24 years ago to this day I went to my very first concert. Little did I know that on that day, June 5th, 1995, I would be embarking on a live musical journey that is still alive in 2019. I’ve tried to jot down all of the concerts I’ve been to over the years and just when I get into a groove my mind goes blank. One of my friends has kept ticket stubs of most of the concerts he’s been to and I wish would have had the hindsight to have done the same. Off the top of my head, I’ve seen Rage Against the Machine, Snoop & Dr. Dre, Metallica, The White Stripes, A Tribe Called Quest, Outkast, Radiohead, Tool, Kendrick Lamar, Justice, Pink Floyd, A Tribe Called Quest, Eminem, Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Coldplay, Stevie Wonder, Chance the Rapper, Anderson Paak, The Black Keys, Lionel Richie, Avicii, Ratatat, Ice Cube, The Foo Fighters, Mos Def & Talib Kweli (aka Blackstar), DJ Quik, Weezer, Gang Starr, Rancid, Mac Miller, Chromeo, Lil Wayne, Drake, Childish Gambino, The Flaming Lips, Little Dragon, Flying Lotus, MF Doom, Lauryn Hill, The Wu Tang Clan (minus ODB), 2Pac’s hologram, Pharrell and so many more. But my very first concert 24 years ago wasn’t any of these artists mentioned above. On that memorable night in 1995, my parents dropped me and a few of my friends off at the San Diego Sports Arena to see one of the most innovative groups of my time, the one and only BEASTIE BOYS.
Now this doesn’t mean I didn’t attempt to go to concerts before this night. When a concert your came through town that I wanted to see I had to sell my parents on why they should let me go. Most of the music I listened to was filled with expletives along with that annoying rectangular parental advisory sticker right smack on the bottom right corner on the front of every cassette or CD. This little sticker on my favorite albums was always a snitch to my parents letting them know that their son was listening to music that wasn’t clean. If they found one of those albums with those stickers I knew I would be in trouble so I’d have to find good hiding spots for all of these CD’s and tapes.
In order to get my parents to allow me to go to a concert I had to prove to them that my virgin eyes and ears wouldn’t be violated in the process. They already knew that I was a good kid that wasn’t getting into trouble so I had that going for me. In the years prior to this concert my parents had bought me several albums for my birthday or Christmas and I strategically asked for the cleanest of clean albums so that on the surface I appeared to be listening to good wholesome music. This included several albums from my man MC Hammer, some DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince singles, the Seal “Kiss from a Rose” smash and TLC’s debut album, Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip. I would always make sure that when my parents heard my music playing they heard one of these clean albums. But when my cheap foam Sony headphones were on it was a guarantee that I was listening to music that they wouldn’t approve of.
As I’ve written before, my older brother was one of the biggest inspirations for my love of music. His library gave me so much to sift through and I listened to everything he had regardless of genre. I believe it was around 1988 or 1989 when I first came across the Beastie Boys in his collection and I’m pretty sure it was on a mixtape. With no internet at the time, an album cover or a mixtape gave you little indication of what a group truly looked like unless a picture of them was on it. It didn’t matter the color of their skin as long as they were dope. On the Beastie Boys first album, License to Ill, all you had was a picture of a hand drawn picture of a plane which told me nothing about the group. But that album cover did catch my eye and did intrigue me enough to give the album a spin. More on the background of that album cover here.
Before I go into my history of the Beasties, I have to go back one step further to tell you how they fell on my radar. I asked my big bro Todd this week how he first found out about the Beastie Boys in the 80’s. It turned out that it was from one of his best friends back then who he is still tight with today. In 1985, Todd’s buddy Sean went to go see Madonna on “The Virgin Tour” with his dad. This tour hit San Diego for 2 shows, 4/19/85 and 4/20/85 which made Sean 10 or 11 at the time. This tour was to support Madonna’s second album which was titled Like a Virgin. Madonna is one of the biggest pop stars of all time and the fact that Sean saw her with his dad as a young kid is awesome.
Opening up for Madonna on that tour was a group named the Beastie Boys that at that time didn’t even have an album out. They didn’t fit within Madonna’s audience demographic but they were gaining a following within the New York underground scene and she liked them and added them as the opener. While Sean’s dad thought that a Madonna show would be appropriate for his son, he had no idea that 3 Jewish white kids from New York (along with Rick Rubin as their DJ) would perform totally wasted while not caring one bit what all of Madonna’s teeny bopper fans thought. This performance left an impression with Sean at a young age and from there he told my brother and their crew of friends about the group. A few years later I would catch on and then tell all of my friends. Word of mouth marketing at its best!
During this tour with Madonna, the Beastie Boys gained some fans and their buzz continued to build with the rise of rap music in the ‘80’s. The Beastie Boys were one of the first artists to be signed to a new label at the time called Def Jam. If you don’t know about Def Jam, just know that their presence was instrumental in the genre of hip hop exploding in the 80’s. Def Jam was created by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin in a NY dorm room with funding from Rick’s parents. It should be known that Rick Rubin was white and at that time there just weren’t many white guys involved in the rap scene. Def Jam’s early roster included Run DMC (Run’s brother is Russell), LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys and then eventually Public Enemy. That was really the who’s who of the emerging rap scene in the 80’s and they were in good hands with Russell and Rick.
The Beastie Boys were formed in 1981. They were a hardcore punk band that opened for groups like Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys and the Misfits who were at the forefront of the hardcore punk scene. The Beastie Boys’ original lineup included Mike Diamond aka Mike D (vocals), Adam Yauch aka MCA (bass), John Berry (guitar) and Kate Schellenbach (drums). John Berry left the group in the early 80’s and was replaced by Adam Horovitz aka Ad-Rock. Kate Schellenbach left the group in the mid 80’s when Rick Rubin started getting more involved and they were transitioning from a punk group to a rap group. What was left in the group was 3 young white Jewish dudes from NY and that’s where the true Beastie Boys were formed… Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock. Their first full length LP License to Ill dropped on 11/15/1986 and the rest was history.
The License to Ill album perfectly blended rock with rap with the help of the production talents of Rick Rubin. It was not until Rage Against the Machine came along that there was another group who fused rock and rap so seamlessly. The Beasties had an entirely new style when rap was bubbling and were just different from from the other rappers that I was listening to at the time. And the fact that they were all white kids made it all very relatable for me. The License to Ill album was the first rap record ever to top the Billboard charts and it has sold over 10 million albums. And one of best parts of that License to Ill album was that there were no easily digestible cuss words in the lyrics which in my parents eyes made it acceptable for me to listen to. And it was because of their clean lyrics on that album that I was able to sell my parents on why I should be able go to the Beastie Boys concert as a 15 year old in ‘95. I was a salesman as a kid just like I am now. Nothing has changed!
Between the License to Ill album which dropped in ‘86 and my first concert in ‘95 the Beasties dropped several huuuuge albums. They split from the NY label Def Jam after their debut album and took their talents out to California to begin work on their 2nd full length, Paul’s Boutique. With them leaving Def Jam, this meant that Rick Rubin was no longer in the fold handling the production. Luckily they partnered up with The Dust Brothers in LA who in my opinion, gave the Beasties their best production on any of their albums. Paul’s Boutique wasn’t received well at the time of its release in ‘89 and many called it a flop. Nowadays that album is considered a classic by some for the multi-layered sampling and experimental psychedelic production style that The Dust Brothers laced the Beasties with. In 1989, producers like The Dust Brothers and Prince Paul with De La Soul’s debut album 3 Feet High and Rising were looping beat breaks from older records to help them create their beats. Shortly after these sample ridden releases, the sampling laws in music changed which forever shifted the production styles of many hip hop producers of that era.
With sampling anything and everything no longer a viable option, the Beasties took a whole new approach on their 3rd album while still living out in California. They invested a lot of money on studio time for Paul’s Boutique and with that album not being a commercial success at the time, money wasn’t necessarily flowing so they had to be resourceful with their beats. The Beasties resorted to renting our a warehouse space in LA and filled it with a skate ramp, basketball hoop and musical instruments. None of them were professionally trained musicians but with the help of Money Mark on the keys, they set out to play all of the instrumentation themselves on their 3rd album, Check Your Head. The Check Your Head album dropped in 1992 and while it has a top 5 album cover of all time, it’s also my favorite Beastie Boys’ album. They of course had rap on that album but they went back to their punk roots a bit as well. But what resonated with me most were their instrumental hip hop tracks without any lyrics. In my opinion, the Beastie Boys gave birth to instrumental hip hop with the Check Your Head album, But if there’s one song to leave you with, it has to be my favorite Beastie Boys song of all time…. A song that showed you all the swagger the Beasties had in only a few minutes. The swagger that I still try to carry with me as a young 39 year old professional. I bring to you, “Pass the Mic” off the Check Your Head album.
I’m not sure how you follow up an album like Check Your Head but the Beasties did a damn good job of it with Ill Communication. Ill Communication dropped 25 years ago last week (5/31/94) and while to me it wasn’t as strong as their 3 prior albums, the Beasties stayed true to their brand with songs like Sabotage, Sure Shot, Root Down and The Flute Song. They even had a nice little collabo with Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest on “Get it Together”. In my opinion, their best collaboration for this album was them linking up with Spike Jonze on the Sabotage video. If unaware of Spike Jonze’s resume, he got started early as a photographer and videographer on the BMX and skate scene, was the co-creator and executive producer of the early Jackass movies, has produced videos for artists like Daft Punk and The Pharcyde and also has a few Academy Award nominations under his belt for Being John Malkovich and Her. Spike Jonze is a legend and if you don’t believe me just watch the Sabotage video.
Covering the Beastie Boys’ first 4 albums (Licensed to Ill, Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, and Ill Communication) and early history helps me set the seen for that night of June 5th, 1995. In what will always go down as one of the best nights of my life, I got to see the Beastie Boys live in my hometown with my lifelong friends and did so without any parental supervision. I remember getting dropped off in the parking lot that night with my friends and feeling so free. I always spent a lot of time near the Sports Arena at the Tower Records digging in the crates across the street but that night I finally got to go to a concert there. The Beastie Boys were just cool to me. And as a 15 year old I was extremely impressionable. At junior high school I was a pimple faced scrawny kid with a squeaky voice going through puberty. But sprinkle in a little Beastie Boys swagger and it helped give me the confidence to just be myself. I’ve been a hip hop kid my whole life and it’s something I will never lose grip of. It’s crazy to think that my first concert was 24 years ago today because I remember it like it was yesterday. I’m so glad I held onto this special ticket stub of that first concert of mine along with the promo flyer which after 24 years is still in mint condition.
A special thanks to the music that the Beastie Boys gave me over the years. You guys are never discussed as being one of the best rap groups ever and it just doesn’t make any sense. You experimented with new sounds constantly and never got complacent with one style. You took chances and pushed boundaries with each album’s release and many musicians didn’t have the balls to do that. Props to you Beasties. Rest in peace MCA!