Beasties doggedly stick to the shtick

Never follow a dog act.

If there’s a golden rule of showbiz, that’s it. But the Beastie Boys threw caution to the wind at the Universal Amphitheatre on Monday.

The hip-hop trio booked Bob Moore’s American Mongrels to open shows on its first full tour in six years, and the vaudevillian pooches were in fact a hard act to follow, with their endearingly cornball mutt acrobatics winning over the early arrivals.

The Beasties -- no stranger to vaudevillian concepts -- did everything but spin plates to win the crowd for themselves. They trotted out such sure-fire favorites as “Brass Monkey.”

They changed from matching gray sweatshirts into powder blue wedding-band tuxes, took up instruments and shifted from b-boy stage prowlers to Meters-influenced funksters for a midshow mini-set. They even resorted to such hoary hip-hop devises as breaking the crowd into three sections for a call-and-response competition on “Time to Get Ill.” The fans loved every minute.

But in the process, Mike “Mike D” Diamond, Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz (with their dazzling DJ Mixmaster Mike) underserved the buoyantly thoughtful reflections about their hometown of New York that anchor the new album, “To the 5 Boroughs.”

And worse, two decades into their career and pushing 40, they underestimated their fans.

That the Beasties are hardly boys any more is no secret, though Horovitz got an unsolicited reminder when a fan at the foot of the stage told him between songs that the rapper had gone to school with his uncle. (Horovitz replied, simply, “Ouch.”)

Maturity is nothing to be ashamed of, though, and it served the Beasties well as they like so many others grappled with the tragedy that struck New York on Sept. 11, 2001.

The result was several new songs that, as love letters to the city and pleas for unity, more or less serve as hip-hop equivalents of Bruce Springsteen’s post-9/11 renewal album “The Rising.”

But the Beasties hedged the bet with the album and diluted its emotional effect by surrounding the meatier, pointed songs with relatively generic patter pieces and unconvincing posturing. It was even more diluted in this show.

“Boroughs” highlights “All Lifestyles” and “An Open Letter to NYC” are not only the album’s uplifting emotional centers, but were the most interesting musical concoctions as well. Monday, though, they were treated as throwaways.

On their last formal tour, the Beasties literally spun on a rotating stage and figuratively twirled between rappin’ b-boys, jazzy instrumentalists and punk band formats. It was an impressive retrospective and show of versatility that, ostensibly, freed them to move on to new ground.

Instead, they’re still relying on familiar old shtick. Do the Beasties not have faith that their fans would be willing to go deeper into their earnest emotions?

The balance of entertainment and meaning was done more effectively and naturally by second-billed Talib Kweli, whose set became a reunion of influential underground hip-hop duo Black Star with former partner Mos Def sitting in (with rappers Common Sense and DJ Quick guesting as well). It was never less than entertaining, and rarely less than thought provoking.

The Beasties have the talent and brains to do the same. They just need to trust their fans -- and themselves. Then they could follow any kind of act.