MMM

zieak ♦ April 18, 2005 ♦ 1 Comment

Saturday we were in Seattle and were fortunate enough to attend a free show that included Mix Master Mike. If you don’t know, MMM teamed up with the Beastie Boys on their album Hello Nasty. It really is pretty tough to find people who don’t like the Beastie Boys in one way or another. I have had friends that disliked them until they realized that their music isn’t electronica. They saw pictures of drums and guitars and shed their bb=rap equation for a little more respect. I hear their instrumentals on NPR outros quite often. From their early anthems to their catchy beats and silly videos they seem to get some respect from most people. One thing is for sure – they never have sold out. But MMM did a little. Camel was paying the bills for this tour. But i didn’t really care. He did a fantastic job on the turntables and the crossfader. He’s famous for having super fast hands and the ability to transform the turntable into an instrument of its own. He’d crossfade from one album to the next so quickly that he’d create his own beats. He mixed old school hip hop with Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine. He never seemed to play more than 30 seconds of a song (largely heavily altered with additional beats, record scratching, or crossfade techniques) before moving on. The familiar songs you couldn’t sing along but a few words before he took you from a familiar song to something vaguely like the original and yet a bit fresh and raw. He let out an “oops” early on but for the most part concentrated on the tunes and uged the crowd to get into the tracks. Nice show. There was the addition of people doing curtain acrobatics and the opening acts included Electric Six which i will always remember for their song Gay Bar as performed by viking kittens.