Mike D barreled his way through the UK last week on a four date mini tour that took in Brighton, Glasgow, Manchester and London. The shows were part of a wider European jaunt, booked to support the release of Thank You, the first album of new music to include Mike’s voice since Adam Yauch passed away in 2012. The Glasgow show was astonishingly great, as you’ve maybe read already, and will certainly read shortly.
Diamond has spoken openly about his inability to produce music in the intervening years since Yauch’s death. He’d open up his laptop, click on a file of a work-in-progress and have little motivation to continue with it. Then, during lockdown, his teenage sons Skyler and Davis began making music with some of his vintage gear and Mike would join in. No matter how teenage-stroppy and independent you might want to be, if your dad’s a Beastie Boy, you can’t say no, right? These sessions progressed to 4-track recording sessions, which progressed further to the album that’s now been released to the world. Along the way, the Diamond clan picked up Mike’s pal Eddie Ruscha and his son Milo and Mike’s multi-generational, multi-skilled backing group, 5D, was born.
Backing group? Come on, man!
In Glasgow, from first beat to last, 5D was just as essential a feature as Mike’s own idiosyncratic whiny-assed rap. In the Beasties, D was one distinct third of a dynamic that pushed the other two thirds beyond their limits, often with astonishing results. In his current group, the musicians behind Mike allow him to be just as creative, just as innovative and just as astonishing. On record, it’s one thing. Live and in your face on a wet and windy Monday night, it’s altogether whole-new-level brilliant.
‘Helloooo Glasgow!‘ he goes after bounding on, loose of limb and loose of clothing; workwear jeans that will never have seen a day of manual work in their lives, expensive-looking trainers and baggy own-brand sweatshirt (for sale at the merch stand, uh-huh), and launches into B-Boy Bouillabaisse, its mainly acappella rap augmented by a phat sub-base that slams into the chest, loosens the fillings in the teeth and pins you to the spot. He’s then straight into his own, brand new ‘What We Want‘ and I’m totally unprepared for the sonic and visual assault.
There are two guitar players, one who slams power chords and moves sideways, forwards, back and up, the other who coaxes all manner of pitch-shifting Tom Morello-isms from his six strings and shouts, Beastie-style, the last word on each line. There’s a doe-eyed Julian Casablancas doppleganger on bass who leaps seven feet in the air at every opportunity, reeling off chunky and funky basslines before deftly switching to the keyboard by his side then to his bass guitar and back again. He also joins in on every last line. There’s a killer drummer, rimshot sure and metronomic and almost totally obscured by amps and lights and Mike’s forever-moving body. There’s an assemblage of musicians behind a moving panel of lights, mix masters and multi-instrumentalists, Mike’s pal Eddie amongst them, firing off samples and sirens and loops and beats and mad arcade video game noises at every opportunity. Over-stimulation and then some.
We get a super-tight and sinister Lookin’ Down The Barrel Of A Gun early on, Diamond happy to sprinkle the old stuff between the boxfresh new. We get 3-Minute Rule, D doing the upturned pointy finger thing as he falls into an easy flow. ‘I stay up all night, I go to sleep watchin’ Dragnet…’ Whodathunkit! There’s an insane Body Movin’, Mike and the 6 musicians who make up 5D (yeah!) in simpatico on a tight stage, instruments and beats locked in, bodies indeed movin’, both on stage and off. Of the new material, Secrets and I Don’t Care are highlights. As too is Don’t Stop’s breathy Salt ‘n Pepa Push It-isms and the relentless stormtrooper death march of Crypto, all fuzz bass, repeating keyboards and nasty guitar. The set finishes with the album’s title track, an acoustic guitar ballad would you believe – out of tune on the night and replete with a couple of howling bum notes – but who’s paying attention to the sideman while Mike D is <<<this far>>> from you?
Oh yeah – this far. Unbelievably, the Glasgow show is in the relatively cozy SWG3 studio. There are less than 1000 folk here, maybe even as little as 700, so when you see the pictures drip in mid-week from the much larger UK venues, you begin to appreciate just how special a night this was.
Beastie Boys – So What’cha Want
There’s a short encore – a cover of the Delta 5’s Mind Your Own Business that sounds stroppy and sloppy and Beastie-great, the music dropping out as Mike and 5D holler ‘Mindyaownbiz-niz!’ to great effect, and then…the absolute show-stopping majesty of So What’cha Want, Check Your Head‘s whiny but thundering magnum opus. ‘Are you ready Keyboard Money Milo?’ asks Mike of the Casablancas-alike to his left and off they go, rapping and banging and thumping and jumping around to the sound of the squeaky organ against those cavernous and Bonham-esque thunder drums. Twin guitars lock-in, Thin Lizzy-style and the song’s nagging and incessant riff plays out, the group a soup of headbanging, leaping, ceiling-bothering creators of joyful noise.
I grinned my way through this show, ten feet from greatness and acting half my age for most of it. On a school night too. Gig of the year? It’s one of ’em.
