A month away from 61, Mike D is no longer a boy.
But he proved that he’s still a beast(ie), musically, on Saturday night, Oct. 17, at Detroit’s Masonic Jack White Theatre.
It was the rapper-singer-songwriter-producer’s first concert in the metro area since the Beastie Boys’ two-night stand during September 2007 at the Fillmore Detroit. The group, of course, ceased after the 2012 death of Adam “MCA” Yauch, and D (nee Diamond) has laid low since, doing some remixing and producing bands such as Portugal. The Man and Soft Play. but he emerged this year with his first solo album, “Thank You,” working with sons Davis and Skyler Diamond (both part of the band Very Nice Person) and forming a band, dubbed 5D, to take it on the road.
That set, not surprisingly, was the core of Saturday’s hour-long show, with 10 of its 13 tracks in the 16-song setlist. But D serviced the Beastie Boys faithful as well, opening the show with a partial “Hello Brooklyn” and including truncated but ebullient renditions of “Looking Down the Barrell of a Gun,” “3-Minute Rule” and “Body Movin’” before closing the night with an extended “So What’cha Want” — all of which had the Masonic crowd spitting the Beasties’ rhymes back at the stage.
D5 also took on the British punk band Delta 5’s “Mind Your Own Business,” but with a heavy, 4×4 EDM arrangement more in keeping with D’s current musical method.
The six-member band’s performance of the new material took the songs’ electronic underpinnings even further, steering them with a combination of live instrumentation and sonic alchemy from the gear manned by the Diamond brothers and Eddie Ruscha (whose own son, Milo, played bass and occasional keyboards). Jeremy Gustin handled embellished the shifting, tricky tempos and beats with as assortment of polyrhythms, while Will Graefe added an additional array of textures on both electric and acoustic guitar. The overall result was a mélange that was certainly afield from what the Beasties did but certainly in keeping with that group’s inventive aesthetic.
And the energetic, sunglassed and T-shirted D’s adenoidal vocalizing insured that no one cold mistake where this music was rooted.
Former Beastie Boys member Mike D brought his new group, 5D, to Detroit’s Masonic Jack White Theatre on Saturday night, Oct. 17 (Photo by Joe Orlando)
The “Thank You” choices shot wide on Saturday, taking D and company in directions such “Switch Up’s” trip-hop, “It’s Time’s” jungle drive and the more melodic, song-like “I Don’t Care” and album title track. “Make It Stop” segued neatly into the banging “That’s Right,” while the troupe segued both parts of the “Thank You’s” “Secrets” into a single entity, the dance-floor second half ending with an instrumental bit of Brian Eno’s “Here Come the Warm Jets.”
D did not reference the long gap since he last came to town, but he was effusive about being in Detroit, even offering one apology during the show; “We kinda f***ed up; We were gonna do a Stooges cover…an Underground Resistance cover. We had a lot of good plans, (because) a lot of amazing music came from this city.” Those would have been nice, but unnecessary; what D and 5D delivered was a welcome and overdue return and certainly made those at the Masonic feel grateful — and hoping we’ll see him back in these parts before too long.