Beastie Boys - Gala Event Chicago 2007

Beasties Boys Gala Event Live at the Riviera Theater – Chicago, 9/26/2007

I was invited to see the Beastie Boys Gala Event Tour at the insistence of my work/life/music bud Curt and I was like… the Beastie Boys, really? So he sent me a link to The Mix Up and I was in. Bonus that it was a special Gala Night where everyone was encouraged to dress to impress. I managed to capture most of the show on video – see the Youtube and Vimeo reels below or hit them here: almost full concert, Sabotage, Off The Grid, The Gala event, and a native resolution video on Vimeo of the opening Intro Jam. All video was shot on Sony Mini-DV tape and converted to digital.

A very different show than most people would’ve expected from the Beasties, touring behind their all instrumental disc The Mix Up and pulling instrumentals and jammy songs from their past catalog. They played at a smaller venues (for the Beasties) and requested that everyone dress up for one of the select Gala Event nights – a great night and a lot of jams!

The Gala Event – The Beastie Boys played 19 Gala Event nights out of 68 shows on The Mix Up tour. These nights were select events at smaller venues with a request from the Beasties that fans dress to impress – “wear a suit, a tie, a dress, your granma’s broach or whatever you feel good in… BUT PLEASE leave your cargo shorts, birkenstocks and t-shirts at home”. All in all an amazing and unique show – this was not “fight for their right to party” it was musicians playing their instruments, gettin funky and jammin out – something unique and a bit unexpected from the band!

The Mix Up – Beastieboys.com – Discogrpahy
“After ‘To the 5 Boroughs,’ we wanted to get back to playing instruments. It had literally been years since me, Adam, Mike and Mark had made music together, and we missed that spontaneous feeling of improvising with physical objects, away from a computer. We had no big concept or specific goal in mind for what we wanted to make; we just knew we wanted it to be live and direct. And fun. The end result was an all-instrumental record called ‘The Mix-Up.'”