December 6 - No Sleep Till Brooklyn

So yesterday's song wasn't too hard to get to. The Beastie Boys' No Sleep Till Brooklyn from 1987's fantastic debut Licensed to Ill did feature a guitar solo from Slayer's Kerry King, and as Steffen suggested, it might not have been the only solo he contributed, as the solo on (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) also sounds a lot like him. To me, Licensed to Ill brings me back to the summer of 1987, when I went on a language tour to England. It was the year of my confirmation, and both my cousin Stein and I got a language tour for a confirmation present from our parents. We were planning it all out - we were going to go together, we were only starting from different places. He would travel from Oslo and I would travel from Trondheim.

It was a three week trip, I think, and we were going to stay with host families there. I was very excited when I got my host family information - and we were both eager to share our assigned family information. The area we were going to was Isle of Thanet, which is the southeastern tip of England, part of Kent. The two main towns in the area are Margate on the northern coast and Ramsgate on the southern coast. What we didn't know was that his group was going to Ramsgate, whereas mine was going to Margate. That meant that we'd have separate trips, with separate groups, and we would be completely on our own, at age 15. Well, not completely - there were tour guides and teachers for the classroom part, and there were host families - but we wouldn't come with any buddies to hang out with from the get go. I was nervous, but I was still very excited.

My vacation was a blast. I am not the most social of beings, so being on my own meant I had to at least partly come out of my shell a little, and I think I did that. I remember Stein coming to Margate on at least one occasion and me travelling to Ramsgate on one occasion, but I also remember spending time with my host family. I am not sure they necessarily appreciated that I wanted to spend time with them - I think they were used to their guests travelling around a lot more - but I greatly appreciated spending time with them. I learned about the wonderful game of cricket, although I don't remember the rules that much anymore, and I even discovered new music, the Irish bluesman Rory Gallagher was found in their record collection, and I really liked his work.

And then there was the Beastie Boys. I bought the tape at His Master's Voice in London. I also remember convincing a couple of the guys I was travelling with to walk with me into the seedy alleys of Soho, looking for the record store Shades, which was famous for it's ads in Kerrang!, the premier heavy metal magazine, and which was rumored to carry bootleg recordings as well. I think we turned around before making it all the way there - but I know I visited the store on one of my visits to London. But Licensed to Ill was the soundtrack for me that summer. I played it in my Walkman as I was walking from my host family into town, on the tour buses as they drove us around, and while on the beaches, the great beaches. It was a great summer, and now that winter is hitting Michigan, it is the perfect time to think back on it.

But I can't get all nostalgic either. It's time to take today's song and find a way to get to tomorrow's, and I think I just did that. There is a link between the Beasties and a very famous singer. That link helped this singer revive his career in such a way that he earned his third Grammy award 31 years after his second - and two years later, he earned a fourth Grammy award. I would really like to know what the link is, what the song was that he earned his third Grammy, the singer, the name of the album and the year of the album.