“Welcome to this random tunnel in London,” Mike D begins, addressing a crowd of melting people in a Waterloo railway arch, the latest stop in his first solo tour, which he’s chosen to undertake in esoteric venues around the UK - think bingo halls and working men’s club. Why do this? Well it’s to do with his esoteric approach to music, as one of Beastie Boys who made eccentricity, risk and japes, into some of the greatest hip-hop ever. You also sense that given this is his first musical foray, beyond producing others people’s records, since the death of Adam Yauch in 2012 - with him being open about his struggles after the death of his friend - he’s building back up from the basics. Trying out his new music, his new band, in a humble manner, rather than just playing Beasties’ Best Of at The O2.
Except, that’s not quite right either. For this is Mike D, and he is resplendent in day-glo jogging suit, backed with a band called The D5 who are also in day-glo jogging suits. And from the second they start it is a bouncing, joyous show, and the music that we’re hearing is not some tentative dip back but immense and immediate, melding punk, hip-hop, rave, with a very Beasties gonzo attitude. Yes, this seems to be more about Mike D rediscovering what he loved about music in the first place: the fun of it.
And the fun of being part of a band. His sons, Skyler and Davis are part of D5 and they’re a proper unit - this is very much not Mike D with a backing band, instead it’s like watching Devo doing a HIIT workout, all flying arms and hair and toy rayguns and a stripper’s flair when it comes to shedding clothes in a venue D drily calls, “A bit clammy.”
It’s sweatbox this tunnel. But the music sounds incredible, instantly addictive. One of the songs he’s already put out, What We Got, has this brutal guitar line with this chant-a-long old school chorus that shapeshifts into nu-rave; image Klaxons, but good. Make It Stop is next, outrageous fun, sampling Kraftwerk but not in a precious Coldplay way but in a robot dancing way.
Next they move into the first of two Beasties tunes, Looking Down the Barrel from Paul’s Boutique, with that heavy industrial rolling guitar riff. Later they will close the set with So What’cha Want, an all-time attitide-filled hip hop shred classic from Check Your Head, and these two old tunes give a good idea of where his music is at, sonically. Loud, intense, an onslaught of sounds and ideas that still manages to be catchy as hell. The Beastie Boys were of course a hardcore band first.
The other new ones take this sound and expand it. True Colors sounds like Spaceman 3. I Don’t Care has a more mellow touch before it goes all sci-fi. Secrets flies fully into the stratosphere, Mike D declaring a, “safe space on this spaceship.” It begins with a heavy pulsing dub before expanding into epic ambient disco. His new single Switch Up begins as a jungle track before diving into avant electro-pop sounding a bit like Fcukers playing Pissed Jeans.
The encore features a blistering version of Delta 5’s Mind Your Own Business before So What’cha Want brings out the inevitable graveyard of smartphones - way to kill the moment, morons - but the last song of the main set is a song called Thank You. And it’s worth dwelling on because it produced a genuine moving moment - a slow song with Mike D singing, “We were just kids... trying it out.... thank you for everything, thank you for having me,” and as realisation dawns that this is his heartfelt ode to MCA and Ad-Rock and being grateful for their incredible journey, the crowd in the tunnel respond so warmly and genuinely that D seems to shed a tear.
And this is just it: with his kids in the band, and his past honoured in the spirit with which he’s approaching the present, this is curiously emotional as well as being a joy. As he put it at one point, “This is a song from my old band... not that it’s over. I’m in it for life.”
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