The Burnzo Diaries: My Raging Case of Beastie Fever

It was the 1st of May, 2016. A Sunday around noon...or maybe 1pm if you want to get really detailed here. I had just picked up a couple of things at Stop N' Shop, which was mobbed with its Sunday afternoon crowd. I was a little frazzled from all the people. They were making me nervous. I got into my car, started the engine and the radio came on automatically. A familiar song was playing.

Brass Monkey.

"Sweet," I said aloud to myself and I turned up the volume. It wasn't my favorite song by the Beastie Boys, but I sure as shit wasn't about to change the station. I kept turning up the volume to a point where I could hear the bass rattling the water bottle in my cupholder. Beastie Boys was juuust what the doctor ordered after a mobbed supermarket visit. It was almost like God knew exactly what I needed to ease my nerves.

"Brass Monkey! That funky monkey!"

Like I said, I was never that huge a fan of the "Brass Monkey" song, but—over the years—it had taken on a more special meaning due to me having associated it with the death of Beasties member Adam Yauch, aka MCA. See, it was actually the night of MCA's death that I had my first taste of an actual brass monkey, which basically consists of 40oz. of malt liquor mixed with orange juice. I was hanging out with some bros and my friend Jeremy had the forethought to bring a 40oz. of Mickey's and some OJ. He gave us all a sip and it was actually rather tasty.

So, yes, I had fond memories attached to the song "Brass Monkey" and these memories soon made me realize, holy shit, MCA's death anniversary was coming up fast...like, really fast. It was on May 4th, only a few days away! It was already going to be four years since MCA's untimely death. I couldn't believe it had already been four years.

The death of Adam Yauch for me was tantamount to 9/11 or the JFK assassination, only in the sense that I knew exactly where I was when I heard the news. Well, I guess it's not that interesting of a story. I was at home, in my bedroom, on my computer, and I saw a post on Facebook. Yeah, that story kind of sucks. Let's actually just get back to me in the car, leaving the supermarket...

"Brass Monkey" came to an end and, lucky for me, the radio station was having a "double-shot" weekend, which meant they played two songs from the same band in a row. So the radio immediately went right into another Beasties song. It was "Intergalactic" and let me tell you, my boys, I had heard "Intergalactic" about a zillion times (perhaps even a quad-zillion), but it had never sounded so—pardon my Russian—fucking rich (meaning good). I don't know what it is about how songs sound on the radio, but there is something a little bit different about them. An echo maybe? A little more reverb, perhaps? I actually don't know what the hell it is, but there is a warmth and energy to songs played on the radio that does not exist on a CD or a tape or a vinyl and certainly not on any mp3 file. I mean, I can fire up the "Intergalactic" mp3 on my computer right now or find it on YouTube or, shit, pop in the "Hello Nasty" CD, but said song would not sound the way it did on my car radio that day. Holy shit, it just sounded so good!

In fact, "Intergalactic" sounded SO excellent that I felt it was a sign from the heavens above or perhaps from even Mr. Yauch himself (wishful thinking). And the sign was telling me, well, I should write something about the Beastie Boys. And that's what I'm doing write now. Haha, get it? Lol.

It was the fourth anniversary of Yauch's death, which occurred on May 4th, 2012. Certainly the 'fours' would be with me whilst writing about the Beastie Boys. LOL...OK, I'll stop. What to write about, though, that was the question. I was no music critic, that was for sure, so anything falling anywhere near the realm of intellectual music criticism was out of the question. I figured that would be boring anyway. I mean, who wants to hear that shit?

Nope, I realized pretty quickly that the only way I'd be able to write about the Beastie Boys would be from a very subjective, non-intellectual angle. My goal was to basically try and figure out why I liked the Beastie Boys so fregging much and, oh yeah, allow me to make something very clear if I haven't made it clear already: I love the fucking Beastie Boys. They are my favorite band/group/musical artists of all time, hands down. There is no contest there and there's no close competition. Now, I realize that—objectively speaking—there ARE probably better bands and musical artists out there. But I don't give a shit. All I know is that I love the Beastie Boys more than any other musical fartist out there and I'm going to attempt to show you how deep this love for them goes. In order to do that, I have to start from the very beginning...

The year was 1987, I believe. I was in kindergarten at the time and I was only at school half the day so I still spent a lot of time at home. I also was one of those kids who got sick a lot, so much of the time I wouldn't even go to school at all because I was ralphing up a storm or that kind of thing. My mom was pretty liberal about monitoring what I watched on television. Mostly it was a ton of Disney Channel and Nickelodeon combined with other cartoons like "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Thunder Cats".

But I also managed to sneak in A LOT of MTV.

For the most part, 1987 was the era of hair bands, like Motley Crüe, Poison, White Snake and then Guns N' Roses were emerging, as well as Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and such. Then you had your 80s pop music. Songs like Aha's "Take on Me" were pretty popular at the time. Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" was another hit. Mister Mister's "Broken Wings" and, of course, Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" were other popular songs.

But then there was a little something called "Yo! MTV Raps", which was a half-hour segment on MTV devoted only to rap videos. You would see videos by groups like Run DMC, the Fat Boys, Sugar Hill Gang and Grand Master Flash. Even a young rapper by the name of the "Fresh Prince" (aka Will Smith) with his hit single "Parents Just Don't Understand" was starting to make a name for himself around this time. Though their styles varied, there was one thing all these rap groups had in common: they were all black.

With one exception...

The Beastie Boys.

All I have to do is take one look at the "Fight for Your Right (To Party)" music video on YouTube and I'm instantly transported back to my kindergarten days, home sick from school, sprawled out on the couch with an upset stomach and the MTV's blasting out of our 1980s-era, wooden box of a television. The first time I saw the "Fight for Your Right" video I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was pretty young at the time and I was basically wired into thinking that rappers had to be black. But these rappers...were white? What I was seeing was incredible.

"Fight for Your Right" obviously became a huge hit and pretty much every time you turned on MTV you were bound to see the music video, which eventually broke out of the "Yo! MTV Raps" slot and played at any goddamn time of the day that it pleased. I ended up watching the video over and over again. I loved the simplicity of both the song and the concept of the video, which basically just involved the bad-ass Beastie Boys crashing a party thrown by two square nerds. For some reason, I was even kind of scared of the video, especially the end where the mom gets the cream pie thrown in her face and the cream's dangling off her nose. That image freaked me out for some reason, but I couldn't look away.

In hindsight, I don't really know what it was that made me so drawn to the "Fight for Your Right" video, but maybe it was foreshadowing my future where I was destined to become one of the biggest Beastie Boys super-fans of all time. All I knew was that I liked what I was seeing and, really, that video was nothing compared to what would come later. I mean, let's be honest here: "Fight for Your Right" is really not that great of a Beastie Boys song. In fact, I admit that—today—I often change stations when this song comes on the radio. I do the same thing when I hear "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn", which is a fun song and, damn, it had a fun video for sure, but it's not that great of a song compared to the rest of the Beasties songs.

In fact, most of the singles from "License to Ill" weren't all that great. "License", if you don't know, was technically the first Beastie Boys album, though there were several EPs that existed long before. These EP's, incidentally, were later compiled into a punk album called "Some Old Bullshit". Yes, what surprised people was that the Beastie Boys used to be a punk band in the earlier part of the 1980s. In fact, "License to Ill" was (sort of) meant to be a joke album, almost like an elaborate parody of bad rap music. This is why most of the music on "License to Ill" isn't all that great, though some people view it as their favorite Beasties album. What that says about these people I'm not sure (I don't judge), but my personal opinion is that there are several great songs on "License", though most of these songs never made it as singles. Songs like "Time to Get Ill" and "Slow and Low" are kick-ass songs while "Girls", "Fight for Your Right", "Brass Monkey" and, yes, even "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn" are sub-par songs in my opinion. I don't think it's any coincidence that the Beastie Boys rarely played these latter songs live in their later years. They didn't seem to care for them that much either.

But, yes, what the Beastie Boys saw as a joke, the music industry saw as dollar signs. Riding high on their success, the Beasties came to terms with the fact that they were now considered "rappers", but instead of making another "joke" album they went ahead and made one of the best and most innovative hip-hop albums of all time. The year was 1989 and the album was called "Paul's Boutique".

"Paul's Boutique" was unique in that it was basically the very first album to be almost completely composed of samples. This was a whole new form of art where a song was essentially stitched together with bits and pieces (i.e. samples) from pre-existing songs. Then, of course, the Beasties added original lyrics to these songs and a brand new original song was formed.

As excellent an album as it was, "Paul's Boutique" was a commercial failure, mainly because Beasties "fans" were expecting more songs like "Fight for Your Right" and "Girls". The Beasties weren't having any of that shit, but this cost them a lot of success and a lot of support from their record company Capitol Records who stopped promoting the album once it became clear that it wasn't selling well. The Beastie Boys would have to develop a whole new fan base, one composed of people who actually liked good music. As we know, they eventually did get these new fans. "Paul's Boutique" later became an enormous success, going so far as to reach double-platinum status (i.e. over two million copies sold) in 1999, ten years after its release.

Now, I must admit that I didn't get into "Paul's Boutique" until well after it was released—several years later, actually. In fact, once my fascination with the "Fight for Your Right" video faded, I sort of forgot about the Beastie Boys for several years. For a while, my only exposure to the Beasties was via my brother who purchased the "Paul's Boutique" album on cassette pretty much right around the time of its release. It was through him that I heard songs like "Shake Your Rump", "Hey Ladies" and one of my favorites today, "Lookin' Down the Barrel of a Gun". I liked these songs that I heard, but I didn't go and investigate the "Paul's Boutique" album any further. In fact, I hate to admit it, but it's very possible that—young and dumb as I was—I may have fallen into the camp of people who wanted the old "Fight for Your Right" Beastie Boys back. "Paul's Boutique" may have been too...well...GOOD for me at the time.

Then, along came the Beasties' third album "Check Your Head", released in 1992. Like with "Paul's Boutique", the only exposure I had to this album at the time was via my brother who, again, bought the album on cassette soon after its release. It was through him that I heard songs like "Pass the Mic", "Jimmy James", "Stand Together" and, of course, "So What'cha Want", the latter of which had a popular video on MTV and also played on the radio all the time.

Although I liked all the songs I heard off "Check Your Head", I still didn't yet have the impetus to investigate this album any further. If I had, I would have realized that "Check Your Head" was perhaps the Beastie Boys' boldest and most versatile album so far. In fact, it arguably could have been the most versatile album in existence at the time. There were some great hip-hop songs on this album, but there were also some punk and grunge songs thrown into the mix, songs where the Beastie Boys actually played instruments like they did in their early punk days. Songs like the grungy "Gratitude" would later become a favorite of mine, as well as the hard punk song "Time for Livin'". Mixing music styles in the same album may have been confusing to both fans and the music markets, but, well, the Beasties didn't seem to give one ounce of a damn.

And as if mixing punk with rap wasn't enough of a marketing nightmare, the Beasties took things one step further and even threw in some funky, jazzy instrumental songs. Songs like "POW" and "In 3's" had no lyrics whatsoever. They were just three minutes of instruments with lots of wah-wah pedal and also lots of cowbell.

Another notable song on "Check Your Head" (that I would be remiss if I didn't mention) was a song called "Somethin's Gotta Give" and this song basically fell into a category all its own. It wasn't quite rap. Not quite punk. Not totally instrumental, either. It was kind of a slow, psychedelic mix of all three styles. "Somethin's Gotta Give" was one of the first Beasties songs that seemed to have a deeper message, both social and political. It was a call for peace and unity within the human race that (at least seemed) to be breaking apart. “There’s fire all around,” the song says, “But this is all illusion.” These lyrics are cryptic for sure. Was the song saying that the human race was inherently a divided mess? Or was the division all an illusion, something fed to us by those in power—via the news and other media—for the purposes of maintaining control over people? While the politicians and media pundits tell us that practically everybody out there is an enemy to fear, maybe the truth is that we’re more ‘one’ than we think. Hmmm. Holy crap! Deep shit. Maybe I’m reading too far into all this and, also, I kind of went on a tangent there (sorry), but all I’m trying to say is this: the Beasties were clearly showing that they could be thought-provoking with their lyrics. On top of being great musicians, they wanted people to think, too.

In short, "Check Your Head" was waaaay ahead of its time, an eclectic mix of several styles and music genres. The Beasties were successfully establishing themselves as the most unique music "group" to come around in a long time and perhaps, well, EVER. They transcended genre and markets. They basically just did whatever the fuck they wanted to.

But, again, I did not come to appreciate the Beasties' versatility and "transcendence of the music markets" until a number of years later. The release of "Check Your Head" came and went and I still hadn't really been bitten by the Beasties bug yet. It wasn't until the release of their next album in 1994 that said bug started biting. And it started biting hard.

This fourth album was called “Ill Communication”.

“Ill Communication” was officially the first album of the Beastie Boys that I ever bought. I was in the sixth grade at the time and I scraped together all my paperboy money until I had a total of $13.97. Then I headed down to the "Record Town" tape and CD store that was nestled within the local Walpole Mall. I still didn't own a CD player at the time, so I bought the "Ill Communication" cassette, which was very memorable because it was the color green.

I'm pretty sure my initial reason for buying "Ill Communication" was because of the song "Sabotage", which also had a very popular video on MTV at the time. The "Sabotage" video was the first video where the Beasties collaborated with Spike Jonze and Jonze would later direct a few other Beasties videos, including "Sure Shot".

I loved "Sabotage" and "Sure Shot", but then I dove deeper into the album and discovered songs like "Flute Loop", "Alright Hear This" and another punk tune "Heart Attack Man". Like with "Check Your Head", the Beasties mixed in three or four instrumental tracks as well. I was so amazed by the presence of these instrumentals, mainly because I didn't quite 'get' why they were on there. In fact, I thought they were kind of a joke at first and I got annoyed whenever they came on because I had to fast-forward the cassette to (what I thought at the time) were the "real" songs. Oh, how young and dumb I was! Fortunately, my stance on the instrumentals gradually changed and I not only started appreciating the instrumentals, but I actually ended up loving them as much as the "real" songs.

The more I delved deeper into "Ill Communication", the more I liked the Beastie Boys and the more I became mystified by their versatility. I mean, these guys went from being the only white rappers I knew, doing songs like "Fight for Your Right", but now they were doing grunge songs and jazzy instrumentals and hip-hop, all on the same album! I didn't know all that much about music at the time, but I still knew that this was pretty much unheard of. These guys, the Beastie Boys, were clearly very ballsy. They did whatever they wanted. Nothing held them back.

Once I had pretty much worn out my "Ill Communication" cassette from listening to it over and over again, I pooled together more of my paperboy savings and started purchasing every other preceding Beasties album. For some reason, I bought "License to Ill" and "Check Your Head" on cassette while I ended up buying Paul's Boutique on CD. This all happened within about a one year period, bringing me into the seventh grade and, by that time, I owned my own CD player.

Out of all three albums, the only one I specifically remember buying is "Paul's Boutique", mainly because it was probably among the first five CDs that I ever bought. But it was also a memorable purchase because of WHERE I bought it: not at the overly expensive Record Town, but at a "Newbury Comics" in Natick, Massachusetts.

Newbury Comics, if you don't know, was (and still is) a wicked cool CD store that was waaaay cheaper than most record stores at the time. What I'm saying is that you could get a new release CD at this store for between ten and twelve bucks. At a place like Record Town you would pay about twenty buckos for the exact same thing. Yes, it was almost twice the price!

Going to Newbury Comics was always a special occasion because there weren't many stores close to where I lived, at least not at that time. You either had to go all the way into Newbury Street in Boston (the location of the very first Newbury Comics) or, if you didn't want to make the trek into Boston, locations started sprouting up in random suburbs. Natick was one of these suburbs.

It was a Saturday morning in the spring when I made the trek to Newbury Comics with the intention of getting "Paul's Boutique". My brother had recently gotten his driver's license and we both had disposable incomes at the time since he worked at McDonald's and I (of course) had my lucrative paper route. We made the 35-minute journey to Natick and we each bought a bunch of stuff to make our trip worthwhile. I can't remember every single one of my purchases but obviously the "Paul's Boutique" album was one of them.

I went home that day and immediately popped the album into my Sony CD player and listened from track one forward. I was, of course, already familiar with songs like "Shake Your Rump" and "Hey Ladies" and those songs were great, but, upon delving further into the album, I quickly developed a fondness for songs like "Egg Man", "Sounds of Science" and eventually "Shadrach".

I listened to "Paul's Boutique" over and over again. And I did the same with "Check Your Head". There was still a lot of "Ill Communication" thrown into the mix with a little "License to Ill" sprinkled in there as well. I listened to "License" the least, probably because I liked it the least, but, of course, when I say that it was my "least favorite" album I mean I loved it, though—compared to its siblings—I would rank it as "least favorite".

But, anyway, what I'm trying to get at here is that, around the time of sixth grade and then going into the seventh grade, I started listening to a whole shit-load of Beastie Boys music. And to complement my newfound love of the Beasties, I started buying a ton of Beasties paraphernalia, like posters to hang on my bedroom walls and even several Beastie Boys T-shirts.

One of the first Beasties T-shirts I remember having was a very simple black one that said "Check Your Head" on the back and the "Check Your Head" album cover on the front, which was basically a black and white photo of the three Beasties sitting on a curb with their respective instruments. Well, the truth is that this shirt wasn't really "my" T-shirt. It got handed down to me from my brother who couldn't fit into it anymore. So I won't count that one.

The first real legit Beasties T-shirt that I bought was at a place called "T-shirt City" in The Emerald Square Mall and it was one of those 1970s-era "ringer" T-shirts that were rather popular at the time. It said "Beastie Boys" on it and then there was a basketball net and over the net it said "Atwater Basketball Association". I still have it to this day (though it's in rough shape) so look at it for yourself in the picture below!

Indeed, the "Atwater Basketball Association" shirt was my very first Beasties T-shirt, at least the first one I bought and could call my own. I was very proud of my Beasties shirt and I wore it to school quite a bit. This shirt—combined with the fact that I was talking about the Beastie Boys all the time—eventually molded my newly-adolescent identity. And that identity was:

Kid who likes the Beastie Boys.

Makes sense, right? Yes, that became my identity in seventh grade and word about my identity spread quickly, not just around my own grade, but to the "higher-ups" as well. Indeed, the cool eighth-graders at Eleanor N. Johnson Middle School heard all about me and my Beastie fever. This badass Beastie reputation especially attracted two fellow Beasties enthusiasts by the names of Mark and John. They were eighth-graders. And they were badasses.

Mark and John were making plans for the upcoming school talent show. They wanted to perform "Sure Shot", but there was one little problem: they needed a third Beastie for the performance. So one day they flagged me down in the Johnson Middle School hallway and said:

"Burnsy, wanna do 'Sure Shot' with us in the talent show?"

"Wha-oh hey John! Hey Mark! Sure! I'd love to do 'Sure Shot' with you!"

"Sweet."

And, SURE as shit, I DID want to perform "Sure Shot" with Mark and John in the talent show. These eighth-grade badasses were way cooler than me and it may have been my one-way ticket to popularity, lots of 'scooping' (our school's term for French kissing girls) and eventual world domination.

But there was one little catch.

And this "catch" didn't reveal itself until I had already signed on to do the show. Mark, John and me, Matthew (all apostle names, holy shit!), met at Mark's house so we could practice a bit before we auditioned for the talent show. It was during this rehearsal when I was informed that—for the audition—we weren't going to say any of the cuss words that were in the song, but the plan was that we WOULD, indeed, say the cuss words during the actual talent show performance. This was all sounding bad-ass. A little TOO bad-ass.

See, I was kind of a pussy when I was in the 7th grade. I was afraid that, if we said the bad words, we would get in major trouble. Mark and John thought saying the swears would be rebellious, but I thought it would be something that would just get us into needless hot water with the school principal Mr. Kivi.

Well, the audition soon came and I played the part of MCA, I guess because I could make my voice sound pretty close to his voice. Don't get me wrong: I was still far, far away from puberty (I was a late bloomer), but I was still somehow able to "mimic" MCA's deeper tone. Anyway, we ended up nailing our performance and Mrs. Silvi, the teacher who ran the talent show, loved what she saw. She was understandably tired of the same old girls doing the same old gymnastics routines to the tune of Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign". A Beasties performance was something unique her talent show had never seen before, and she was excited to add us to the line-up.

As the day of the talent show approached, I grew more and more nervous about the "Sure Shot" performance and whether Mark and John would still want to say the swear words. The only swear I would have to say was "bullshit", but I was still worried about saying even that. Of course, I could’ve just mumbled it under my breath without it really being heard, but I also didn't wanna be yella. As for Mark or John—can't remember who played Adrock—one of them would have to say "all fucked up" at some point. That was clearly going to be the swear that caught the most attention and, even though I wasn't the one voicing it, I still thought we would all get into the same amount of trouble.

Well, as luck would have it, I would NOT end up having to worry about the "Sure Shot" performance. I was probably dissecting a frog in Mr. MacNutt's science class when I caught word that Mark and John had been suspended from school! Well, to be technical, they had "in-house" suspension, which meant you had to sit in an isolated room all day and do schoolwork. I honestly can't remember why they got suspended, but it meant that they lost their privilege to perform in the school talent show. So our "Sure Shot" performance wasn't happening. Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise.

In place of the "Sure Shot" performance, I actually ended up doing something COMPLETELY different. It was kind of last minute, but I got together with two kids named Justin and Dave and we performed the song "When I Come Around" by Green Day. Dave played guitar, Justin was on vocals, and I played the drums. There weren't any swears in that song so we ended up banging out that performance and it was a huge hit. We were the biggest rock stars at Johnson Middle School after that year's talent show. I didn't end up 'scooping' anybody, but I did become pretty popular for a hot minute.

Flash forward to eighth grade. I wanted to top the Green Day performance, but in order to do that, I had to pull off something really special for that year's talent show. I thought back to the "Sure Shot" performance that never materialized and, although—at the time—I was nervous about swear words, I still knew the song had the potential to be something magnificent. So I definitely wanted to try and do a Beastie Boys song for that year's talent show and, since I was in eighth grade, big man on campus, I needed to be the one who stepped up and organized it.

I ended up recruiting two of my friends, the aforementioned "Brass Monkey" Jeremy and my other friend Josh. All three of us were die-hard Beasties fans. Surely we considered doing a song like "Sure Shot" (without the swear words), but ultimately we decided we liked another song better:

That song was "Pass the Mic".

This time around, the performance actually happened. I played the part of MCA again while Jeremy was Mike D. and Josh was Adrock. There were no swears in "Pass the Mic" so we didn't have to worry about any of that shit and, even if there were any fucking swears, I'm pretty sure all three of us would've been on the same page as far as realizing that swears would get us into needless trouble.

We rehearsed "Pass the Mic" quite a bit and, with the help of a blank Maxell tape, I made a customized version of the song with a little intro that played at the beginning. The intro was Track 8 from "Check Your Head" called "The Biz vs. the Nuge". Most people don't know this track by name, but it's the song that goes, "The Beastie Boys, they are they're comin' home...." Our plan was to hide in the back of the school auditorium while this intro played and get the audience all excited. Then, as soon as the intro stopped, "Pass the Mic" would kick in and we'd run up to the stage, grab the microphone and start literally passing the mic around.

And this is basically how it all ended up going down. The intro played, the audience got all fired up and then right after the horn sounded at the beginning of "Pass the Mic", we booked it from the back of the auditorium and up onto the stage. We all wore sunglasses, stocking hats, skater clothes and such. I'm not sure if my memory serves me right, but I'm pretty sure we looked really friggin' cool.

For the most part, the performance went well. The only thing I would've done differently is tried to find an instrumental version of the song, which—unbeknownst to me at the time—did actually exist on a Beasties EP that I don't remember the name of. See, the problem is that we kind of just sang along with the Beasties lyrics and it kind of sounded like shit, at least from what I remember. We did have a "DJ" that turned the volume down during the parts that we were rapping and then turned it up again when there was just music. But, with the music volume all over the place, we had problems keeping in time with the music. Also, the other problem was that the mic we were using wasn't that good or very loud. It was just the auditorium microphone hooked into the out-of-date PA system.

Overall, the performance probably could have been better, but, again, it was pretty good from what I remember. There was a videotape out there somewhere that captured our epic "Pass the Mic" performance, but, to my knowledge, no copy of it exists anymore. I'm usually good about keeping things over long periods of time and I did possess a copy of the tape for a few months, but then I let somebody borrow it and they lost it. I was bummed about this, because—on the very same tape—there was also some footage of me slow-dancing with a Costa Rican exchange student named Ána. Ána was a fox and I ended up making out with her at a party one night. But no evidence of her exists anymore, along with no evidence of the "Pass the Mic" performance. Who knows, maybe when I die I'll be able to go back in time and see both the performance and Ána again. If heaven actually exists, this will happen.

Before that eighth-grade talent show performance, I was already known as being a huge fan of the Beastie Boys, but after the entire school saw me and the boys perform "Pass the Mic", my name basically became synonymous with 'Beastie Boys'. I mean, I was practically considered a fourth Beastie Boy. At least I think I was. Maybe that was just what I was fantasizing about at the time. Either way, one thing was for sure: I was all about the Beastie Boys. Everybody knew it. And I carried this reputation right into high school.

Freshman year of high school came and went really fast and, by the time my sophomore year rolled around, there was a lot of buzz going around about a new Beastie Boys album. I was very excited about this because I practically knew every single Beasties song on every album by heart and I needed new songs before—dare I say?—I got sick of the Beastie Boys. This would have likely never happened, though I feared it was possible.

Finally, towards the end of sophomore year, an official release date was announced for the new Beastie Boys album, which was to be titled "Hello Nasty". It was due to be released that summer between my sophomore and junior year, July 14, 1998.

By that point in my life, I had befriended two new fellow Beastie Boys fans named Marc and Jesse. Well, to be honest, I think I was partially responsible for their Beastie fanaticism. My Beastie fever was contagious and I often turned new friends on to the boys. I'm not saying they wouldn't have gotten Beastie fever without me in their lives. All I'm saying is that they may not have caught such a raging case of it. You picking up what I'm throwing down? Yeah you are. Can I get a hell yes?

Hell yes.

Now, Marc and Jesse were one year older than me and both had their driver's licenses (I didn't get mine until junior year), so we all did a lot of fun stuff together. We went to dinner at TGI Fridays all the time...and went to malls...saw movies like "Blair Witch Project" together...and, of course, there were countless trips to Newbury Comics. We also had some nasty Mario Kart 64 sessions, as well as some intense "Bond" sessions (i.e. multiplayer Goldeneye on Nintendo 64). Oh, and there were Magic Cards, too. I'm talking "Magic: The Gathering" here. In fact, that's kind of how we initially became friends. I played Magic and THEY played Magic and they had friends who played Magic and am I rambling here?

Yes, let's get back on track. What I meant to say was that Marc, Jesse, myself, and (I think) aforementioned Brass-Monkey-Jeremy all decided that we wanted to check out the "Hello Nasty" release party that was taking place at Tower Records in Boston the night before July 14...so that means it was July 13th for those of you who didn't major in mathematics.

"Hello Nasty" would be the first album to feature the Beasties' new DJ Mix Master Mike. Mix Master was a sick world champion DJ and Tower Records was holding a DJ spin-off in honor of the Beasties' new master of mixing. Any amateur DJ could show up and do five or ten minutes of spinning, but they had to mix Beasties songs together and nothing else. That was the rules.

My friends and I thought this all sounded really cool so we took a train into Boston, headed for the Tower Records on the corner of Newbury Street and Mass Avenue (sadly, it no longer exists) and, at around nine o'clock, the spin-off began. I don't remember all too much about the spin-off except that there was one DJ who did something really cool with the flute sample from "Flute Loop". He mixed that sample with some other Beasties sample—don't remember what—but it sounded really sick, that's all I know.

I also remember that the spin-off was really crowded and at one point some dude booed at the DJ who was currently spinning. It could have been the flute-loop guy he was booing at, but I'm not positive. Well, what this guy didn't know was that the DJ's good friend was standing right next to him, turned around and said, "Hey, that's my boy up there!" The heckler was clearly surprised that the DJ's friend was standing right there next to him, but he still tried to be all tough and said that he didn't like what he was hearing. Well, the DJ's buddy then lectured the man and said something along the lines of, "It takes a lot of courage getting up there doing what he's doing." But the heckler wasn't backing down and kept saying the DJ sucked. Well, things escalated rather quickly. You could tell a fight was about to break out and this was when my friends and I thought it was a good idea to hit the road.

We walked up and down Newbury Street for a bit, but I don't believe we ended up staying in Boston until midnight when the albums actually went on sale. I think we either needed to catch the last train home, which was before midnight, or maybe I just had to be home before my curfew, no idea. All I know is that it wasn't until the next day that I bought the newest Beasties album "Hello Nasty".

And 'nasty' it was. 'Nasty' in a good way. "Intergalactic" had already been playing on the radio quite a bit so I was already familiar with that song, but I quickly became fond of songs like "Super Disco Breakin'", "Body Movin'", "Remote Control" and several others.

True to Beasties form, there were several instrumental songs on "Hello Nasty" and even a slow song with Adam Yauch singing...I mean singing, like, for real, man. He hits all sorts of high notes and it sounds really good and, well, sweet and lovely.

One other notable track was a song called "Picture This" where some random girl (Miho Hatori) is singing solo. Hmmm...not sure what that song was all about, but the Beasties were clearly once again pushing the envelope and trying to see what they could get away with. And they apparently ended up getting away with it all. According to Wikipedia, "Hello Nasty" sold 681,000 albums in its first week and debuted #1 on the Billboard 200 album sales chart. The album also won two Grammys that year. Holy shit!

The only thing (noticeably) missing from "Hello Nasty" was the punk and grunge songs that were present on the two previous albums. "Remote Control" almost falls into this category, but it's still pretty subdued compared to songs like "Time for Livin'", "Heart Attack Man", "Tough Guy" and "Gratitude".

In fact, "Hello Nasty" overall had a much less grungy feel than "Ill Communication" and "Check Your Head". Even the rap songs were much more clean and fun. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure there were swears in any of the songs. It was mostly all good clean fun and all the music videos stuck with that tone. The "Intergalactic" video, for example, was a throwback to Godzilla movies only, instead of Godzilla, there was a giant Octopus destroying civilization. And then there was the "Body Movin" video that was a throwback to old 1970's spy movies and TV shows like (Adam West's) "Batman". In fact, the Beasties didn't even use their own version of the song for that video. They used a remix by Fatboy Slim that kicked a lot of serious ass. There was a time when I thought I liked the Fatboy Slim remix better than the original album version, but today I like both versions about the same.

My friends and I ended up listening the crap out of the "Hello Nasty" album and it basically became the soundtrack for that summer of 1998. With the new album out, word started to spread about a U.S. tour going down. Oh, yes, my boys, you probably already know where I'm going with this...

The Beastie Boys were coming to town.

They were coming to Worcester, to be exact. On August 25. At a venue called "The Worcester Centrum" in downtown Worcester, MA. The Beasties loved the Centrum and often chose that as a venue over any place in Boston. Why? I don't know, but I think they liked how it was smaller and a little more intimate than most venues. Also, I think that in the specific case of their "Hello Nasty" tour the Beasties chose the Centrum because it was the perfect place to set up their circular 'concert in the round' stage, which was kind of like a record that spun around in place. This spinning record theme was an homage to their new Beasties DJ Mix Master Mike, but it also was an innovative way the stage could be in the center of the venue, spin around and this way nobody really had bad seats. The Beasties would never have their backs to anybody for very long. Brilliant!

With much eager anticipation, my friends and I secured our tickets, which only cost about 30 bucks back then. Imagine that! We even got our tickets at an actual Ticketmaster location in the real world so there was no service fee or online fee or any of that thievery. I may still even have my ticket somewhere, but I'll have to look for it. Shit, I can't find it! Damn.

As the date of the concert approached, it all felt very surreal and I couldn't believe that I would actually be watching the Beastie Boys in the flesh. I had been a die-hard fan for years at that point and I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was finally going to see them live. I fantasized about what songs they would play, how they would play them and, for some random reason, I wondered if a real steel drum would be present onstage for the song "Body Movin'". In fact, I was fixated on this latter issue and I have no logical reason to explain why I was so fixated on—what most people would consider—a rather minor detail.

Anyway, the day of the concert finally arrived after several restless nights where I could barely sleep a wink. My brother had also managed to obtain a ticket so me, my brother and a bunch of my friends piled into a few cars and made the trek to the Worcester Centrum to see the Beastie Boys. I should probably mention that this was to basically be my very first real concert. What a way to pop my cherry, eh? I mean, losing your concert virginity to your very all-time favorite band of all time...that's the way to do it, right? That's right. That is the way to do it. Period.

A bumper sticker I got at the concert
that I kept as a souvenir.

I have no recollection if there was an opening act at all. If there was, we may have missed it, I'm not sure. All I remember is that, during the half-hour or so leading up to the Beasties going on stage, a herd of people decided to "rush" the floor. This meant that a bunch of young hoodlums congregated in the stands, counted to three and then literally rushed the exclusive floor-seating-area where ticket prices were more expensive and more limited. I was not aware at the time that this was commonplace for not only Centrum concerts but concerts just in general. The rushing kept on happening over and over again and security wasn't doing a damn thing about it. I wanted to shout at everybody, "Stop it, what are you doing?! You're going to ruin everything! Stop it this instant!!!"

And "ruining everything" was, indeed, my main concern. I was worried that things would get too out-of-control and the show was going to be cancelled. Fortunately, this didn't happen, but I remember being really shocked by the crowd's behavior. What animals! How rude! Again, I had no idea that "rushing the floor" was commonplace at these kinds of concerts. In fact, it was almost like ritualistic behavior from what I later understood. Security seemed to have even expected it to happen. How that kind of situation didn't violate any fire codes was beyond me. Well, it probably did violate codes, but maybe nobody really cared at the time. All I know is that if a fire broke out and panic set in, people would have been trampled and killed. Then things probably would have changed.

But, yes, fortunately the show went on as planned. Eventually the lights dimmed and everybody started hooting and hollering. This was it! It was all actually happening! Then a spotlight appeared amidst the darkness and within that spotlight appeared Mix Master Mike.

"What up, Worcester!"

The crowd erupted in ecstatic pandemonium. Everyone in the Centrum was going friggin' crazy. Then Mix Master went right into a little mixer of an intro and, holy shit, it sounded so damn cool. Basically, he was taking a sample from the song "Tom Sawyer" by Rush and doing all sorts of crazy shit with it. With the bass turned up at maximum woofing and the state-of-the-art concert speakers doing what, you know, what they do...oh, it just sounded so good. In fact, I had no idea what song Mix Master was mixing at the time and he later inspired me to go and check Rush out, a band I was hardly familiar with in 1998. I ultimately ended up getting big into Rush—not as big into them as the Beasties—but Rush eventually became a favorite band of mine.

The following audio was taken from the actual Mix Master Mike intro—not at the Centrum—but at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island, New York. This concert was held only one day before the Centrum concert, so what you hear is likely to be very similar to what I heard at the Centrum:

So picture Rush's "Tom Sawyer". Lots of record-scratching. Everything's dark in the Centrum, but there's police-like lights spinning all over the place. Then "The Biz vs. The Nuge" comes on. Yes, that's right: the Beasties used the same intro song that we did for the talent show! And then some loud bass starts rumbling the Centrum and the Beastie Boys literally come running and I mean running FAST up onto the stage and they're at 100-percent energy from that point forward.

The opening song?

Well, I'm pretty sure the opener was a song called "The Move" from "Hello Nasty" and the only reason I remember this is because I remember the bass at the beginning of the song being so damn intense that I could feel my testicles jiggling. It was so friggin' cool and surreal. They went from one song right into the other and then they did a whole set of their grunge/instrumental songs where they each played their respective instruments. It was awesome.

The Beasties wore—I want to say—working class, blue collar suits? I don't know how to describe the style, but it was almost like what you would see a maintenance guy working in, or maybe like a janitor in a high school. You know, it was a Dickies-pants-look with little dangling wallet chains. They also wore wires in their ears, which seemed to be their new, visually aesthetic look for the Hello Nasty era, but I also think they functioned as high-tech monitors so they could keep in time with Mix Master. As for the stage, it did, indeed, start spinning around like a record, but not for the whole time lest the Beasties get too dizzy.

Oh, and the Beasties did definitely play "Body Movin'", but there was unfortunately no steel drum on stage for the song. The sound for the drum was already laid out on Mix Master's records. It was a little disappointing, but I got over it quickly.

Lack of the steel drum notwithstanding, the concert was an incredible experience and the Beasties were full of energy and on top of their game. I think I remember that there was one point where Adam Yauch took a little break to say something about the U.S. bombing in the Middle East. He basically said it was a mistake and our 'retaliation' would only be met with more 'retaliation' from the radical Muslim world so the cycle of violence would therefore never end. Of course, he was right and even prophetic seeing that 9/11 was just three years over the horizon. Yauch's wise words were well-received and people even started cheering when he was finished speaking his mind. Sadly, I'm not sure people would be cheering if it were today. People these days seem to be less receptive to "real talk" from musicians and other celebrities. They don't want famous people speaking their minds and they're much more intolerant to free speech. I mean, I can just see the Facebook comments now: "Shut up and play the music, Yauch! Know your role!"

Not to drift off on a tangent, but Yauch was always the most politically-engaged and more outspoken of the three Beasties. He was quite the activist, too, and was best known for the work he did in helping bring awareness to the plight of Tibet and its desire to secede from its repressive mother country China. Incidentally, Yauch's activism in this area inspired me to write a paper on Tibet for my International Relations class senior year in high school. I'll get to my senior year in just a few moments, but before I do that, one last thing about the Beasties concert:

There were A LOT of new T-shirts and other Beasties "merch" for sale in the Centrum's lobby area that you couldn't buy anywhere else. I think I ended up buying about three shirts, some of which I still have today. In fact, now that I think of it, I'm literally wearing one of these shirts as I'm writing this right now. The shirt is a little weathered and it may not have much life left in it. Nevertheless, I'm trying to make the most out of the limited time it has left on the earth.

Speaking of Beasties shirts, I had a LOT of them by the time I was a junior in high school. Before I even purchased my three shirts at the concert, I already owned about five or six Beasties shirts that I can remember. Then, right after the concert, I think I bought a couple more and, as my junior year in high school progressed, I only added more to the collection.

More often than not, I wouldn't find these shirts, but these shirts would find ME. To give you an example, one time I was in Baltimore as part of a school band trip (we went to Williamsburg, Virginia, but stopped in Baltimore on the way back). After getting my picture taken with some Hooters girls inside a random mall (extraneous detail but true story), I happened upon a random hippy-like store with a variety of Tibetan and Buddhist stuff. I was looking through a rack of T-shirts there and I ended up finding a rare Beasties shirt that I had never seen before. It was a "Hello Nasty" shirt with the spaceship on it—you know, the one you could find in the album art (see photo below).

One other time, I believe I was on vacation somewhere—I wish I could remember where—and I stumbled upon a very rare Beasties shirt from the "Check Your Head" era that I had never seen anywhere else and have never seen anywhere else since. I remember seeing it hanging on a wall somewhere at a store, but I can't remember what store I was at and where it was. All I know is that it was at a hole-in-the wall place that I don't think I had ever been to before. Yes, I realize the story of how I found this shirt turned out uninteresting and therefore maybe pointless, but I ain't deleting it, y’all.

Then, there was this other rare Beastie Boys shirt that had a large, pyramid-like stack of speakers on it. Okay, I'll admit that I'm pretty sure I got this shirt at Hot Topic in the nearby mall. That being said, I do think it was a rarity because I never saw it anywhere else after the day I bought it. This shirt was one of my favorites, but my time owning it was short-lived. My junior year in high school I ran track and I was wearing said Beastie Boys shirt over my track uniform. I took the shirt off when it was my time to run the mile (I was a distance runner), left it on the field with my other belongings, and then when I went back to get it afterwards it was gone! I later heard that some kid from my own team took it by "accident", but he never gave it back to me and I never confronted him about it. He was a douche, though, and I'd rather not think about him. Fortunately, I do have some evidence of a) the shirt's existence and b) me wearing it. There's a newspaper photo of me that was taken when I was rehearsing for the school play "City of Angels". In the photo, I'm wearing the shirt (see below), so at least I have the photo and I'll always have the memories...

By the time my senior year in high school came about, I owned about 13 or 14 different Beastie Boys T-shirts and my plan entering senior year was to literally wear a Beasties T-shirt to school every single day of the year. Sometimes in the winter I would have to be wearing the shirt beneath a sweatshirt, but I pulled it off in the end and I was very proud of myself. What an accomplishment, right? Pats on the back to me! Yay!

In fact, by that time in my life, Beastie fever had taken such a hold on me that it was probably getting kind of annoying. To be honest, I'm surprised a fellow student never got tired of me being "all about the Beastie Boys" because, if I were them, I probably would've given me a nice punch in the face so I'd cut it the fuck out. I mean, if there was any possible way to somehow incorporate the Beastie Boys into any school project or paper I was assigned, I would manage to do it. Along with the aforementioned International Relations paper I wrote on Tibet (where I referenced MCA several times), I also did a Beasties video project in my TV production class. It was the very first project we were assigned and we were to make a simple montage of pictures set to music. You know, it was basically a modern-day equivalent of a slideshow that you could easily do with iPhoto these days, but we had to do an "in camera edit" so everything had to be timed perfectly and then we added the music in the editing room via an offline tape-to-tape editing machine. This was all very old-school and right before the digital era was starting to take off. My Beasties montage video was called "Beastie Fever" and it was meant to show the band's evolution over the years, starting with their "License to Ill" days and ending with their "Hello Nasty" days. Although I'm sure I could whip up something about a zillion times better on iPhoto these days, I put a lot of heart into that project and, considering the fact that we were using ancient forms of video production, it came out pretty good.

Not long after I finished the Beasties video project, an opportunity came along to write about the Beastie Boys in my school newspaper The Rebellion. I had been pitching the idea to my journalism teacher Mrs. B. Sullivan for a while and she finally gave me the green light. It would be a Beasties retrospective for the paper's music section. I used to goof around a lot in my journalism class, which, by the way, is something I regret doing. Where normally it would take me forever just to get one article done, when it came time to write about the Beastie Boys, I got that bad-boy done in about a couple of days. Mrs. Sullivan took one look at the finished product and was SHOCKED...shocked that it didn't need any editing. Normally she would have to edit the crap out of everybody's articles, especially mine. "This is perfect," she said and was so impressed that I was actually capable of such good writing. She realized that I needed to be writing about subject matter I was passionate about. The truth is that I probably just needed to be writing about the Beastie Boys. Though Mrs. Sullivan tried to assign me more articles she thought I'd be interested in, I unfortunately went back to goofing off and taking months to get one single article done. There was clearly only one good Rebellion article in me at the time. And that article was about the Beastie Boys.

Once it came time for college applications, I even managed to find a way to incorporate the Beastie Boys into one of my college essays. Well, I didn't just incorporate the Beasties; the entire essay was about them. I had to write about somebody who inspired me over the years, so I wrote about the Beastie Boys. And it was all true. The Beasties were, indeed, a main source of inspiration. They taught me to be versatile, be unique, always try new things and push the parameters. This inspiration drives me to this very day and I try to be as versatile with my writing, filmmaking and acting as I can be. The bottom line is that the Beasties strived for excellence and they didn't let any sort of genre or marketing strategy water them down. They transcended all that shit and made the best music they could possibly make, whether it be hip-hop, grunge or beautiful instrumental music. I wanted to be excellent like the Beastie Boys and they inspired me to be all that and a bag of potato chips!

The Beasties essay did the job it was supposed to do. It ended up getting me into Boston University (grades and SAT scores may have also helped) and that's where I ended up going after graduation. Speaking of graduation, I'm pretty sure I ended up wearing a Beasties shirt underneath my graduation gown.

But, yes, senior year in high school came to an end and I graduated close to the top of my class, number-four to be exact, not to brag or anything, but I was wicked smart, I'm awesome in general and I don't smell much when I sweat. It was around the time of graduation that I caught wind of some very exciting news. In fact, it was almost as though the universe was rewarding me with a graduation gift of its own. (Singing in Christmas carol fashion) The Bea-stie-Boys were coooom-ing...tooooo town! Well, back to town, that is.

This time, they were playing much closer, literally seven minutes from my house at Foxboro Stadium where the Patriots play (now called Gillette Stadium). But they weren't playing alone. It was going to be a co-headliner with...wait for it...Rage Against the Machine! It would be called the "Rhyme and Reason Tour" and, holy shit, this show was going to be epic!

Now, I should probably mention that I had already seen Rage Against the Machine earlier in my senior year of high school. They played at the Centrum—where I saw the Beasties—and, holy shit, that show was really good...

...BUT...

...it was also a little scary.

See, at the Rage concert, I had actual Centrum floor tickets, which I thought was awesome at the time, and it WAS—sort of—but things got a little frightening when fans started rushing the floor like they did at the Beasties concert. When the floor got rushed, things got crowded...like VERY crowded. And it all happened very quickly. It was not only uncomfortable, but you also got the feeling that things were getting dangerous. I remember several menacing dudes were just lighting up cigarettes and bowls of weed and other weird-looking pipes. Then there were some girls crowd-surfing and one of them looked like they were high on ecstasy or something like that. The girl got passed around above the crowd and guys were reaching up, rubbing her crotch and ass and basically molesting her. The girl was so high on something I don't even think she knew what was going on. There was definitely a sinister vibe down there on the floor.

A bumper sticker I got at the Rage show.

Maybe it was my guardian angel or maybe it was just common sense, but I ended up moving over to the edge of the floor area, near a gate so I could make a quick escape if I needed to. My friend Marc joined me while the rest of my friends stayed in the middle of the floor whooping it up. I was a little worried for them because the rushing kept happening in waves and, the more people there were, the more sinister the energy felt. Things really seemed to be getting out of control, but security didn't do a damn thing about any of it. They let it all happen and the show went on as planned.

Yes, the lights went dark and Rage came out playing a new song from "The Battle of Los Angeles" album called "Testify". As soon as the first downbeat of the heavy part kicked in, all hell broke loose on the floor. A huge mosh pit erupted and I was glad I was at the margins of the floor area. I was just hoping that the pit wouldn't spread all the way to my little sanctuary.

Well, the pit didn't come my way. I was more or less safe, but, after the first song, I saw one of my friends (the aforementioned Jesse) crawling out of the crowd, drenched in sweat and gasping for air. Me and Marc helped pull him to safety and that's when Jesse informed us that he had basically just been trampled on as soon as the first song started.

Now, I know I sound like a square, but how nobody died on the floor that night was pretty miraculous. Everybody seemed so angry and, well, full of rage, which I suppose was appropriate given the band that was playing. But I don't think they were 'raging' against any sort of machine. They were just raging in general.

Zack De La Rocha didn't necessarily help the situation. I remember that, after the opening song, he spoke into the microphone and expressed his discontent about there being so many cops present in the venue. He apparently didn't like cops and even went so far as to say:

"I just want you to know we support cop killers!"

I was, like, um what?? Did I hear right? Yikes! And what was even a little more unsettling was that the crowd roared and cheered afterwards:

"Woo, yeah, cop-killers are cool! We support cop-killers, too!"

Overall, I have to admit that the majority of people at that concert were a bunch of low-life losers and really didn't know anything about the political shit Rage Against the Machine was all about. Fuck, I didn't know much about the political shit either, seeing that I was so young, but you didn't see me raging my face off and shouting "Woo yes!" to cop-killers. I was there because I liked the music, man. That was all.

I actually remember later into the concert that there was a youngish kid standing next to me wearing some military-looking shit straight out of an Army/Navy store. At this point, security was telling everybody to keep the aisle between the floor area and the level-one seating area open. Apparently, it was against fire codes to block this aisle, but they had no problem with the floor being three times over its "seating" capacity. Didn't make too much sense, did it?

Well, the guard was telling this militant-looking kid next to me to clear the aisle and I looked over and could see that the kid was just looking straight ahead, pretending not to hear the security guy. The security dude kept yelling at the kid and pretty soon he was in the kid's face, but the kid just kept staring straight ahead like he was some sort of protester or something. But protesting what? All this security guy wanted was for the dweeb to clear the fucking aisle.

The security guy eventually took the kid by the arm and that's when the kid flipped out and two other security guys swarmed in and they all dragged the dingbat militant prick out of the Centrum. All I remember was thinking to myself, "Okay, that was pretty pointless." Way to stick it to authority, dude!

All right, I know I went off on a little tangent there and I know it probably sounds like I didn't enjoy the Rage Against the Machine concert what with all the losers and low-lifes around me and such. BUT...the exact opposite is true. Despite all the sinister, dangerous vibrations that were running through the Centrum during the concert, Rage Against the Machine was absolutely phenomenal. That concert definitely went down as being one of the best concerts I've ever been to (music-wise). In fact, it probably goes down in my books as the second-best concert I've ever been to, the Beasties being my first.

So what I'm getting at here is that if you took the Beastie Boys and also Rage Against the Machine and threw them both into the same concert, both as headliners, then holy fucking shit you would have one epic concert right there. And this was exactly what was happening...

Beasties.

Rage.

August 12, 2000.

My friends and I purchased our tickets as soon as they went on sale. They were awesome floor tickets. Would I have to deal with a rushed floor again? Probably. But was it going to be worth it? You bet your ass. Practically everybody I knew was going to this concert. It would definitely be the highlight of my summer, maybe even the highlight of my life.

But, alas, it was not meant to be. Mike D got into a little accident while he was riding his bicycle in New York City, he broke his collarbone and the whole show ended up being cancelled. I had to return my ticket (lest I be out thirty or forty bucks), though I should have kept it as a memento of "what could have been".

With the Beasties/Rage concert cancelled, the summer between high school graduation and freshman year of college was uneventful and anticlimactic. I worked at a supermarket all summer and I started getting big into punk music—particularly The Misfits—perhaps because I was so heartbroken after the concert cancellation that I just couldn't bear listening to any more Beasties. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Of course I listened to more Beasties, but I would be lying if I didn't say that my musical horizons started to expand in other directions.

During college, I almost got as intense into the Misfits as I did with the Beasties. I bought practically every Misfits album I could find, a bunch of T-shirts and—for a while—I even played drums in a Misfits cover band. College was a very introverted and angsty time for me and I listened to heavier music as an attempt to expunge a lot of the angst that was stirring around inside of me. There was nothing major going on with me, just a bunch of "pissed at the world" kind of shit that several young people go through. My eyes were opening to all the injustices in society and it was all overwhelming. 9/11 came, the Twin Towers went down, the war in Iraq started, George Bush became president—it was a pretty tumultuous time and it definitely affected my psyche on both a conscious and subconscious level. Overall, my college years were basically defined by an existential state of melancholy and rage and maybe the Beastie Boys were a little too "fun" for where my head was at during the time.

Of course, another reason why I may have drifted away from the Beasties during this period was because, well, they weren't making any new music. All four years of my college experience went by and there wasn't one new album that came out.

This isn't to say, however, that the Beasties weren't productive during these years. I would be very remiss if I didn't mention that, in late 2000, the Beasties released what was (and I would argue still is) perhaps one of the most innovative music DVDs ever to be made. This was Criterion Collection's "Beastie Boys Video Anthology", which was basically a labor of love that would not have existed had it not been for the creativity and hard work of one Beastie Boy in particular: Adam Yauch.

Yauch supposedly spent a very long time putting this video anthology together and it fucking showed. I just recently popped in my copy of the Criterion DVD a couple of nights ago and I'm amazed by, well, how cool it is. It is a two-disc box set with 18 different Beasties videos in total, but for just about every video there are multiple camera angles and multiple remixes of the songs. You can literally just sit back on a comfy sofa, pop in the DVD and switch camera angles or song remixes with the press of a button on your DVD remote. It's a really fun, cool interactive experience and I don't know of any other band that made something like this. I'm sure a band tried to copy what was done at some point down the line, but Yauch was the visionary who started it all.

What really amazes me about the video anthology above all else is that all the song remixes synch up with the video almost perfectly. You would think most of them would be out of synch, but no matter what angle you're on or what remix you're on, it all matches. I'm not sure if Adam took the time and effort to make sure everything synched up or if the remixes were made with the intention of needing to synch up with the videos, but—either way—it's pretty remarkable.

Criterion's Beastie Boys video anthology was and still is truly one-of-a-kind, something you would never be able to experience by just watching music videos on YouTube. The anthology showed that Yauch was clearly getting more and more interested in video production, which would later become even more apparent with the live Beasties concert film "Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That". But before I get to that project I need to talk about "To the Five Boroughs".

"To the Five Boroughs" was released the month after I graduated from college, in June 2004. The album was kind of a response to 9/11, the Iraq war, the Bush presidency and everything else that had been going on in the post-9/11 world. You would think that this was exactly what I needed to hear after four years of angst and—to an extent—it WAS, but, for some reason, I never fell too hard in love with this particular album. I liked the fact that the songs attempted to be more political and socially-aware, but I'm not really sure that suit fit the Beasties all too well. Songs like "Time to Build", "Right Right Now Now" and "We Got The" seemed a little too overtly message-driven. These songs kind of reminded me of teachers who would make up fun-sounding rap songs in order to make learning more fun. Maybe that sounds a little harsh and, again, I'm not saying I didn't appreciate the Beasties activism, but I just don't know if it translated into good music. Something was a little off and lacking.

Don't get me wrong, though: "To the Five Boroughs" is a solid album for sure. However, I'm pretty certain I'm not alone in thinking it's probably one of my least favorite albums, which doesn't mean I don't like it, I just mean compared to the rest of the Beasties album catalogue. Even the album's best songs like "Check it Out", "Triple Trouble" and "An Open Letter to NYC" just don't quite live up to the same standards of quality set by its preceding albums, especially its immediate predecessor "Hello Nasty".

But even if "Five Boroughs" seemed to be lacking some energy, the Beasties had certainly not lost their fire and this was clearly evident from a documentary capturing what was perhaps one of their finest and most energetic performances ever. The documentary was the aforementioned "Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!" and this "film" was another Adam Yauch (aka Nathaniel Hornblower) production that blew every other live-concert film out of the water.

"I Fuckin' Shot That" documented a 2004 Beastie Boys performance at Madison Square Garden. What made it unique, though, was that Yauch handed 50 camcorders out to 50 random concertgoers that were sitting in various parts of the Garden. All this footage combined with more "professional" footage from a "professional" crew created the masterpiece that was "Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!".

The film was released in 2006, two years after the concert and that makes sense because it must have taken a very, very long time to edit 50-plus cameras-worth of video footage. The final product, however, was one-of-a-kind. So fun. So original. I literally have watched this DVD dozens of times. It's a great concert captured on video and it's a great piece of art. Yauch truly was a visionary.

With "I Fuckin' Shot That", it was even more clear that Yauch was getting himself deeper into video production and having a lot of fun with it as well. The writing was pretty much on the wall that he would make an official crossover into video/film production and it was no surprise to most people that he decided to make an original documentary of his own, something that had nothing to do with the Beastie Boys. It was a 2008 documentary called "Gunnin' for that Number-One Spot", which was about the best young basketball players in the nation showcasing their skills in the first annual "Elite 24" all-star game held at the famous Rucker Park court in NYC.

I saw "Gunnin'" a while back, maybe a year or two after it came out. I thought it was a fantastic documentary and I didn't just think it was awesome because MCA made it. The documentary followed 8 of the 24 basketball players during the days leading up to the big Rucker all-star game. We learned all about the pressures young basketball talents face as they try to be "number one" and the temptations they experience from NBA scouts, sneaker companies and the like.

By the looks of "Gunnin", it was clear that Adam Yauch had great filmmaking talent and was destined to make more non-Beastie-related films as the Beastie Boys got older, more mature and, perhaps, a bit burnt-out as musicians. I'm not saying that the Beasties were ever going to stop making music—they clearly loved it—but their musical productivity was clearly waning as time went by. They had already been around for a while and you can only burn so bright for so long before, well, you burn out, at least a bit. Yauch, however, clearly had a second chapter to his life on the horizon. He was going to make more movies. I don't think there was any doubt about that.

But he didn't get enough time.

Yauch was diagnosed with a rare form of throat cancer in 2009, which delayed the release of their newest album "Hot Sauce Committee Part One". Yauch's form of cancer, which was located in the parotid (salivary) gland, had a high survival rate, but it also had a high percentage rate of coming back and metastasizing to the lungs and bones etc..

In 2011, Yauch seemed to be feeling fit enough to direct the short film "Fight for Your Right Revisited". This was basically a long music video for the song "Make Some Noise" and it promoted the release of "Hot Sauce Committee", which finally happened in 2011 but was called "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two". This album would be the last album that the Beastie Boys would ever make and it ended up being a really grand finale, or at least as good as you could ask for.

Where "Five Boroughs" was all hip-hop with a lot of political messages, "Hot Sauce" was a return to the Beasties' more playful, lighter tone. Instrumentals made an appearance once again, but punk and grunge songs were still MIA. Apparently the days of super-high-energy songs like "Tough Guy" and "Time for Livin'" were clearly in the past.

I actually waited a couple months before I purchased "Hot Sauce", mainly because I was extremely poor at the time and didn't have much disposable income. Also, this was now the YouTube and Internet age, so I could find much—if not most—of the album online. In fact, right before the album was released, the Beasties were streaming "Hot Sauce" live from Madison Square Garden, which was apparently a venue very close to their heart. This essentially meant that you could go to a website and listen to the album which was playing live over the Garden's PA system. There were also a few web cams that showed the empty garden from various angles.

Of course, I didn't feel too good about being one of THOSE people who just YouTube's everything and never went out to buy the album, especially not when we were talking about the Beastie Boys. I needed my Beastie album collection to be complete so I went out and bought the "Hot Sauce" album at the Cape Cod Mall a few months after the release. I was on vacation near Craigsville Beach at the time and that album basically became the soundtrack to both my vacation and the rest of my summer.

I really liked "Hot Sauce" and listened to it over and over again like I did back in the olden days with the other albums. I quickly fell in love with songs like "Too Many Rappers", "Long Burn the Fire", "Say It" and the instrumental "Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament." The latter song I listened to over and over again for some reason. It's a pretty simple song, but I really dug it.

For the next year, I listened to "Hot Sauce" off and on. There was no word of touring, but—as far as most people knew—Adam Yauch was doing OK.

But this apparently wasn't true. On May 4th, 2012, Adam Yauch died. No, the illuminati probably didn't 'off' him like some conspiracy theories suggest (though if that's true I'd be pissed!). It was the cancer that had returned and it returned with a vengeance.

With the news of Yauch's death, Beastie nation was in a state of mourning. The radios played Beastie songs, MTV played Beastie videos and people drank their brass monkeys, especially my friend Brass-Monkey-Jeremy. People weren't just mourning the death of MCA, though. They were mourning the death of the Beastie Boys. With Yauch's death, the Beastie Boys were basically all done. Mike D. and Adrock both were adamant that, without MCA, they would retire the Beastie Boys for good. Even if they did try and carry on without MCA it would never be the same anyway. The perfect triad or triforce or trinity that was the Beastie Boys could not exist without MCA's deeper voice that balanced out the higher voices of Mike D and Adrock. He was the bass (both his voice and his instrument) and they were the treble.

Yauch was only 47 when he died, but, damn, he shined bright while he was alive. I think he definitely could've had a brilliant second chapter to his life, especially in the area of filmmaking, but his first chapter was certainly amazing enough and also more prolific than what most people do in several lifetimes.

So the Beastie Boys may be all done, but their legacy will live on forever and, yes, I know how corny that sounds. The Beasties were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, shortly before MCA's death, and they will most certainly go down in the books as one of the most unique bands of all time. I never really knew why I was so obsessed with them (obsessed in a healthy way...I think), but I suppose it was literally because they were the most unique band of their time. No other band had such a range, from making punk music to grunge to hip-hop to jazzy instrumental to you-name-it.

In the late 1980s, the Beastie Boys were clearly a band that the music industry had—pardon my imagery here—a major hard-on for, but their giant Beastie boner was throbbing for them to be marketed as a hip-hop group. The Beasties, however, resisted any marketing that would take away from them being as excellent as possible. They purposely kept the industry on their toes by releasing atypical albums with a mix of styles and, when that wasn't enough, they even would release EP's like the yet-to-be-mentioned "In Sound from Way Out" and also "The Mix Up" that consisted solely of instrumental songs, not to mention another yet-to-be-mentioned EP like "Aglio E Olio" that consisted only of punk/hard core songs. We've been so hard-wired by the music industry into thinking that bands have to fit into a certain genre and image and identity, basically so these bands can then be more easily marketed to us. But real musicians aren't afraid to try different things and move in and out of such radically different styles. The Beastie Boys were real musicians. Calling them white rappers would be too limiting. They were true musical artists and maybe that sounds sappy, but that's what they were.

The Beasties had a giant, inflatable boner onstage during the License
to Ill era. Indeed, this boner was symbolic of what the music
industry felt about the band at the time.

Two lines in the Beasties song "Intergalactic" sum up the Beastie Boys best:

"My number's beyond what you can dial,

Maybe it's because we're so versatile."

The Beasties truly were beyond any number that anyone could ever dial. Their unprecedented versatility skyrocketed them up into some sort of intergalactic space, a "new dimension" and "new galaxy" that transcended any other music that existed at the time...and probably any music that will ever exist in the future.

Looking dapper in my beloved "Beastie Fever" T-shirt.

As for me, I will always love the Beastie Boys and, oh yes, I will always have a raging and contagious case of Beastie Fever. Think twice about coming near me, because you may end up with it, too.

…

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses, I Turned into a Misfit and I Used to be a Gamer. Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.