Beastie Boys Last Night

So I went and saw the Beastie Boys in Central Park last night. I got there right after the doors opened at 5:30pm, the show was supposed to start at 7:00pm. It was at the Summerstage, so for anyone who doesn't know that it's basically a soccer field with fences around it and a big stage. Fits maybe 5000 people.

We waited and waited and waited. It was HOT, but luckily Time Warner Cable was distributing fans that we used to cool ourselves off.

Around 7:30 some shmuck comes on the stage. David something-or-other. The President of the Summerstage thing or some such nonsense. The crowd was not happy to have to listen to him jabber for 10 minutes. Halfway through his spiel he said "you guys better be nice to me because I'm the only thing standing between you and the Beastie Boys" to which the crowd replied with a hearty "fuck you." Beautiful.

I guess this David guy really did have some sort of power because after he was finally booed off the stage we waited and waited and waited some more. Finally around 8pm the boys came out. There was Mix Master Mike, Mike D, Adrock, MCA, a percussionist and a keyboardist. They played a couple punk tunes. Each one was maybe 45 seconds long. Awesome.

Then the percussionist and the keyboardist went away, they put down their instruments and MMM started spinning some beats. The show was a mix between their hip-hop stuff, 30 second punk songs, and the surprise highlight for me - their new, unreleased instrumental stuff. That shit was awesome. Makes me want to go see their instrumental show at the Hammerstein Ballroom tomorrow. Seriously some dope tunes.

Around 9:30 they said "thank you, good night" and walked off the stage. The crowd cheered for more and after about 5 minutes - the entirety of which we could see them waiting off to the side of the stage - they came back, picked up their instruments and did a couple more. They did a couple punk songs, a couple rap songs and ended with Sabotage, which was totally awesome.

I took a video clip on my cell phone of them doing Brass Monkey because I have a kid who loves that song. The sound quality sucks and you can't see shit but whatever... It was from my cell phone, what do you expect?



All in all it was a really, really, really good show. It turned out to be a nice night once the sun went down and it started to cool off. The music was good - especially their new stuff. Some drunk guy complained that they didn't play much off of License to Ill but what they did play was totally awesome. They were obviously having a ball - I would too if I was playing Central park - and the crowd loved it.