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On November 10th, 2004 I had the great privilege of seeing The Beastie Boys right here at home in Ottawa. The show was part of their Pageant Tour and it went down in Kanata at the…whatever they were calling the arena at the time.
(I’m not the biggest rap fan by any stretch, but these guys are the Wayne Gretzkys of the genre and were not to be missed, though I sure do miss them now that they are gone.)
Though I should remember the show for the astounding amount of great, great music that got played over the course of the night covering such a vast variety of styles, or perhaps for the circular stage that revolved several times throughout of the evening revealing the band decked out in any number of outfits designed to reflect their style-of-the-moment (especially notable were the glitzy lamé clothes that paired with their stellar instrumental lounge grooves), or maybe I should remember this one for the dog act (yes, the dog act) that opened the show. But no, I remember this concert mostly for the encore.
More specifically for the final secret encore.
The show ended as pretty much every show ends in the modern era, with the crowd dutifully calling for “more, more” while the band briefly steps backstage and readies themselves for their obligatory predestined encore. We did, they did; it was awesome.
And then it happened again…a rare (but not unheard of) second encore. Cool.
Of course the Corel Centre (or whatever) is notorious for their absurd parking lot; getting out of there after an event is like driving a camel through the eye of a needle, so people tend to race out of the building after a concert (or during the last five minutes of a hockey game regardless of how close the score is). On this night that meant that a lot of people missed the second encore, having ran to their cars the minute the band left the stage after encore number one. Poor souls.
So of course when the house lights came up after the surprise second encore and the house music started Muzaking through the speakers that was it; everyone that was left started heading for the doors. Fortunately I had been up front on the floor for the concert so I lingered, waiting for the packed stairs to clear out a bit.
While I lingered I watched the roadies hit the stage and I noticed that instead of unplugging cables and tearing down amp stacks they were actually plugging cables in and checking equipment. “Omigod,” I said to my friend Meggo. “They’re going to come back out for more!”
And they did. I think this may have been the only time in my life I saw a band come back out after the house lights had come on and I’ll never forget it because when they returned they played their certifiably greatest song ever:
Sabotage.
There was what, maybe 2,000 people left in the room? And most of them spent the first half of the short song racing back into the bowl from a dozen different staircases. I went from being twenty feet from the stage to being basically front and centre, jumping ten feet in the air the whole time.
It was my first ever secret encore. I wonder if I’ve unknowingly missed dozens of them over the years? I hope not, because secret encores are the best. Especially when it’s The Beastie Boys playing secret encores, and most especially when the secret encore is Sabotage.
Todd Man Out 