Beastie Boys: A close encounter in 1994 – exactly 30 years ago. Memories that feel simultaneously like yesterday and from another lifetime.
Gentle reader: Do you have any memories that feel as if they happened yesterday, yet also feel as though they are from more than a lifetime ago?
Here’s one such memory. It’s 30 years ago today (Saturday 22 June 2024) that I first got to see the Beastie Boys live (on Wednesday 22 June 2024 at the long-since demolished London Astoria). I can remember so much of that day as if it was yesterday, or earlier today. But at the same time, it feels so long ago it’s like I’ve dreamed a day from another person’s life in another world.
Three decades ago from today, I had just finished my university finals, and I suppose I must have received the results by then, too. I was feeling mentally exhausted and somewhat anxious about what the future might hold. I truly had no idea what I was going to do next, let alone do for the rest of my life. Best to focus on the day ahead.
As uncertain as everything else in life felt, music was and remains an eternal certainty and sanctuary. Music always was, is and will be there for me.
It’s fair to say that the Beastie Boys were my biggest musical obsession in the early-to-mid 1990s (I wrote about this obsession in #7songs: Beasties, beer spraying and Saṃsāra). I am no longer obsessed. But I cherish my memories of those times.
I found my way into the Beasties’ world with 1992’s Check Your Head album. The rich seam of roughly sketched, wildly diverse and endlessly colourful, life-affirming music on Check Your Head was exactly what I needed to hear at that time. It opened up new musical and creative pathways for me. The Beastie Boys took inspiration from all genres of music. Mash up sitars with hip hop and crudely sample Bob Dylan so that he sings the final line of a song about food?* Why not!
Sadly, I found Check Your Head a few months too late to catch the tour. So when I saw a music paper ad for their one-off June 1994 gig at the Astoria, I knew I had to be there.
Time for livin’
The day of the gig itself was blisteringly hot. A 24-hour rail strike meant we had to get a sweltering, slow-moving bus to London. Arriving in the early afternoon, we hit Soho to visit Berwick Street’s then-rich seam of record shops. I definitely bought the Harder They Come soundtrack that day (as I wanted to hear Stop That Train, sampled by the Beasties on B-Boy Bouilllabaisse, the epic medley that closes their 1989 album Paul’s Boutique).
After the record shops, we made our way through the heat-baked streets to Soho Square, right behind where the Astoria used to be. In those days before mobile phones were a thing (outside of the ultra-rich), we’d made vague plans to meet more friends there on their way to the gig. With a few hours to kill, we found a bench and drank cans of Red Stripe in the lovely London afternoon sun. The crowds in Soho Square were the usual wildly diverse central London mix of all kinds of folks. A sizeable contingent were clearly headed to that night’s Beasties gig, including a mellow gent in a grey Buddha t-shirt sitting on the grass a few feet from us, engaged in quiet, mellow conversation with a girl.
As we got through the Astoria’s doors that evening, there was a frenetic excitement and joy in the air. For me and my friends in our small-town corner of England, the Beastie Boys had felt almost like our little secret. They’d had their chart-dominating moment back in the 1980s, and it seemed in 1994 that – at least in the UK – those days would never return. It was amazing to see as many folks at that gig as Beastie-obsessed as I was, all crammed into this meltingly hot, grimy old theatre.
The atmosphere built and built with pre-show DJs playing hip hop at world-shaking volume. I definitely recall hearing Spoonie Gee’s The Godfather, A Tribe Called Quest’s then-current single Oh My God, and even Anthrax’s not very good Beastie Boys tribute/parody I’m the Man.
Cometh the hour, come the Beasties. As they leapt to the stage, the excitement in the room positively exploded. Besides being excited to be in the presence, I was also stunned to realise that I had already been in the presence without realising it. Beastie Boy Adam Yauch – aka MCA – was the exact same guy in the exact same grey t-shirt who’d been sitting right by me in Soho Square that afternoon. So quiet and unassuming was Mr Yauch in person, I’d completely failed to recognise him.
According to the kind folks at Setlist.FM, the Beastie Boys opened with their punked-out cover of Sly Stone’s Time for Livin’. Live instruments cast aside, they pogoed straight into Sure Shot, this next song being the first song on their (then-)new album Ill Communication.
All around was mayhem, joyous mayhem. My abiding memory of that gig is exuberant, youthful joy. Joy that was even undimmed when my glasses were knocked off by the pogo-ing crowd while they screamed the chanted refrain of “ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES” during Rhymin and Stealin. In the brief pause after that song, I rooted down around the broken plastic beer cups on the floor and somehow found my glasses. Miraculously, my specs were just a tiny bit misshapen from their spell amidst the stomping feet – but otherwise fully functional.
The set sped by in an accelerated blur, closing with an explosive Sabotage. As far as I know, there is no video footage of the Astoria gig. But you can get a taste of it from the video of a more mellow set that they did as a secret gig that same week in June 1994, at London’s Slam City Skates shop.
After the Beastie Boys, the Astoria crowd thinned out to a few hundred people staying to check out the hip hop DJs who played through ’til the wee small hours. I am certain that I saw a backpack-laden Björk among the hardcore of dancers sticking around.
The heat in the venue got so unbearable that we left about 1am. Big mistake, as the aforementioned train strike meant that we had nothing to do – and certainly no money with which to do anything – until the first post-strike train services started up at some time after 6AM on Thursday 23 June 1994. The Beastie Boys gig felt as though it had passed in the blink of an eye. My memories of the four or five tedious hours spent sitting on benches in a completely deserted Euston railway station in the small hours of that Thursday feel like they lasted longer than life itself.
The trains finally restarted. I finally made it home bone tired but happy. Ready for whatever surprises, twists and turns the rest of my life, the next 30 years (and, I hope, beyond) would and will bring.
I never have tired and never will tire of this music. It surprised me and inspired me. It helped me through tough times until things started to come good. It continues to help me today. It surprises and inspires me now. It showed me and continues to show me that life need not be set in stone. Things can change. Things can get better. As one of the songs on Check Your Head puts it:
“Lighten up right now/ Shine like the sun.”
May you be nothing but kind today, to yourself and to others.
May today be nothing but kind to you and yours.
Postscript
This post dwells on memories intertwined with music from the past. But – as I have written many times on this blog – I am against nostalgia. We should approach each moment with deliberate optimism, knowing that the best is always yet to come.
Music always was, is and will be there for me. There is always new music to discover.
Music never runs out of new ways to delight. These past few months, it has been particularly delightful for me to discover a huge seam of music that takes inspiration from and builds on the spirit of hip hop from my youth. Here are some current musical loves of mine:
Marlon Craft – Mugsy Bogues. Marlon Craft’s Muggsy Bogues sounds for all the world like an updated, 2024 take on the dripping menace of early Wu-Tang Clan – so it is only appropriate that the Wu’s Method Man joins this already excellent song with a stunning guest verse.
There is a strong hip hop influence to be found in much modern K-pop music. The rest of my musical picks here are all from the K-pop world. They can also be found (along with some other choice selections) in my K-pop hip hop YouTube playlist.
ATEEZ – Work: The jazz loop in this delightful song makes me wonder if it shares some distant musical DNA with Beastie Boys tracks like Flute Loop, and with other jazz-heavy hip hop of the early 90s.
Dynamicduo – Smoke. If this had come out in 1994, it would be considered a headnodding NYC hardcore hip hop-inspired classic. The video below shows a Vietnamese dance crew absolutely killing the routine created for this song.
Stray Kids – S-Class. If the rap breakdown in this song isn’t directly inspired by the Beastie Boys, then I don’t know what is.
Young Posse – XXL. This song makes me think of Cypress Hill producing a song to be played at children’s parties. Some of the rapping is outstanding, and the lyrics are endearingly silly, with their references to “unexpected cheeky monkeys” and the like.
FOOTNOTES
* The Dylan-sampling song is Finger Lickin’ Good.
IMAGES
- Beastie Boys ticket photo by MJCarty.
- London Astoria via Wikimedia Commons.
MJCarty 
