by hip-hop aficionados and the entry-level fans who had never heard the sound before. Both categories, it is safe to say, were spellbound by the brilliance of The Beastie Boys. Although many didn’t clock the band’s comedic edge upon the first release, they still found themselves engrossed by the magic that Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock had created.
Elsewhere, last week marked 38 years since the world lost the imitable Muddy Waters. In remembrance of the blues pioneer, Far Out explored how there would be no Rolling Stones if it weren’t for Waters’ breaking down the boundaries, allowing the British icons to flourish.
The Glimmer Twins bonded over a mutual love of the Delta Blues scene. It was these records that changed their lives and, even on occasion, the band unapologetically imitated their heroes. The Stones’ band name arrived after BBC radio had booked them for a live session in 1962. Brian Jones, who was on the phone with Jazz News to inform them about the big plans, realised that the group still didn’t have a name. The late guitarist, in a panic, looked around and spotted ‘Rollin’ Stone’ by Muddy Waters on the floor and decided to name his band The Rolling Stones on the spot — almost 60 years on, they are an omnipresent monolith of rock and roll.
Moving on, The Coral took part in a ‘Far Out Meets’ last week, with frontman James Skelly giving the lowdown on their stellar new double-album, Coral Island, set in a fictional British seaside resort.
Skelly also looked back on 20 years of The Coral and opened up about how he struggled with their early fame. “I wasn’t ready for it,” Skelly reflected. “But, I was also brought up to be grateful for what you have, so you end up with this internal argument all the time. You end up with some kind of self-loathing for feeling anything but gratitude for it. It’s hard because if your whole thing is that you’ve got Holden Caulfield syndrome and think everyone’s a fake. Then when you go into that, and you’re part of that, you kind of become a fake, and you’ve boxed yourself into a corner.”
“I don’t regret anything,” Skelly adds. “All the things that I’ve learned along the way I tell to other bands that I work with who I’m helping. It’s not like I’m in a bad position; I’ve just produced a number-one album (Blossoms record Foolish Loving Spaces). I can’t complain; I’m doing better than most,” the frontman sincerely added.
The Coral are currently perched in number two in the UK album charts behind Royal Blood, who also spoke with Far Out about their pulsating new album, Typhoons, and how without frontman Mike Kerr getting sober in 2019, there would be no new album, no band and no Mike.
“I think we had a real hunger for something fresh. I think we both felt like we had exhausted our Royal Blood formula,” the singer said over Zoom from his Brighton base. “We made two records were really happy with, but the idea of continuing and not changing was so uninspiring and not something we wanted to explore. We had no appetite to explore that whatsoever,” Kerr explains in a refreshingly matter-of-fact way.
“I felt like there was a bit of an appetite from everyone for something fresh,” Kerr adds. “Not that I go around with a microphone interviewing people, but I just think we’re very successfully completed with those records.”
Elsewhere, The Vaccines frontman Justin Hayward-Young spoke with Far Out for our Doctor’s Orders feature in association with mental health charity CALM about his nine favourite songs. The singer picked a diverse selection, which ranged from ABBA to obscure Thai funk.
Check out the playlist, below.
The Far Out Weekly Playlist:
- Kim Gordon – ‘Murdered Out’
- Royal Blood – ‘Typhoons’
- The Coral – ‘Change Your Mind’
- Fever – ‘Jungle Man’
- Willie Nelson – ‘Always On My Mind’
- Aretha Franklin – ‘Respect’
- Elvis Presley – ‘Jailhouse Rock’
- Muddy Waters – ‘Rollin’ Stone’
- Bon Iver – ‘Holocene’
- The Vaccines – ‘Melody Calling’
- James Brown – ‘The Boss’
- Frankie Valli – ‘Walk Like A Man’
- Beastie Boys – ‘Brass Monkey’
- Green Day – ‘Longview’
- The Smashing Pumpkins – ‘Tonight, Tonight’