So, you're starting a tour this week — where are you going to be playing?
MCA: Portugal.
Mike D: Barcelona.

Oh that's right — you're playing the Sonar festival in Barcelona. Have you been before? Isn't it mostly electronic music? Or at least it used to be.
Mike D: And it all takes place throughout the city, or it's one site...?

When I went, it was on a place called Montjuic — literally ''Jewish Mountain.'' Or ''Jew Mountain.'' Something like that.
Mike D: So they're sending us to the Jew Mountain? I guess that makes sense.

Yup, back to the ghetto.
Ad-Rock: Three Jews from New York. Where you gonna send them? Jew Mountain...
Mike D: They got tons of Chinese food up there — you're gonna love it!
MCA: Sounds like the name of a horror film: Night on Jew Mountain. [Laughter]
Mike D: One of the things we're gonna do on this tour — for most cities we'll do one main show, more stuff with Mixmaster Mike. And then we'll do a separate show the next night or the night before — the ''gala'' event. More band arrangements of older songs and new songs and mostly instrumental stuff. Last tour [we did] pageants. We'd hoped that people would dress up accordingly. Some people did. So for the gala events on this tour, we're hoping that people also take that seriously and apply the dress code to their experience.
Ad-Rock: It is a gala event — you figure, you're going to wear, like, cargo shorts? We're not billing it as a BBQ.

Let's talk about Bad Brains — you produced their new record, Build a Nation, right?
MCA: Yeah. We grew up listening to them. I was just talking to Darryl [Jenifer, the band's bassist] on the phone, and he mentioned they were thinking about recording. I think I volunteered. It was cool, though it took a long time, for some reason. But it got done. And it's coming out. On the same day as our record. Strange coincidence.

Okay. Let's talk about your history as a band. Let's go through each record, starting with License to Ill.
MCA: Well, we started out as a hardcore band. We first put out a hardcore record. Don’t know if you would really count that.

Yeah, you used to play at CBGB's. Are you sorry that it's gone?
MCA: Yeah. I think it's a void. When I walk by and see that it’s not there.

So your first record after your hardcore days was License to Ill...what were you thinking about when you made that record?
Ad-Rock: We focused on beer...
Mike D: ...and beer helmets, too. You put the cans in...
Ad-Rock: [License to Ill] was also inspired by drink tickets. And getting into the club for free, then getting the drink tickets, and how many drink tickets you had...
Mike D: And then when the energy started to go down, going to the next club. Sometimes we'd try to write lyrics on napkins at, say, the Palladium or Danceteria, and then go back to the studio and record.
Ad-Rock: Once we bought beer helmets on 8th Street, started walking on Broadway to 10th. There were two women out front [of a restaurant], obviously executives, having a margarita out front, and Yauch [MCA] and I come up and we've got the beer helmets, and we're like, ''so, ladies...'' Then we hear, ''Nice hats, guys,'' and there's a cop car parked around the corner. He gave us tickets.
MCA: We weren't smart enough to put bags on the helmets.

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