Beastie Boys For the Children

Prior to their Sunday night show at the Opera House the Beastie Boys held a brief, mini press conference to talk about their new album and tour, which also hit the Bank of America Pavilion Monday night.

The trio of MCA (Adam Yauch), Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) and Mike D (Mike Diamond)is notorious for taking very little seriously and didn’t disappoint as they took a few questions from the local media.

Herewith a few tidbits from the confab:

The band has been playing two shows in many cities on the tour. One is being dubbed a "gala event" like the gig at the Opera House. At these they mostly play instrumental tunes from their new album "The Mix-Up" and band arrangements of old songs and encourage people to dress up. The other is a more traditional hip-hop/band hybrid.

When asked if people have been dressing up they said the hot weather has been prohibitive. But Mike D felt good about Boston, though.

"I could end up being proven wrong but I’m going to go out on a limb right now and go on record and say that as this event is at an Opera House and the temperature is a little more moderate outside, we will see the greatest number of people well dressed." Then MCA piped in "Or we should say, the least number of cargo shorts. I think the average of cargo shorts will go down." "Oh it will drop rapidly," agreed Mike D. Continued MCA "Maybe it will be one in every twenty people wearing them as opposed to 20 in every 21."

(D was right, as quite a few people at the Opera House took the dress code to heart. I saw several ball gowns and at least two men in tuxedos.)

On the inspirations for the new album being an instrumental affair:
MCA: "It was kind of mixing a bunch of styles, I don’t even know if that was the idea going into it. I think we were sort of more looking at it after (recording). We started playing, we started recording with the instruments and at some point just decided to finish it as an instrumental record."

On whether or not their label, Capitol Records, was resistant to an instrumental album which perhaps would not be quite a lucrative as a Beastie Boys album with vocals:
Ad-Rock: "They were happy to get an instrumental record from us with the trend of instrumental records. They were surprised that we wanted to go pop."

Mike D: "There was an incident where the new CEO of Capitol Jason Flom, shortly after coming to hear the instrumental record in the studio, he bungee jumped from the roof of the studio with no pants on with a sign that said 'please no!' I don’t know what that referred to. Maybe he should have had his pants on, I’m not sure. So that was a disturbing incident for all of us."

On whether or not they were worried if their instrumental chops would be up to snuff: (MCA plays bass, Ad-Rock guitar and Mike D the drums)

Ad-Rock: "Clearly you haven’t read a little magazine called Drum magazine which is on stands right now, featuring on the cover of this magazine a drummer named Mike D. Diamond. It talks about his sophisticated high patterns."

(Then Mike D admitted he’s not sure the story actually employs that phrase because he thinks the reporter just buttered him up by saying that in order to get juicy gossip out of him).

On the news, to them, that they will be playing an upcoming show in the virtual world of There.com:
All: "What’s that?"

Mike D: "How do you shrink us into the computer?"

Ad-Rock: "What are we doing?"

When told they were playing a show MCA said "Well then I’ll just say we support there.com and we always have. We think what they do is very important and it’s great and we’re really looking forward to this." Added Mike D, "They’re for the children and we’re for the children too."