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Brian Mclavish We all know that rock and its musical brethren have long enjoyed bringing down established morals like a house of cards. But the house that the Beastie Boys erect — using an insubstantial and slimy substance without being entertaining or inspired beyond prurient curiosity hardly seems an attractive alternative. It's startling how much money and attention get paid the Beasties, who packed about 1,400 fans Saturday night into the sold-out Uptown Theatre. Their barely hour-long show was loud, but I'm afraid more dumb than proud. Get this: The new-music commumity (and anyone else with cash to spend on the group's already nearly platinum LP, "Licensed to Ill") is supposed to be impressed with this Great White Rap trio's offensive and stupid conduct instead of being really bored by it. Which isn't to say that three young guys from New York screaming often filthy rhymes while a DJ reproduces bass-guitar-drum explosions from on top of five giant Budweiser beer cans doesn't grab the attention, at first. But take away the barely dressed girl, who spent the whole set undulating or hanging upside down in her cireular cage, and what you've got left is a plethora of — let's face it - noise. If anything, the group ought to have two or three females in the cage at the same time. Sound even more debauched? Naturally, but that way the Beasties might be able to distract even further from their insipid teenage tirades against authority and their redundant endorsements of drugs and booze, demeaning sex, violence and other highly questionable behavior patterns. Where's the talent? Nowhere within the unmusical and all too bratty shout sessions that passed for a concert. Where's the style? Not in the Beasties' dousing of demonstrative audience members with oozing, crushed cans of beer, even though the recipients who crammed close to the stage acted pleased. Where's the heart? It certainly wasn't revealed in the awkward lack of an encore or even a curtain call after the set-closer. "Fight for Your Right." Although "Fight for Your Right" *to p-a-a-a-a-a-rty! is a funny song, it was hardly worth having to endure in its entirety such a trivial fad-in-action as the Beasties. Perhaps authentic rappers Run D.M.C. will be showing up in town before too long. Fishbone, six uninhibited young men from Los Angeles who play a variety of instruments as well as pop/rock and R&B styles, easily showed up the headliner. They were wild - even rolling around on stage - but they could sing too. When they chanted "Fishbone is red hot!" there was little to argue with. Murphy's Law, a neo-punk quintet from New York, opened with a hit-and-miss set of near-thrash and Iggy Pop covers that had a few patrons half-heartedly slamming bodies on the dance floor. It was admittedly diverting to see the lead singer play guitar with his head and stumble like a monkey with an experimental drug running through its veins. |
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