Beasties Play for Jay
The Beastie Boys will play a benefit for the family of late Run-DMC
DJ Jam Master Jay April 25th at the House of Blues in Las Vegas.
Slotted in one day before their appearance at the Coachella Arts
and Music Festival in Indio, California, the event will be the
Boys’ first gig in the western U.S. in four and a half years.
Former Beasties regular DJ Hurricane is also bill.
Jam Master Jay was shot and killed last October in his Queens,
New York, recording studio, leaving behind a wife and three
children. Police have yet to find his killer.
The Beastie Boys also plan to put in a live appearance at the
Tibetan Freedom Concert in Japan on April 19th, for a total of
three shows in one week, a frantic schedule for a group that has
rarely performed since they stopped supporting 1998’s Hello
Nasty.
The Beasties did release one new song, the anti-war “World Gone
Mad,” via the Internet, but Nasty‘s in-progess follow-up
won’t be ready until 2004.
“I don’t quite know how bands put out a record every year,” Adam
Yauch told Rolling Stone. “It takes a year to make the
record, a year to tour and then a year of vacation. We just happen
to stretch that vacation part to two or three years.”