Around March or April I had begun to wonder if the Beastie Boys had fallen off the face of the earth. Then came news of a new album and tour. I figured that, as usual, they would not schedule a show within driving distance, but I was wrong!

After braving the rush hour Atlanta traffic and battling the hordes of suburban soccer mom vans in Gwinnet, we got to the venue, secured beer, and found our seats. Our seats were better than I had hoped, about two-thirds of the way around the side and three rows up. I noticed that there was a small stage about 20 feet in front of us, but did not really think too much about it. We crowd watched for a while then the opener came out.

There was a guy with a group of dogs that did tricks for about 15 minutes, then followed the worst live performance I have ever seen, Talib Kweli. I am not a huge rap fan anyway, but watching him was just painful.

The Beasties came on stage about an hour later. They opened up with some new stuff and a couple of older songs. The stage set-up was simple but impressive, with a nice video rig. After a while, Mix Master Mike's platform spun around, revealing bass, drums, guitar, and keyboard. They did some of their slower, '70's style stuff, and then spun the stage again and came back out and did a bunch of the "Greatest Hits" type stuff such as, "Brass Monkey," "3 MCs and 1 DJ," etc. After "Check It Out," they left the stage and returned about 5 minutes later, this time on the little stage a couple of rows in front of us.

They encored with "Sabotage," which was dedicated to "The future former President of the United States."

After the first couple of notes, the crowd went apeshit.

All in all, a great fucking show.

Rating: 4