The high season for wedding celebrations has commenced and it has been beautiful thus far. However, it has also been a rough month of great losses this May for some giants of music. It seemed like every time we turned around to do a post, someone great had passed in an untimely manner. Someone truly revered musically. Someone whose passing made it feel like time was moving faster. Donna Summer, Levon Helm of The Band, Chuck Brown, the godfather of Go-Go music (a regional staple of Tom’s childhood in Washington DC), and Robin Gibb of the legendary Bee Gees. The one that stung the most for us, was to hear that Adam Yauch, of the Beastie Boys, had lost his life after a hard battle with cancer. It still stings. That first week was incredibly tough, walking the New York streets feeling as though a chunk of earth had fallen out from beneath this place. It’s palpable in the air still, weeks after his passing. The Beastie Boys were such a huge influence on our tastes and sensibilities from an early age. Long before we met them, there was a sense of fun, perceptible love for the world, and tangible wisdom that transcended their music. Back then, when we needed the right recipe of humor and intelligence to inspire and polish our restlessness, it was there. To listen to their music and especially, to their avant garde sampling, was in no small way a key to who we are now and what we do. They created monsters out of us–we had to know what all of that stuff was and where it came from, We went looking for the records when there was no internet to give us the answers. We will forever be grateful to them for that. Adam Yauch’s time was a life to be admired and emulated and his legacy is one of immeasurable influence and integrity.