Saw the Beastie Boys on Wednesday night – what an amazing show. I’ve been listening to these guys for nearly 20 years hoping for a chance to someday see them perform live. Living in Ottawa has its downsides, not the least of which being in a smallish town, most big acts tend to pass us by. When I heard the Boys were coming to O-town, I had to check it twice. I couldn’t believe it. There was no way I wasn’t going to this show…
It was incredible – 20 years of anticipation realized. They’re every bit of fun you’d imagine they’d be, because that’s what they’re obviously there to do: have some fun. From the opening scratch to the very last beat they were joking around, making faces at each other and the crowd, jumping around and just having a blast.
Mixmaster Mike is a living legend, and seeing him do his stuff live is mindblowing. And the visuals were stunning – there were a bunch of giant screens onstage that projected looped clips of videos, live footage, and all kinds of psychadelic shit.
They dropped tracks from every album and they dropped plenty. I think the running time was somewhere around 1.5 hours or so. Highlights include Root Down, Egg Man, An Open Letter to NYC, Paul Revere, Intergalactic (see fanboy story below) and the ear-splitting roof-crashing shit-kicking mega-rocking closer, Sabotage.
So here’s my little fanboy story: we were standing near the back of general admission – right in front of the sound booth – my knee was bothering me, so I didn’t want to get into the fray… plus, I’m just getting too old for that crap.
So we’re at the back for the whole show – which is cool because they had these giant screens and they were pretty high up and general wasn’t over-packed, so we had a great view. Towards the end of the show, some security guards come up behind us and latch a section of fence up to the outside of the sound booth fence and clear out a section at the back..
I kinda suspected what was about to happen – the boys left the stage for the obligatory encore call and a minute later showed up right behind us for a song… all of a sudden we went from being at the very back, to being at the very front.
It took a few minutes for everyone to realize where they were, so those of us at the back had them to ourselves for a few minutes… and then IT happened – MCA grabbed my HAND! (and this is where I start thinking, I’m 31 years old, I shouldn’t be feeling all giddy about this… but I do, so whatever) He held onto it a long time too… long enough that I didn’t really know what to do. It actually got a bit uncomfortable, but I’m like, whatever, MCA’s shaking my hand, get over it. So I just kinda stood there and kept shaking MCA’s hand.
Next thing you know, half of General Admission is pushing in from behind, trying to squeeze in. Me and my peeps held them at bay and rocked out with the boys front row for the duration of Intergalactic… most of which I heard through ringing ears brought on by the two screaming girls pushing from behind, but whatever – I shook MCA’s hand.