The band: The Beastie Boys. The venue: Tradewinds, Sea Bright. The description: Insanity.

Since their last album Paul’s Boutique was released in 1989, The Beastie Boys have undergone an extensive sabbatical, while their audience – or should I say, disciples – have remained loyal. So loyal in fact, they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves, their spouses, their clothing and their beers.

In other words, were Pandora to have taken a sneak peek into her music box on Friday night, she’d have been a trifle confounded by the sheer number of bodies hurtling above the many adoring heads.. That’s bodies, as in human beings – rolling, tumbling, squawking men being thrown like pancakes into the humidity of a heaving madhouse.

Why? Why indeed. Why is it that four million people (predominantly male) would wish to pay $17 to be potentially trampled to death in order to witness three twentysomething Jewish guys sing about their right to party?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that The Beastie Boys made their name (and a considerable number of dollars) with their trash epic of 1987, ‘Fight For Your Right (To Party).’

Funky Persian poet of the IIth century, Hassan Sabbah, once said: ‘’Nothing is true – everything is permitted.’ So far as 99 percent of the current music industry is concerned, this succinct yet all-encompassing invitation couldn’t be closer to the truth.

But what poor Sabbah failed to realise was the mid-20th century’s appreciation for rock’n’roll, a genre of communication so vehemently despised and adored, so vaunted and real, that the aforementioned permission and truth didn’t even enter the equation. These qualities can pretty much be applied to most new fashions, sounds and trends, one of the latest being rap, a division of popular music essentially catered by, for, and to, blacks.

Until, of course, The Beastie Boys came along.

Five years ago, the New York trio combined rap with funk and funks original ingredients: sex, fun and danger. Their debut, Licensed To Ill, was a belligerent chronicle of excess, an anti-album of metal/hip-hop and unsafe sex innuendo that in 1987, was at the vanguard of its niche. This may (or may not) explain why it became the biggest selling rap album ever.

Check Your Head, released in April of this year, is just as effervescently direct as it is inexorable. Rather like their live show at Tradewinds.

Introduced by the inevitable and invisible fourth Beast, Ricky Powell, the band sauntered onto the stage amidst an avalanche of chaos and pre-recorded tape loops. Launching straight into ‘Let Yourself Go,’ it didn’t take long for bassist MCA (Adam Yauch) to clamber onto the PA column, therefore enticing a few enthusiastic fans to fly. But gravity being what it is…

An arousing ‘Jimmy James’ followed, after which King Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) pleaded with the audience to ‘’chill out.’’ Which reminds me, the temperature at this point was reminiscent to that of West Africa. ‘Gratitude’ was performed with as much gusto and dexterity as a pre-recorded tape can possibly procure, which is to say that watching The Beastie Boys live is a partially fraudulent affair.

So what if all three members of the band are hip-hopping the stage like rabid fleas in heat? What you’re witnessing is a tempestuous and glorified karaoke of The Beastie Boys. The difference being, it’s the real thing.

Thus, by the time The Beastie Boys actually picked up their instruments to play, the fatigue of ‘’much ado about nothing,’’ had irrevocably set in. ‘Are you ready for some sex soul classics?’’ asked drummer Mike D (Mike Diamond).

‘’Whoaaaaahhhhh’’ responded the throngs of rebels without a clue. And on it went into the New Jersey night. A night that barely breathed for lack of musical flesh and blood.

‘Stay Together,’ ‘Mark On The Bus,’ ‘Lighten Up’ and ‘Time For Livin’’’ were all executed with a stance of back-to-roots infallibility that never let up.

On the other hand, there was no real communication between band and audience throughout the entire performance. Sure enough, the kamikazes were out of the closet, but, abetted by clinical tape loops, The Beastie Boys could have sung about the sex life of a millipede and nobody would have known the difference. Except perhaps, the sound man.

The one song of the evening to evoke some true articulation was ‘Licensed To Ill,’ the soundtrack and title track if their initial breakthrough. Other than that, The Beastie Boys did their thing, and the audience did theirs. Much like two lost lovers, adrift, amidst a sea of blood, sweat and beers.