Beastie Boys Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, left, the late Adam “MCA” Yauch and Michael “Mike D.” Diamond knew how to throw a party. Photo by Phil Andelman

This is from a Nov. 12, 2004, show at the Nassau Coliseum. I pushed back a vacation in order to see the Boys. Rest in peace, MCA.

CONCERT REVIEW;
Boys of the boroughs rap an ode to NY

BY KEVIN AMORIM

STAFF WRITER

BEASTIE BOYS. Because they can’t, they won’t and they don’t stop. With Talib Kweli and Bob Moore’s Amazing Mongrels (is this what they call Beastie-ality?) at Nassau Coliseum Friday.

For a few hours Friday night, Uniondale — the Nassau Coliseum, to be precise - became an honorary slice of New York City.

The occasion was the Beastie Boys’ “To the 5 Boroughs” tour, the final U.S. stop for 2004. And from the first song, “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” a favorite that’s almost 20 years old, the B Boys — Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, Michael “Mike D.” Diamond and Adam “MCA” Yauch — planted a figurative NYC-rap flag onstage much like the Marines on Mount Suribachi. And, like those Marines, the Beastie Boys kicked butt.

Their matching Adidas sweats received a workout for the first part of the evening - bouncing through “Root Down” and “Sure Shot,” which manages the unlikely rhyme: “I’ve got more action than my man John Woo/And I’ve got mad hits like I was Rod Carew.” Multiply by three the balletic energy that went into some of Woo’s Hong Kong shoot-‘em-ups with Chow Yun-Fat, and you have some idea of the intensity of these middle-aged Boys.

Of late, the three rappers put most of their strength into the ABB campaign: Anybody But Bush. At the coliseum, aside from a funny video of Will Ferrell as W. down on the ranch, and one or two quips during the main set, the real political statement came at the end of the 90-minute show. The trio, fleshed out with a conga player and keyboardist, wielded instruments — Ad-Rock a guitar, Mike D. the drums and MCA a bass.

“We’re gonna have to end it on a bummer,” Ad-Rock said. “This song is dedicated to —- George W. Bush; it’s called ‘Sabotage.’ ” They should have warned the audience, which numbered around 6,500 before last-minute walk-ups, to leave their cochleas at the door.

What came before was less a political party and more an evening of party music. The three MCs were abetted by one DJ, Mix Master Mike, all night.

Nostalgic high points included “Paul Revere,” “So What’cha Want” and “Posse in Effect,” which featured Doug E. Fresh onstage beat-boxing it while the three Beastie Boys traded rhymes.

Even the most suburban of concertgoers felt pride during the group’s new love note to the city, “An Open Letter to NYC”: “Dear New York, I know a lot has changed/Two towers down, but you’re still in the game.”

Brooklyn’s Talib Kweli, endorsed by Jay-Z and touted on “Chappelle’s Show” no less, opened the musical part of the evening with tracks from the “Black Star” (Rawkus) album he did with Mos Def in ‘98 (“Definition”), as well as from the recent solo album “The Beautiful Struggle” (“I Try”).

The nonmusical opener — Bob Moore’s Amazing Mongrels — thrilled with various mutts performing life-and- paw-threatening (not really) stunts. While Skeeter and Ringo jumped through hoops, Fifi the Canine Knievel leaped off a towering ladder and into Moore’s arms.

Cute, but it’s a good thing the rest of the night didn’t go to the dogs.

BY KEVIN AMORIM

STAFF WRITER

My singing voice can wake the dead. Or so I thought.

In the early ’90s, shortly after coming under the sway of Guided by Voices, I lost control. Working in a Dayton, Ohio, funeral home — hey, we all have to start somewhere — I approached the microphone stand of the public-address system. A family had just been ushered out the side door for the drive to the cemetery, and I was supposed to be cleaning the room, replenishing Kleenex, whatever.

Then I did it: Volume for the PA system turned up to 8 or 9, I began swinging the mike like Roger Daltrey, except I was trying to be GBV front man Robert Pollard. Dressed in my one and only suit, I broke into possibly the worst version of “On the Tundra” ever, even trying to pull off a fake English accent to match Pollard’s faux burr. It was Guided by Voices karaoke without the karaoke machine. I’m glad a freaked-out funeral director stopped me before I tried “Wished I Was a Giant.”

That’s the kind of pull that accompanies Pollard’s songs - sort of Anglopop through an Appalachian filter. You get them in your head, hum them all day and try to sing them aloud, if possible.

But now Guided by Voices — the mass-murderer’s defense in name only — is itself coming to an end after two decades. Pollard, a former fourth-grade schoolmarm who has led the revolving-door band of musicians (he estimated a few years ago that he’s had 30 backup players come and go), is disbanding the group on New Year’s Eve. The shows tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at Irving Plaza in Manhattan will be the quintet’s final area appearances. Pollard plans to get more experimental without the confines of a band.

The mystery of GBV, to those outside of southwest Ohio at least, has a lot to do with the band’s base of operations. Besides being the hometown of Orville and Wilbur Wright, Dayton was home to the inventors who thought up everyday objects such as the cash register, the parking meter (sorry, world) and the soda pop-top.

Pollard’s spirit of trial and error - whether it was banging on a garbage-can lid to get the right amount of reverb for “My Valuable Hunting Knife” or recording on whatever equipment was available, including his pal Tobin Sprout’s boombox - can be traced to his birthplace.

Some of GBV’s subject matter finds a link to the area, too. Nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, rumored to be the home of Hangar 18 and those little green men from outer space, just may have inspired “Why Did You Land?” On the band’s 15th and final proper album, “Half Smiles of the Decomposed” (Matador), Pollard ends things with “Huffman Prairie Flying Field” - named after the open space where the Wrights perfected their flying skills in the early 1900s.

In the early 1990s, I hoped Pollard would soar, too. But at the same time I wanted to keep GBV all to myself. Then word began to seep out of Dayton. Spin magazine wrote about the band and Pollard booked GBV’s first show in Chicago, at a club named Thurston’s, in January 1994. I was there, hitching a ride with my friend “Fretless” Dan Toohey, a Peter Pan kind of guy who was GBV’s bass player at the time. That was when I met Pollard face to face; we had chatted by phone, and he was nice enough to pass along tapes the band was working on. “Bring the kid around to practice,” he told Toohey.

I never made it to a practice, but every chance I got, I went to see my guys - from Brookwood Park on the outskirts of Dayton; to Sudsy Malone’s, a bar-Laundromat (no fooling) in Cincinnati; to Central Park SummerStage in the big city.

After all these years, Chicago turns out to be where GBV - with the final lineup of Pollard, Doug Gillard, Nate Farley, Chris Slusarenko and Kevin March - makes its last stand Dec. 31. This tour is named the Electrifying Conclusion - there won’t be a drawn-out death like Cher’s been pulling for the past year.

This is it. Pass the Kleenex, please, and step away from the PA system, kid.

WHEN & WHERE Guided by Voices plays at 8 tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, Manhattan, 212-777-6800. $25. Call Ticketmaster at 631-888-9000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.