On Friday morning, tickets for the Beastie Boys' Gala Event at the Warfield went on pre-sale. We didn't get any. But then on Sunday at the regular online sale, my amazing, astounding, magical wife Lulu managed to score a single ticket for the show.

The thing is, we already have tickets to a show that night. WILCO is playing at the Greek, and both of us were really excited for this show.

That is, until a few weeks ago when the Beasties announced this additional show.

And now I have a ticket to each. Lu definitely wants to see WILCO, but she's sad to miss the Beastie Boys, too. I, on the other hand, am utterly torn.

This is one of those decisions that I can't really complain about, but the fact is that deciding between two events of extreme fun and awesomeness, quite frankly, sucks.

There's a few ways for me to look at this scenario to decide which show to attend. I think the WILCO show will be superior, musically. I think the Beastie Boys show will be more 'fun'. WILCO will be artful, powerful, beautiful and I really want to hear the news songs live and rockin. The Beastie Boys show will be ridiculous, hilarious, over-the-top and yet at the same time very intimate and special. They play rooms this size pretty much never, anymore. WILCO will probably be back to the Greek and other venues like it many more times over the years. The Beastie Boys might not ever tour again. Their tours are already sporadic at best, and although I hope they'll keep rockin for many more years to come, I learned a serious lesson with Phish.

The fates of bands are unpredictable. I cannot count on another tour sometime in the future.

But when I run it right down the line, numbers to numbers, there's really no choice at all.

I first found the Beasties back in 1986, but it wasn't until college that I really dug in. Since then I've memorized all of their albums, play them repeatedly, and have consistently listed the BBoys as one of my favorite bands since at least 1993 when I finally heard Check Your Head, and it completely blew my mind. (it came out in 1992, but I wasn't ready for it then. Right after finding CYH I started in on Paul's Boutique and was astounded at what I had been missing. PB came out in 1989, but I had missed that, too.)

That's over 20 years of diggin' these guys, but the sad fact is, I've only seen them once, kinda. It was at Lollapalooza in RI, back in like '94. By the time I made it in through those hours of interminable traffic, their set was half-over, and I was very far back. Never in a club. Never in a civic center. Never indoors anywhere at all.

But now I have a ticket to a Special Gala Event at an amazing venue in SF. And even though WILCO is my favorite band out there right now, there's a special place in my musical soul for everything the Beastie Boys have done. There's no way I can pass this up, and I'm so grateful to my wife for both getting this ticket for me, and being okay with me enjoying the show without her. It's always more fun with her at my side, but this time we're going to have to divide and conquer. I'm jealous she's getting WILCO, but as a longtime Beastie fan herself, she feels the same, coming back the other way.