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AAdam Yauch AKA MCA’s death in 2012 from cancer at the age of 47 effectively ended the hip-hop trio’s recording and performing career. The Beastie Boys. Since then, his friends Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond have not been seen in public but the latter is now back. His first appearance on a British stage in almost 20 years was, of all places, a bingo hall in the North East, where he became the first singer to shout: “Wassup, North Shields?!”
With turntables on stage, hip-hop clobber in the audience, a six-piece band in matching costumes and bingo tables in the background, this impromptu show feels simultaneously low-key and eventful. Mike D is backed by 5D – which includes his sons and is more than half his age in his 60s – whose grooves and shredding guitars are not the Beastie Boys re-heated, but have the same joie de vivre.
Fresh and bold, almost an entire set of new material, from the latest single What We Got to several songs from the upcoming album. Make It Stop doffs cup that Kraftwerk. True Colors are a big electronic-rock-rap group and their influences on I Don’t Care include the New Yorker’s distinctive reed playing on a stripped-down, minimalist track. There is great excitement when Mike D learns about nearby “Newcastle, where the Venom samples come from,” referring to the time the Beasties sampled the Geordie metal band Check Your Head.
Every song sounds different. Examples of Crypto currencies, Switch Up climbs to the top of its killer line and there’s a surprising right-brake turn to Thank You, a beautiful song whose lyrics like “We were kids, fools” seem loaded with meaning. In the late 70’s Delta 5’s Mind Your Own Business produced some suspense before Mike D released “something from my old band”, which turned out to be the noisy So What’cha Want. There is a chant of “one more song!” it didn’t work: the only disappointment in an hour-long show is that there isn’t much else.
