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Official newsletter confirms performance dates

Well, it seems the Beastie Boys have finally seen fit to contact the hundreds thousands of fans who do not visit their official web site regularly to inform them of their upcoming tour dates.

An official e-newsletter was distributed today:
hi...
here's a few things you might wanna know about..

1. we have a new record coming out
2. it's gonna be sick
3. we're playing a bunch of shows this summer (see below)
4. they're gonna be sick
5. we're gonna play some instrumental only shows also... (you know..drums..bass..guitar..keyboard..percussion..)
6. better call your doctor..cause they're gonna be sick
7. it's gonna be a gala event
8. we're changing up the website...sick
9. got new gear coming soon...again...sick..
10. go see a tailor and get tapered up...

see you soon....beastie boys
www.beastieboys.com

May 26th - Sasquatch Festival - George, Washington
Beastie Boys - A Gala Event - Exclusive Instrumental Show
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.com/artist/860071
Festival Information: www.sasquatchfestival.com

May 27th - Sasquatch Festival - George, Washington
Tickets: www.ticketmaster.com/artist/860071
Festival Information: www.sasquatchfestival.com

June 10 - Alive Festival - Lisbon, Portugal
Tickets and Festival Information: www.everythingisnew.pt

June 14th - Sonar Festival
Beastie Boys - A Gala Event - Exclusive Instrumental Show
Tickets and Festival Information: www.sonar.es

June 15th - Sonar Festival
Tickets and Festival Information: www.sonar.es

June 17th - One Love Festival - Istanbul, Turkey
Tickets: www.biletix.com
Festival Information: www.pozitif.info/2004/en/

June 22nd - Hurricane Festival - Scheessel, Germany
Tickets and Festival Information: www.hurricane.de

June 24th - Southside Festival - Neuhausen, Germany
Tickets and Festival Information: www.southside.de/

June 26th - Zenith - Paris, France
Headline Show
Tickets: www.fnacspectacles.com

June 28th - Rock Werchter Festival - Belgium
Tickets: 194.7.45.68/nl/event.php?event_id=158876
Festival Information: www.rockwerchter.be

June 30th - Heineken Festival - Gdynia, Poland
Tickets and Festival Information: www.opener.pl

July 1st - Heineken Festival - Gdynia, Poland
Beastie Boys - A Gala Event - Exclusive Instrumental Show
Tickets and Festival Information: www.opener.pl

July 3rd - Quart Festival - Kristiansand, Norway
Tickets and Festival Informaton: www.quart.no

July 6th - Roskilde Festival - Denmark
Tickets and Festival Information: www.roskilde-festival.dk

July 11th - Moon & Stars Festival - Locarno, Switzerland
Tickets on sale March 29th. Ticket link: www.ticketcorner.com

July 13th - Exit Festival - Novi Sad, Serbia
Tickets: www.exitservices.co.yu
Festival Information: www.exitfest.org

July 14th - Nuke Festival - Vienna, Austria
Tickets and Festival Information: www.nuke.at

August 31st - Connect Festival - Inverary Castle, Scotland
Tickets and Festival Information: www.connectmusicfestival.com

September 8th - Bestival - Isle of Wight, UK
Tickets and Festival Information: www.bestival.net

September 9th - Bestival - Isle of Wight, UK
Beastie Boys - A Gala Event - Exclusive Instrumental Show
Tickets and Festival Information: www.bestival.net
Seriously. If you were a Beastie Boys fan--which we assume you are since you're reading this--how would you know about the tour dates before now if you didn't actively search for them from other sources? This newsletter is WAY PAST DUE. Communication is a must, Beastie Boys!

Enough of my disapproval. HOORAY for show confirmation!

What did this newsletter tell us that we self-informed fans didn't know before?
  1. The locations of the exclusive instrumental shows are confirmed as George, Washington (Sasquatch Festival); Barcelona, Spain (Sonar Festival); Gdynia, Poland (Heinken Open'er Festival); and Isle of Wight, UK (Bestival).
  2. The show in Paris will not be an instrumental set, which pleases us.
  3. Somebody likes the word sick.
You may subscribe to the official newsletter at Beastieboys.com.

Four exclusive instrumental shows planned for Europe

Yesterday (March 26) Mikołaj Ziółkowski, the organizer of the Heineken Open'er Festival, told Trójka Radio that the Beastie Boys will play TWO SHOWS at the Polish music festival. On Saturday, June 30, Beastie Boys will play their regular set at the festival and on Sunday, July 1, they will perform an EXCLUSIVE INSTRUMENTAL SHOW.

Ziółkowski also told the radio program that Beastie Boys will play their special instrumental sets, which he referred to as a "project," at three other European cities: in Barcelona at the Sonar Festival (which was confirmed at the band's official site), at the Roskilde Festival, and in Paris.

Beastie Boys in Switzerland

On July 11, Beastie Boys will perform at the Moon & Stars Festival in Piazza Grande Locarno, Ticino, Switzerland.

Tickets will be sold at Ticketcorner.com; however, at this time, there is no listing for the event. We will report when tickets go on sale.

Beastie Boys to perform at Virgin Festival



Beastie Boys will be performing at the Virgin Festival, which will be held August 4 and 5 at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland.

According to the festival web site, the ticket on-sale date will be announced soon.

Yeeeeaaaahhhh Booooiiiii!!

Beastie Boys are among the musical artists who will be contributing their thoughts to a documentary about Public Enemy. The dvd, titled Public Enemy, the Brotherhood, marks the legendary rap group's 20th anniversary. In addition to tributes by PE's friends, the dvd will include live performance footage.

A release date for the dvd has not yet been determined.

Beastie Boys confirmed for Connect Festival

As reported earlier, the Beastie Boys will headline the Connect Festival in Argyll, Scotland, on Friday, August 31. The headlining artists were officially announced today.

Tickets for the event will go on sale on this Friday, March 23, at 9 a.m. (local time).

Money Mark tour update

Here's a list of upcoming Money Mark shows in Europe:

12 Apr 07 Trabendo, Paris, France
14 Apr 07 Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark
15 Apr 07 Knust, Hamburg, Germany
16 Apr 07 Magnet, Berlin, Germany
18 Apr 07 Prime Club, Cologne, Germany
19 Apr 07 Paradiso, Amsterdam, Holland
20 Apr 07 Bioul, Brussels, Belgium
23 Apr 07 Phoenix, Exeter, UK
24 Apr 07 Audio, Brighton, UK
25 Apr 07 Other Rooms, Newcastle, UK
27 Apr 07 King Tuts, Glasgow, UK
28 Apr 07 Leadmill, Sheffield, UK
29 Apr 07 Night & Day, Manchester, UK
01 May 07 ICA, London, UK
02 May 07 Thekla, Bristol, UK
03 May 07 Social, Nottingham, UK

Friedman presents photography at NYC conference

Yesterday in New York, photographer Glen E. Friedman participated in SweetTalkNYC, a conference on design, photography, and illustration. Friedman presented and spoke about some of his band photography, including his work with the Beastie Boys. Check out John Prolly's photoset on Flickr to see photos of Friedman's presentation at SweetTalkNYC.

Sasquatch Music Festival giveaways

The Sasquatch Music Festival and Tag Team Media are giving away a set of two-day passes to the Sasquatch Music Festival, which the Beastie Boys are headlining on May 27. To qualify for the giveaway, email sasquatchgiveaway@tagteammedia.com (only one entry per individual, per email will be accepted). Provide your name, age, phone number, and the name of the web site through which you found the giveaway by Monday, April 2.

This giveaway is actually designed as a promotional activity to highlight one of the other bands performing at Sasquatch -- Tokyo Police Club, which is a band I highly recommend checking out. The winner of the giveaway will get to meet and interview Tokyo Police Club at the festival.

The giveaway only covers entrance to the festival, not airfare or accommodations.

LiveNation.com has a sweet giveaway for the Sasquatch Music Festival, which includes VIP Solid Gold Supertickets, airfare, and lots of swag. Enter the giveaway here.

Yauch talks to the kids

We have a follow-up to the story we posted earlier about Adam Yauch being interviewed by students participating in Project Happiness, a youth program established by the Dalai Lama Foundation.

One of the students has written about the interview with Yauch in the project's blog:
Our first interview was with a member of the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch. He was a very down to earth person. Being a practitioner Buddhism, he has done a lot of work through his band and his fame to promote the Free Tibet Movement. One thing I really respected about Adam Yauch was how sincere he was with his answers to us; he showed no restraint in asking for clarification in our questions. To me this showed that he honestly cared about answering our questions, instead of simply answering a question he did not understand with an answer that didn’t mean anything to him. One of my favorite answers that he gave us was when we asked him if he had any advice about how to make the project more accessible to the mainstream youth. His response was that, as a class, and as members of this mainstream youth, we could make the project accessible by using our own experiences and personal connections to the project to connect with the readers, instead of preaching to the youth. This really resonated with me. If we can show kids our age that we are going through all of the processes described in the project relating to finding our own happiness, I think it would make the project more open to youth and therefore make it more accessible.
Ahh, that Mr. Yauch! He's such a good guy, reaching out to the kids.

Beastie Boys to headline Connect Festival

The Sunday Mail reports that the Beastie Boys will headline the final day of a new music festival in Scotland. The Connect Festival will take place at Inveraray Castle in Argyll, Scotland, on August 31 - September 2. Bjork and Primal Scream will headline on the other days.

The promoters will officially announce the line-up on Tuesday (March 20). Tickets will go on sale on Friday (March 23) at 9 a.m. local time.

The Sunday Mail also reports that the Beastie Boys intend to film their performance at the Connect Festival for a DVD.

"Pick Up the Pieces" video



"Pick Up the Pieces" is the first single from Money Mark's new album Brand New by Tomorrow. If you don't have the album yet, get it now! It's sexy.

Money Mark interview and performance



Minnesota Public Radio is hosting audio of an interview and performance with Money Mark in Austin, Texas. Mark is in town to perform at the South by Southwest Festival and promote his new album Brand New by Tomorrow.

Setlist:
Color of Your Blues
Summer Blue
Sneaky People

In the interview portion, Mark talks about how he met the Beastie Boys, his involvement on Check Your Head, and his upcoming tour plans. In addition, he mentions that he has heard the new Bad Brains' album produced by Adam Yauch.

Barcelona gets blessed with two Beastie Boys performances



Beastie Boys have confirmed that they will be performing at this year's Sonar Festival in Barcelona, Spain. They will be doing two sets -- an exclusive instrumental show on June 14 and a standard set on June 15.

Tickets are on sale now at Ticktackticket.com. The site does not allow direct ticket order linking. Please follow these instructions to order in English:
  1. Go to this page.
  2. In the Search field, type "Sonar."
  3. Click the orange "Buy" button on the right side of the page to get the correct ticket order page.
  4. On the ticket order page, indicate in the blank fields next to "Opening Night Ticket - Thursday 14th" and/or Sónar by Night Friday 15th Ticket how many tickets you wish to purchase. (These instructions are applicable if you're only interested in seeing the Beastie Boys' sets. Festival passes are available if you wish to attend the entire festival.)
  5. Provide your credit card information.
  6. Choose shipping option. (Please note that the ticket service's international delivery is very limited. U.S. orders will be held at will-call for pick-up.)
  7. Click "Confirm."
As an added bonus, the Beastie Boys concert film Awesome: I Fuckin' Shot That! will be screened at the SonarCinema on all days of the festival (i.e., June 14, 15, and 16).

Happiness according to Yauch

This week Adam Yauch will be interviewed by a group of students as part of Project Happiness, a documentary film and Internet project launched by the Dalai Lama Foundation. The project aims to help young people on a "universal quest for happiness."

The students will ask Yauch to describe his thoughts on happiness. They will also interview other celebrities and eventually the Dalai Lama himself in India on the same topic. The interviews will be shared at the students' personal blog at ProjectHappiness.net. The students will also be using Youtube.com and Myspace.com to promote their project and message.

What happiness is pretty simple for us: It's a new Beastie Boys album.

Check the Technique

Brian Coleman, is working on a book titled Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies, which will contain a chapter about the Beastie Boys' album Check Your Head.

The author told The Phoenix: "For the Beastie Boys chapter (Check Your Head) I talked to every single person involved in making that record. It gave me the luxury to do that. It was nothing but amazing, I'm really excited."

Coleman is the author of Rakim Told Me, a first-hand account of hip-hop classics. The self-published book created such a buzz that Random House asked Coleman to update and release a much bigger book. Coleman doubled the amount of hip-hop information to 500 pages, including and excluding some things from Rakim. The book is 36 chapters on the making of 36 hip-hop classics -- everything from the Fugees to Too $hort.

Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies will be released on June 12 by Villard.

Beastie Boys to perform in Ireland?

Beastie Boys are strongly rumored to be headlining the Electric Picnic in Ireland. This smallish festival (only 32,500 tickets available) takes place in County Laois on August 31-September 2. Also rumored to perform at the Electric Picnic are Bjork and Primal Scream.

Festival organizers will be announcing the artist line-up later this month.

More from Yauch on new Bad Brains and Beastie Boys albums

From MTV.com:
Beastie Boys' MCA Helms 'Incredible' New Bad Brains LP
MC also says that next Beasties LP, due this year, will be 'instrument-driven.'

By Chris Harris

Adam Yauch hasn't been saying much about the Beastie Boys' upcoming record, even though they've been working on it for nearly a year. So when he agreed to do an interview about Build a Nation, the forthcoming album from reunited hardcore legends the Bad Brains — a Megaforce Records release he produced that lands May 7 — well, we couldn't resist slipping a couple of Beastie questions in.

"I'm not sure that I'm at liberty to divulge anything about it, but we're definitely working on it," he said of the yet-untitled follow-up to 2004's To the 5 Boroughs. "We've been working on music since last spring, and we're mixing right now. Hopefully, it will come out in the spring — at least that's what we're shooting for."

As for what the album sounds like, he said simply that "we're focusing on playing instruments," and "we're not even looking at samples right now, because we're moving more in an instrument-driven direction for this one."

That's all he would say, so without further ado, onto the first new album from the Bad Brains in a dozen years, which features the group's original lineup: frontman H.R., guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer and drummer Earl Hudson. Over the years that lineup has splintered more times than anyone can keep track of — Dr. Know and Jenifer have performed with different singers and drummers, both as the Bad Brains and as Soul Brains — but there's no denying the power of the original crew. On their first releases — 1982's self-titled LP and the following year's Rock for Light — the band played both blistering hardcore songs and smooth reggae. Later efforts found them fusing the sounds into a bruising but soulful form of hard rock.

"When they get together and start playing, there's definitely some magic in the air," Yauch explained. "I was psyched to produce the record, and they still sound so incredible."

Yauch, who continues to cite Bad Brains as a chief influence on his own music, said that during a phone conversation with Jenifer, the bassist "mentioned they were planning to get back together and record some stuff, and I told him they were welcome to come down to [the Beasties' Oscilloscope laboratories and studio in New York], and that I'd work with them if they were into that, and it just came together."

MCA said he had helped inspire a Bad Brains reunion more than a decade ago when he tried to persuade the band to ink with the Beasties' now-defunct Grand Royal label. "They ended up doing a deal with Madonna [a reference to Maverick Records, then co-owned by the singer] and made that record [1995's God of Love]," he said. "This just sort of came together — I guess it was just the right time for it to happen."

The arrangement is the latest culmination of the two groups' long history, which stretches back to the early 1980s. "It was definitely a long process, and it happened over the course of many years," Yauch said. "I just got to know them a little bit back in the hardcore days. We used to open up for them when we first started out. I think maybe it was our third show; H.R. was there and he started slam-dancing into everybody and got the whole audience excited — and when I say 'the whole audience,' I'm talking about all 15 people that were there. Afterwards, I was talking to him for a minute, and he asked us to open for them at [then-hotspot] Max's Kansas City. That was a pretty exciting moment, playing a show with those guys."

And when it came to producing a band he's idolized for so long, Yauch said he let the fan in him come out.

"I talked to them a bit on the phone, and I told them the stuff I was most excited about was the early punk stuff, rather than the later stuff, like [1986's] I Against I, where they were fusing the reggae elements with the rock stuff. I liked it when it was more separate, when the dubs [reggae songs] were dubs and the rock tracks were more hardcore. And I think they took that to heart a bit in the writing process.

"I was pretty involved in getting the sounds right on this record," he added. "I always loved the way [Bad Brains] sounded. That's the way they're meant to sound — the way they sounded live in those days, when the amps were really overdriven, on the verge of exploding. There was something about that level of energy. That's what I was striving for. A lot of the later records, to me, were a cleaned-up version of [ Bad Brains]. I just wanted to capture that raw sound they're known for."

Fans will be able to catch both the Beastie Boys and Bad Brains this summer, Yauch said. While no definitive touring plans have been nailed down yet, both will be taking the stage for this year's Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Washington, on May 27.

Northern State new album in September

Northern State are planning to release their new album in September. In an interview given to Express, Hesta Prynn revealed that the album will contain two tracks produced by Adam Horovitz. Read the interview here.

Yauch talks about Bad Brains album

From Pitchfork.com:
Beasties' Yauch Talks New Album, Bad Brains

It's been three years since the Beastie Boys released To the 5 Boroughs, which is still only half the time between the release of Boroughs and its immediate predecessor, Hello Nasty. The trio is, however, already hard at work on their next album, as Adam Yauch (aka MCA) revealed to Pitchfork in a recent interview.

Yauch says the Beasties are "focusing on playing instruments [and] not really working with drum machines and samples" on the record, which they are in the process of mixing. The album is currently untitled, but they hope to release it this spring.

If that happens, the group will have an album to promote on their upcoming summer festival tour, the first date of which is at the Sasquatch! Festival alongside their friends and old touring buddies Bad Brains. Yauch says there are no plans for the two groups to play together at the festival but adds that Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer "will probably steal a couple of beers from my dressing room."

Yauch spent a lot of time with Jenifer and the rest of Bad Brains' original lineup recently when he produced their forthcoming album, Build a Nation. Yauch calls Nation "more raw sounding than some of the other stuff that they did. It has a pretty full sound, but it's more like the way they sounded live back in the day seeing them at CBGB's, the amps and the PA at full tilt."

Nation also takes a different approach to the band's reggae influences: "With I Against I and after that, they started bringing the reggae influence into the rock style, and this record goes back to the [self-titled] ROIR cassette style where the dub is very separate from the hardcore tracks. There are tracks that are more straight-up hardcore and then tracks that are straight-up dub."

Considering how fast Bad Brains used to play, it would be understandable if they had mellowed in their old age. But Yauch says, "If anything, they play more accurately than ever. They're pretty incredible musicians. It was pretty amazing hearing those guys play together and lay it down. The way that they move together, the drums and bass and guitar, is almost like one complex instrument. I guess they've just been playing together so long that there's a certain flow to the way the band plays that's pretty unique. They have a lot of jazz influences in the way they go through changes. Like, the chord changes that they choose and the rhythms that they do are pretty amazing."

Build a Nation comes out this spring on Megaforce Records.

Beastie Boys to headline Roskilde Festival



Beastie Boys will headline Denmark's Roskilde Festival on July 6. Tickets are on sale now at billetnet.dk (€200 for a 4-day pass).

Beastie Boys to headline Nuke Festival



Beastie Boys will headline the Nuke Festival in Vienna, Austria, on July 14. Tickets may be purchased at musicticket.at (€79,90 for a two-day pass).

Yauch reveals pretty much nothing about new album

Surprise-surprise. No updates from the Beastie Boys.

From Billboard:
March 05, 2007

Beastie Boys Eyeing Summer For New Album
By Jeff Vrabel

An uncharacteristically short three years after their last disc, 2004's "To the 5 Boroughs," the Beastie Boys are putting the finishing touches on a new record. "Hopefully that'll be out this summer, too," group member Adam Yauch tells Billboard.

Though he remained characteristically tight-lipped about details, Yauch says the Beasties plan to air out some of the new material in a series of dates this summer, including a headlining slot at the Sasquatch Festival, to be held May 26-27 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Wash.

From there, the Beastie Boys head to Europe for a series of festival dates. The band also plays a headlining set in Paris on June 26.

As first reported here Friday, Yauch has also produced a new record by the original lineup of Bad Brains, "Build a Nation," due in late May or early June via Megaforce.

Review of Singapore Good Vibrations Festival

Better late than never, The Malay Mail has published its review of the Good Vibrations Festival in Singapore.
March 2, 2007

NO SLEEP 'TILL BEASTIE
By Tania Safuan

WHILE half of Singapore remained closed for the second day of the Lunar New Year, Fort Canning Park was 'vibrating' with activity.

It was the venue for the Good Vibrations festival (originally from Australia), which was taking place in Asia for the first time.

With a line-up comprising Cut Copy, Jurassic Five and main headliner Beastie Boys, it was hard not to leave the small talk of Chinese New Year at home with the relatives.

Regional acts conquered the first half of the festival; a rather turbulent route of genres, there was reggae by Bushmen one minute, and broody drum and bass by Guerrilla Collective the next.

There was no moshpit, but beach balls were tossed about the crowd, hitting heads and hairdos.

Two thumbs up to percussive band Wicked Aura Batucada for making people dance in the drizzle; Electrico for their impressive cover of Soft Cell's Tainted Love; and Indonesia's Agrikulture, whose sexy beats could have made 'discotheque' a cool word again.

By the second half of the evening (around 9pm), the crowd was getting restless.

Alternative remixers Cicada emerged on stage with sheer-dressed front-woman Heidun Bjornsdottir flirting with the crowd.

But things quickly perked up as the Australian electronic-punk pop trio Cut Copy launched into Saturday, a hit from their Bright Like Neon Love album.

The lengthy intervals might have been the night's rash, no thanks to the long queue that extended from the only two drink booths available at the park.

Here was another mystery - our own Too Phat was scheduled to perform before Cut Copy, but they were nowhere to be seen.

When Californian hip hop crew Jurassic Five came out, it was the general consensus that the hip hop group had saved the night's wear and tear of energy.

Their old school, no-frills approach and inventive social commentaries perked up the heads of thousands present, and everyone was awake again.

At last, when three men in suits - the Beastie Boys - took the stage looking like greying fathers of blues, there was an avalanche of cheers throughout the entire park.

This was hip hop, Beastie Boys' style.

Performing tracks like Brass Monkey, No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn and Ch-Check It Out (some verses were rapped to the beats of Erick Sermon's React, Nina Sky's Move Your Body, and Missy Elliot's Pass That Dutch), the Boys proved that they were musical geniuses.

Their encore was Sabotage - which was dedicated to a certain politician named Bush - which later mixed into the long-awaited rendition of Intergalactic.

Although the boys left out party anthem Fight for Your Right from their playlist, everyone walked out of Fort Canning Park with one checklist box ticked - they'd watched Beastie Boys 'live', and it was undoubtedly awesome.

As for the night's controversy, it was a tie between the group's song dedication to US president Bush and the missing trash bins around the park.

Bad Brains album finally gets a title and release date

Billboard reports that the Bad Brains album that Adam Yauch produced will be released in late May/Early June on Megaforce Records.
Bad Brains Back To Rock The 'Nation' With Beastie
By Jeff Vrabel

As standard bearers of the East Coast hardcore scene in the early 1980s, Bad Brains were partly responsible for helping the Beastie Boys first get into the recording studio. As previously reported, one of the Boys is returning the favor, as a long-awaited Bad Brains record produced by the Beasties' Adam Yauch will see the light of day this summer.

"Build a Nation," recorded with the classic Bad Brains lineup of enigmatic singer H.R., guitarist Dr. Know, bassist Darryl Jenifer and drummer Earl Hudson, is slated for a late May/early June release on Megaforce Records, Billboard can exclusively reveal.

For Yauch, producing the record was a labor of love. Bad Brains were one of the groups, he says, that shaped the Beastie Boys' early hardcore years. "Those guys are really of a different caliber in terms of their songwriting and musicianship. We always used to throw songs together and play a little bit, but they were really intense musicians," he tells Billboard.

With that in mind, Yauch went into "Build a Nation" with a plan. "I kind of felt like I knew the way they should sound, because I grew up listening to them, going to see them when they first came up to New York from [Washington] D.C. and were playing CBGB and Max's [Kansas City]," he says. "My feeling was that the ROIR tape [Bad Brains' self-titled debut record, released on cassette only] really sounded right-a lot of the stuff after felt to me like people were trying to clean them up and make them sound more palatable for radio. So I guess I sat around thinking, 'Man, if I could just get in there.'"

Jenifer agreed, and when he and Dr. Know got together to lay down early riffs in his Woodstock, N.Y., studio, they aimed "to show fans who we are. Bad Brains has always experimented, forging ahead in terms of riffs and searching for unique ways to approach rock music, but we said this time we're going to take it back to the way we used to kick it," he says.

The two camps nearly worked together a decade ago. According to Yauch, Bad Brains were in negotiations to release a record on the Beastie Boys' now-defunct Grand Royal label, but Madonna's label Maverick Records stepped up "and offered them a whole bunch of money, and I understood they had to go that route." (That record, 1995's "God of Love," was more reggae-oriented than its predecessors.)

But in 2002, Yauch found himself talking again with Jenifer, who mentioned that the band had been mulling new material. Yauch offered use of his studio, and the reunion was born. "For some reason or another it kept circling above the airport [since then]," Yauch says. But with vocals and overdubs now complete, it's finally ready to go.

Beastie Boys and Bad Brains will appear at the Sasquatch Festival, to be held May 26-27 at the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Wash.

Bad Brains will play some live dates this summer too, but "we're not looking for 30-date tours," Jenifer says. "We're looking at dates in New York and San Francisco, to ease our way into doing this. There's no mystery in our dysfunction, but we're not a band. We're like troubadours out there to give peace and love, and we're very serious about wanting people to feel it."

Beastie Boys ticket information

We thought it was time to review the announced performance dates -- a few of which we have been too lazy to post previously -- and provide specific ticket information to make up for our laziness.

May 27
Sasquatch Festival
George, Washington, USA
Presale now (password: beast) // On sale March 3 ($100 for 2-day pass)

June 10
Alive Festival
Lisbon, Portugal
Ticket information not available

June 17
Efes Pilsen One Love Festival
Istanbul, Turkey
On sale March 5

June 22
Hurricane Festival
Scheesel, Germany
On sale now (€101)

June 24
Southside Festival
Neuhausen, Germany
On sale now (€101)

June 26
Le Zenith
Paris, France
On sale now (€ 40.70 or € 46.20)
Note: This is NOT a festival performance.

June 28
Rock Werchter Festival
Werchter, Belgium
On sale now (€75)

June 30
Heineken Open'er Festival
Gdynia, Poland
On sale now (199 PLN for 3-day pass)

July 3
Quart Festival
Kristiansand, Norway
On sale now (1735,00 NOK)

July 13
Exit Festival
Novi Sad, Serbia
On sale now (€78.50 for 4-day pass)

September 8
Bestival
Isle of Wight, UK
On sale now (£115.00 for 3-day pass)
Note: The web site is overloaded today because of high demand for tickets. It recommends phoning for tickets. See web site for phone number.