Sometimes, fate just works so that the randomly assigned tickets in the 226 section of the Beastie Boys show at Madison Square turn into the best seats in the house. For the first song of their encore, Mike D, MCA and Adrock appeared right behind Gothamist and everyone around us lost it. People climbed over seats to get closer as the Beastie Boys sang Intergalactic. One poster to the Beastie Boys Message Board noted
The intergalatic encore was right behind my section. I was in sect. 226. This girl ran up to Mike D and starting crying like you see they little chinese girls do at the Michael Jackson concerts. It was crazy."
That's pretty accurate, except we always thought it was the little Japanese girls who cried at Michael Jackson concerts. Anyway, there were many video cameras on the Beastie Boys as they are putting together a concert DVD (they even asked fans to be camerapeople on their website earlier this week); Gothamist is sure that you'll be able to see our arm, snapping blurry pictures.
After the jump, you'll see more of our photos. Tien has some great pictures also. Here's their setlist; the final song was dedicated to President Bush - "Sabotage." And here are lyrics to songs from their latest album, To the Five Boroughs.
MSG was sold out.
After the main performance, people lit up their cellphones and cameras for an encore.
We were looking for them on stage when we heard the opening bars of Intergalactic, but the screaming was so loud behind us, we turned and there was Mike D.
A blurry photo of MCA. All Beastie Boys were wearing red t-shirts, with games on them named on them; MCA has "Mahjong," Adrock had "Scrabble," but we couldn't see what Mike D's shirt read. [We later learned it was "Critter." Whatever!]
The crowd was somewhat tamed by the intense security detail.
And Adrock was totally in our face. Best concert ever.
