Sometimes in a musician’s life, the perfect moment happens when inspiration, tribute and just dumb luck all collide. This happened last May when Southern California jamband, Quactus, were on their way to perform at the first Freako de Mayo Festival in Las Vegas, NV. En route to Vegas from Los Angeles, the band learns of the passing of Adam “MCA” Yaunch of the Beastie Boys. A huge inspiration to Quactus’ lead singer, Seth Gordon. Seth comments before they begin the second set, “One of my big inspirations growing up. I love the Beastie Boys. I had one music poster in my life in my room and it was a Beastie Boys poster. It’s still there at my parents house.”
Without any Beastie Boys songs in their set list, they quickly decided on Brass Monkey. It didn’t take them long to learn it and you can see in the video that Gordon, as not to screw up the complicated lyrics, reads them from his iPhone. By chance they knew a sax player in town and it all came together “most definitely” as MCA would say. Quactus has just begun releasing videos from that show at the Las Vegas Country Saloon. This was one of the first.
Released on the one year anniversary of Yaunch’s death and performed on the day he died, check out Quactus’ version of “Brass Monkey”.
For more videos from that show, check out Quactus’ youtube page.
