Thursday , March 28 2024

Beasties Celebrate Life’s Rich Pageant

I am relieved that after becoming socially conscious and shit – what with freeing the Tibetans, birding the Bush, and pacifying Iraq – the Beastie Boys aren’t taking themselves overly seriously on their current tour. I just don’t think I could handle yet more sanctimonious political speechifying from the stage, especially from these beats-and-blunts jokers, although their latest, To the 5 Boroughs (Al says nay, the Duke says yeay), wasn’t shy about the body politic amongst the grooves.

So, why the relief? Check out this interview:

    “You could look at it like, here’s a group that’s been around for a while, been in the game for a while,” Mike D (the D stands for Diamond) says backstage at the Long Beach Arena, the fourth stop on their U.S. tour.

    “But at the same time, I feel like we’re brand new to the pageantry game,” he says. “We’ve only just begun within the world of pageant. That’s given us an entire new lease on life.”

    ….”We should make it clear that this is not a concert tour, so much as a traveling pageant,” says MCA, a.k.a. Adam Yauch. “We tried to gather feedback about the kinds of things that children are into and what came back to us was a pageant, repeatedly.”

    ….”It involves certain kinds of dress, certain kinds of festivities, celebrations, feasts or food. I’d like to emphasize the feasts, if I might,” Yauch says. “You don’t just nosh, you feast, you don’t just throw on some clothes, you get dressed, and these are the differentiations.”

    ….”By watching the dog show, I get inspiration,” Yauch admits. “‘Cause you see them and like, they don’t hold back, you know? And they know how to work the crowd. They get up there and they know when to use subtlety.”

    …”There are times when one dog will jump off the ladder and take a spill — and that’s for the team. You know, there’s no ‘I’ in team,” he deadpans. “We realize when we get out there, it’s a group effort, it’s a team effort and we gotta leave it all on the floor, which the dogs also do.”

    ….”We realize people are paying good, hard-earned pageantry cash to see and be part of the pageant, so we try keep the focus on that,” Diamond says.

    During the Long Beach show, there are sparse references to President Bush. There’s a short video of “Saturday Night Live” alum Will Ferrell portraying Bush-as-idiot. And later, the group dedicates “Sabotage” to the president.

    Despite their feelings on Bush, the group would consider a White House show, if asked.

    “Yeah, we could put on our flight suits and go down there,” says Yauch, “smoking roaches in the stair well.” [AP]

That puts things in the proper perspective – obsessive, iconographic whimsy is one of the things they do best.

Tour dates:
Oct 8, 2004
» Fairfax, VA
Oct 9, 2004
» New York, NY
Oct 11, 2004
» Philadelphia, PA
Oct 12, 2004
» Worcester, MA
Oct 15, 2004
» Atlanta, GA
Oct 16, 2004
» New Orleans, LA
Oct 18, 2004
» Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Oct 19, 2004
» Tampa, FL
Oct 22, 2004
» Austin, TX
Oct 23, 2004
» Dallas, TX
Nov 3, 2004
» MADISON, WI
Nov 4, 2004
» CHICAGO, IL
Nov 5, 2004
» DETROIT, MI
Nov 7, 2004
» MONTREAL, CANADA
Nov 8, 2004
» Toronto, Canada
Nov 10, 2004
» Ottawa, Canada
Dec 3, 2004
» RENNES, FRANCE
Dec 6, 2004
» MANCHESTER, ENGLAND
Dec 7, 2004
» LONDON, ENGLAND
Dec 9, 2004
» BERLIN, GERMANY
Dec 11, 2004
» BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Dec 13, 2004
» DUSSELDORF, GERMANY
Dec 14, 2004
» AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS
Dec 16, 2004
» MUNICH, GERMANY
Dec 17, 2004
» BASEL, SWITZERLAND
Dec 18, 2004
» MILAN, ITALY

About Eric Olsen

Career media professional and serial entrepreneur Eric Olsen flung himself into the paranormal world in 2012, creating the America's Most Haunted brand and co-authoring the award-winning America's Most Haunted book, published by Berkley/Penguin in Sept, 2014. Olsen is co-host of the nationally syndicated broadcast and Internet radio talk show After Hours AM; his entertaining and informative America's Most Haunted website and social media outlets are must-reads: Twitter@amhaunted, Facebook.com/amhaunted, Pinterest America's Most Haunted. Olsen is also guitarist/singer for popular and wildly eclectic Cleveland cover band The Props.

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