Beastie Boys Prep New Album, Tour

Dec. 1, 2000 -- The Beastie Boys have been keeping a low profile the past few months, but don’t mistake that silence for a lack of work.

The hip-hop giants are out with a two-DVD anthology of their music videos, to be followed by new recordings that could take on a far more serious tone than one might expect for a bunch of guys who got their start proclaiming they had to fight for their right to party.

The rhyming fiends have been branching out, experimenting with jazz instrumentals on their 1998 release Hello Nasty.

Curried Raps to GoNow sounds from India are the style of choice, their DJ, MixMaster Mike, told ABCNEWS.com. He and the Beasties — drummer Mike Diamond, guitarist Adam Horovitz and bassist Adam “MCA” Yauch — have been kept busy by a number of projects.

“I’m doing a yoga album with Mike D … me and Ad Rock [Horovitz] are working on a drum record with all beats and sounds for DJs to cut up,” says MixMaster Mike, né Mike Schwartz.

“We’re working on a lot of music right now, but we don’t know if it’s a Beastie album … [but] we’re working on it,” says the San Francisco native.

The Beasties are also planning a full-scale tour, probably in March, to make up for their summer outing, which was squashed when Mike D broke his shoulder.

Turntables Turn in the Spotlight

Wearing the title as resident DJ for the Beastie Boys is a sweet gig, and came as a surprise for the 30-year-old, who went from having a guest spot during the recording of Hello Nasty to becoming the trio’s de-facto fourth member. “[They’re] my crew,” says MixMaster Mike.

“I’ve been wanting to take this performing arts type thing to like, probably Carnegie Hall and what not, and it’s going to different areas now … You see rock bands with DJs, it’s just spread like wildfire now.”

With or without a rock band, a DJ with some clout can easily rake in the crowds for a gig of his own. MixMaster Mike still takes time for solo shows, using the turntable to mix and spin vinyl recordings and create rhythms and sounds all his own.

“I just grab parts [of a song] and if it’s like a horn that’s played by itself, I can grab that horn and turn the power off the turntable and relay it,” says MixMaster Mike.

Those sounds are drawn from every kind of music, with sets changing throughout one of his tours. He says he keeps a set of turntables on his bus and continues reworking elements of his act while traveling the highways across the country.

“I listen to all different types of music so I got perspectives from different types of music, like jazz, blues and rock and not just hip-hop only. [It] gives me an ear when I’m performing, cuz I studied a lot of John Coltrane and B.B. King, and the way they play their instruments, so it’s just like when I play my instrument, the turntable, I know when it’s too much.”

But if the listener or the original performer recognizes their work, that means he’s not doing his job, MixMaster Mike says. “I do my best to really disguise it and really tweak it out so they’ll never notice. That’s my objective when I touch a record.”

Professor Mike

MixMaster Mike recently joined up with a traveling DJ school of sorts, sponsored by M&M Mars. He was one of several DJs setting up shop amid the food courts and Gaps in malls in 12 cities, including Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles, to share some of their skills with the younger set.

The locations may seem a bit tame: “I mean, who would walk into the mall and see somebody scratch? You don’t see that, so it’s good.”

While the young hopefuls will need more practice than they can get scratching for weekend shoppers, the series should at least get kids started, MixMaster Mike says. “I’m heavily involved in the whole turntable art and I just want to show kids what the turntable does these days.”

That’s quite a lesson for young MCs raised on the compact disc, who have probably never played or owned a vinyl record of their own.

“They [the kids] come up and then they’re like, ‘Doesn’t that mess the record up?’ I’m there to show ’em hands on, so I bring them up to the turntables and show ’em how to move the record back and forth, and ya know, it leaves kids with something to go home with,” says MixMaster Mike.

And hopefully their parents won’t mind cracking out the old vinyl if some of those kids want to perfect the craft, like the MixMaster who recalls his early days, spinning in his San Francisco bedroom.