xtinaguad
10-01-2007, 10:10 AM
The boys have a little feature in Men's Vogue.
Here is the article:
Boys to Men
With a new sound and an old-school look, the Beastie Boys can't, won't, don't stop. By Alex Abramovich
http://www.mensvogue.com/images/arts/2007/09/arar01_beastie_boys.jpg
Adam Horowitz, Michael Diamond, and Adam Yauch raise the stakes at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. (Photo: Julian Dufort)
Rap is no country for middle-aged men, but the Beastie Boys—who solidified their lineup 24 years ago and found themselves opening up for Madonna on the Virgin tour not long after—have always had a Madonna-like knack for self-reinvention. Even now, as the youngest Beastie creeps past the big Four-O, the group still has a few tricks up its (now immaculately tailored) sleeves.
The Beasties were the first white boys to play this particular black man's game—or, at least, to play it well enough to keep them from getting booed off the stage. And because they were white, they also managed to avoid the aesthetic traps and existential conundrums that seemed to plague so many of their black counterparts: Whereas black rappers tended to sell the most records when they presented themselves as new jack journalists chronicling the hard realities of inner-city streets, the Beastie Boys never claimed to be anything other than the potty-mouthed Jewish kids they were. They came off as the slightly brain-damaged second cousins of the Marx Brothers, and their raps managed to please without aspiring to the condition of poetry:
I'm charming, I'm dashing
I'm rental-car-bashing
I'm phony-paper-passing
At Nix Check Cashing
In the nineties, the Beasties got even better. I remember the first time I saw them live, at New York's Roseland Ballroom, on the Check Your Head tour. They were so very good that I forgot myself entirely and ended up going down the up escalator in Penn Station and spending a night in jail for "improperly entering a train station." Subsequent shows—the Ill Communication tour and afterward—were equally ecstatic. And somewhere along the way, the Beasties, who'd started off as a punk band, went back to playing their instruments and writing actual songs.
This year, the Beastie Boys are touring behind their seventh album, The Mix-Up—an all-instrumental affair. And while the album itself is something of a placeholder—Pitchfork described it as so much "instrumental wankage"—the whole package still has the power to impress. Every third show or so, the Beasties play an intimate "Gala Event," encouraging their audience to "dress to impress." The Boys themselves—Michael Diamond (Mike D), Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock), and Adam Yauch (MCA)—have taken to wearing vintage suits, à la Frank Sinatra in the early fifties. At a recent show at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, they were surrounded by fans who wore rented tuxedos and minidresses. It was a new sartorial twist on the old musical game of call-and-response, and one that exceeded the Beasties' own modest expectations.
" 'Dress to Impress' means no Tevas," explained Mike D, sporting French cuffs and sleek black sunglasses before the show. "No Birkenstocks or open-toed sandals. No open-toed anything, unless you're a girl." Looking out into the crowd that night, Ad-Rock singled out a spiffy 12-year-old in the audience: "Check out my man!" he said, and you could see the kid melting. Odds are, by the time he grows up, the Beastie Boys—rap's longest-running superstars—will still be going strong.
Here is the article:
Boys to Men
With a new sound and an old-school look, the Beastie Boys can't, won't, don't stop. By Alex Abramovich
http://www.mensvogue.com/images/arts/2007/09/arar01_beastie_boys.jpg
Adam Horowitz, Michael Diamond, and Adam Yauch raise the stakes at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. (Photo: Julian Dufort)
Rap is no country for middle-aged men, but the Beastie Boys—who solidified their lineup 24 years ago and found themselves opening up for Madonna on the Virgin tour not long after—have always had a Madonna-like knack for self-reinvention. Even now, as the youngest Beastie creeps past the big Four-O, the group still has a few tricks up its (now immaculately tailored) sleeves.
The Beasties were the first white boys to play this particular black man's game—or, at least, to play it well enough to keep them from getting booed off the stage. And because they were white, they also managed to avoid the aesthetic traps and existential conundrums that seemed to plague so many of their black counterparts: Whereas black rappers tended to sell the most records when they presented themselves as new jack journalists chronicling the hard realities of inner-city streets, the Beastie Boys never claimed to be anything other than the potty-mouthed Jewish kids they were. They came off as the slightly brain-damaged second cousins of the Marx Brothers, and their raps managed to please without aspiring to the condition of poetry:
I'm charming, I'm dashing
I'm rental-car-bashing
I'm phony-paper-passing
At Nix Check Cashing
In the nineties, the Beasties got even better. I remember the first time I saw them live, at New York's Roseland Ballroom, on the Check Your Head tour. They were so very good that I forgot myself entirely and ended up going down the up escalator in Penn Station and spending a night in jail for "improperly entering a train station." Subsequent shows—the Ill Communication tour and afterward—were equally ecstatic. And somewhere along the way, the Beasties, who'd started off as a punk band, went back to playing their instruments and writing actual songs.
This year, the Beastie Boys are touring behind their seventh album, The Mix-Up—an all-instrumental affair. And while the album itself is something of a placeholder—Pitchfork described it as so much "instrumental wankage"—the whole package still has the power to impress. Every third show or so, the Beasties play an intimate "Gala Event," encouraging their audience to "dress to impress." The Boys themselves—Michael Diamond (Mike D), Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock), and Adam Yauch (MCA)—have taken to wearing vintage suits, à la Frank Sinatra in the early fifties. At a recent show at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, they were surrounded by fans who wore rented tuxedos and minidresses. It was a new sartorial twist on the old musical game of call-and-response, and one that exceeded the Beasties' own modest expectations.
" 'Dress to Impress' means no Tevas," explained Mike D, sporting French cuffs and sleek black sunglasses before the show. "No Birkenstocks or open-toed sandals. No open-toed anything, unless you're a girl." Looking out into the crowd that night, Ad-Rock singled out a spiffy 12-year-old in the audience: "Check out my man!" he said, and you could see the kid melting. Odds are, by the time he grows up, the Beastie Boys—rap's longest-running superstars—will still be going strong.