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With no hesitation Adam Yaunch, better known by his stage name of MCA and who died nine years ago last Tuesday, launches into his band's Bodhisattva Vow, one of the most unique songs in hip hop: " I develop the awakening mind I praise the Buddhas as they shine I bow before you as I travel my path To join your ranks, I make my full time task " The Beastie Boys' Bodhisattva Vow is MCA's masterpiece about being a practising Buddhist and the veneration of fellow Buddhists. What makes it particularly astonishing is how eloquent and palatable it is within the confines of the 3 minute pop/hip hop song, as he himself explained: "The general concept behind the song," Yauch said, "was to take the meaning of Shantideva's text, at least on the level that I understood it, and compress it into a modernised, three-verse rhyming song." The track's genesis started when Yauch attended a lecture by the Dalai Lama in the Spring of '93 whilst recording ...

Little Labours of Love - The 100 Greatest B-Sides Like the English electric lightning that's features above on Suede's excellent B-side compilation Sci-Fi Lullabies , the B-side is a humble relic from a bygone era.  L eaving both a mountain of aural rubbish and a small but largely untold legacy of great music when artists dared to experiment, dared to take risks, dared to push themselves. B-sides were tracks that accompanied singles - or A-sides - and were their literal flipside, on vinyl or cassette that could be turned or flipped over. In the fifties and early sixties two songs could be recorded and radio would choose their preferred song to play and these became the single. So for example Bill Wither's Ain't No Sunshine was originally a B-side to the single Harlem before Radio DJs saw the obvious error and played the B-side instead. Examples such as these were purely down to chance however.  The idea that a B-side could be worthy of being taken seriously was perhaps ...