Beastie Boys "Report"
Your Intrepid reporter, Frodaddy here with a dispatch about the Beastie Boys concert on Friday Oct. 15th in Duluth Georgia. First I want to say the Gwinnet Center, where the concert was held, is a great brand spanking arena, with free parking, and getting in and out of the arena was a cinch.
Anyway, we got there fairly early, and the opening act was, well, a dog show led by a guy named Bob. Actually, it was fairly entertaining, the dogs were pretty well trained I guess. The Beastie Boys can get away with this and make it seem cool, because, well, they're the Beastie Boys.
A quick word about the crowd- it seemed to be mostly folks in their late 20's or early 30's, and almost exclusively white, so I guess most of these people are ones who rocked out to "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communication" in college. The other opening act was Talib Kweli. He's a good act but you know he's got to be getting tired of opening for bigger acts by now. Anyways, after a slow start the crowd did start to get into it, after Talib reminded them several times that "this is a hip hop show". So after that, everybody, and I really mean just about everybody did a beer run.
Then it was time for the real show to begin. It hit me pretty much immediately that I should have gotr General Admission tix, our seats were good but all the real fun was down in front of the stage. Still, everybody was pretty amped, and after an awesome mix intro by Mix Master Mike the Boys hit the stage. The highlights were pretty much non-stop from there. The Beasties did a good job of mixing up the old and new, and even dropping new beats on classic favorites. After rapping for awhile, a quick wardrobe change, and it was time for some of the more laid back instrumental songs.
Then it was back to rapping, and the hits continued. They tried to have the crowd rap the whole song of Paul Revere, but they didn't quite make it. Finally, and kind of weakly, the show ended. Something didn't seem quite right about the way the show wrapped up, and then... down in the stands, all the way at the other end of the arena, the Beasties showed up, rapping their asses off, and the crowd went wild. Good thing there wasn't a riot. Once that was done, the Beasties showed up one more time and finished the show with some more rockin' instrumental songs, including Sabotage and What'cha want.
The Beasties looked like they were genuinely having fun, riffing off each other, and that translated into a good show for the fans. A theme of the tour is "pagentry", and anybody who dressed up as a classic BB video character (Cochise, Intergalactic suits) was sure to get a shout out. They put in some more nice touches, like moving TV screens, movable stages, and some Matrix-style camera shots, in addition to the awesome encore. Frodaddy's review? 4 outta 4 stars.