January
The Beastie Boys spend January in New York NY working on the To The Five Boroughs album at their
Oscilloscope Studio.
March
The first song to come out of the To the Five Boroughs sessions,
"In A World Gone Mad" is released as a free MP3 on Beastie Boys.com on March 11 2003. The band receives a fair amount of criticism for the song, but it does not deter them from performing the song at their upcoming summer concert dates.
April
After not holding one for a few years, the Beastie Boys return to the stage to take part in another Tibetan Freedom Concert. This time around it is held in Tokyo, Japan on
April 19 2003. The Beastie Boys perform during the
second day too, which is held in Taipei Taiwan at the Songshan Tobacco Factory. After returning to the United States, the Beastie Boys fly to Las Vegas to perform at the Jam Master Jay Benefit Concert on
April 25 2003. Approximately 1800 tickets were available for this show and it sold out in 24.8 seconds.
December
On December 5th, 2003, word quickly spreads that an auction for all that remains of the Grand Royal record label has begun on the online auction site Bid4Assets.com. With a minimum bid of $10,000.00 and bidding increments of $2,500.00, this was not an auction for the casual fan. The winning bidder was said to inherit the Grand Royal LLC record label with various master recordings, license agreements, recording agreements and misc. contracts. However, assets related to the groups At the Drive In, Ben Lee, Noise Addict, and Bran Van 3000 were not included in the auction sale.
