Longtime readers know the Beastie Boys were my white whale of concert photography. For reasons that are too boring to recount here, I never got to shoot them. So watching Mike Diamond front his own band at the 9:30 Club last week, closing that loop more than a decade and a half later, hit a little different than a normal weeknight show.
The vehicle for all this is 5D, and the reason for the tour is Diamond’s new record, Thank You, which is better than it has any right to be. The songs split pretty cleanly into two camps. There are the Beastie-style Funtime bangers — “Switch Up,” “What We Got” — which are exactly what you’re hoping for, that same loose, goofy energy from a guy who’s clearly still enjoying himself. And then there are the more confessional songs, the two-part “Secrets” and “I Don’t Care” among them. I’ll be honest, those songs don’t do a ton for me. But I’ll give Diamond his flowers here: the man is 60 years old, and I’ll always take an artist writing about where they actually are in life over one straining to fake being 25 forever.
Watch the official lyric video for “I Don’t Care” by Mike D on YouTube:
The band itself is the real charm of the show. 5D is Diamond, his sons Skyler and Davis Diamond, Eddie Ruscha, Will Graefe and Milo Ruscha, and there’s a family-and-friends looseness to the whole thing that suits the material. This isn’t a legacy act on a victory lap, it’s a guy playing music with his kids, and it gives the night an undercurrent that’s genuinely sweet.
And yes, he played Beastie Boys songs at 9:30 Club on Sept. 1. Five of them — “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” “3-Minute Rule,” “Hello Brooklyn,” “Remote Control,” and “So Whatcha Want” — sprinkled throughout the set rather than saved for one big nostalgia dump at the end. It worked. Old and new traded off all night without either one swallowing the other, and by the time “So Whatcha Want” closed the show, it felt less like a legacy artist checking a box and more like one long, unbroken set from a guy who’s still got plenty to say.
Setlist:
Here are some photos of Mike D 5D performing at the 9:30 Club on Sept. 1, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Kyle Gustafson.
