Anthrax (from left, Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, Frank Bello, Joey Belladonna and Rob Caggiano), shown here at a 2010 show in Warsaw, performs Aug. 5 in Hartford.

Anthrax fans are in for a particular treat this summer at the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, which stops Aug. 5 at Comcast Theatre in Hartford.

Instead of performing on the somewhat sterile (for a metal concert, anyway) main stage, the seminal band has opted to play its set on a more intimate side stage dubbed, for the sake of sponsorship dollars, the Jagermeister Stage.

“We decided to pattern the Mayhem set on the kind of shows the Ramones used to do: a high-energy, non-stop barrage of hit, hit, hit, hit, hit,” drummer Charlie Benante says in a press release. “No lulls, no filler, totally in your face. We’re going to be playing a supersonic-paced set loaded with the best of our best.”

If that’s not enough for you, consider this: Motörhead and Slayer play the festival, too.

Adam Yauch speaks at the Apple Soho store on May 2, 2008, in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder / Getty Images)

As news spreads via social media this afternoon about the death of Beastie Boys co-founder Adam Yauch, a tweet from the screenwriter Josh A. Cagan, West Hartford native and son of my colleague Korky Vann, stood out: “Ow,” he wrote. “My childhood hurts. #RIPMCA”

I can relate: the Beastie Boys headlined the first concert I ever saw, in July 1987, at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, Colo., outside Denver. Run D.M.C. opened. I was 11.

Mostly I remember them jumping around on stage, spraying each other with beer and dropping f-bombs, to the chagrin of my father, who had no idea what he was getting himself in to. I knew all the words to “Fight for Your Right” and “Paul Revere,” even if I was too young to know what they actually meant.

It was clearly a formative experience, though, and one that undoubtedly played a role in steering me toward a career writing about music. I never met Yauch, or spoke with him — in fact, that show at Red Rocks was the only time I ever saw the Beastie Boys live — but I’m grateful to him for planting a seed all those years ago. My childhood hurts, too.

Adam Yauch, right, died Friday at 47.

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys died Friday after a three-year battle with cancer, RollingStone.com is reporting. He was 47.

Yauch, known as MCA, was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 after doctors discovered a tumor in his salivary gland. He co-founded the Beastie Boys in 1981 with Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) and Mike Diamond (Mike D.), a friend from a previous incarnation of the group that began in 1979. The trio last month was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though Yauch did not attend the induction ceremony in Cleveland.

The Beastie Boys started as a hardcore punk band with Yauch on bass, releasing a handful of singles before the trio evolved into a rap act known for repurposed Led Zeppelin samples and wisecracking rhymes on its debut album, 1986′s “License to Ill.” It was the first of eight studio albums that have collectively sold more than 40 million copies worldwide, including “Paul’s Boutique” in 1989, “Ill Communication” in 1994 and last year’s “Hot Sauce Committee, Part 2,” the release of which was delayed after Yauch’s cancer diagnosis.

Those early albums especially were transformational, helping to spread hip-hop from the streets of New York, where it originated in the 1970s, to the cassette players of suburban teens everywhere via singles like “Fight For Your Right” and “Hey Ladies,” and videos that featured the trio goofing around.

Yauch directed many of those clips videos under the pseudonym Nathaniel Hornblower (and wrote a letter under that name to The New York Times in 2004 — third one down), though Spike Jonze directed the band’s most famous video, “Sabotage,” a send-up/homage to 1970s cop shows.

In addition to his musical activities, Yauch, a New York native, was a Buddhist and high-profile proponent of the Free Tibet movement. He helped organize — and headlined with the Beastie Boys — a series of Tibetan Freedom music festivals between 1996-2001.

Yauch is survived by his wife Dechen and his daughter Tenzin Losel, and his parents Frances and Noel Yauch.

Rubblebucket performed Thursday at Pearl Street in Northampton.

Spending years on the road has honed Rubblebucket into a super-efficient party machine on stage.

The eight-piece Brooklyn band, formerly of Vermont, returned Thursday to Pearl Street in Northampton with a set full of high-energy songs, a sense of gleeful abandon and even a pair of giant metallic-looking puppets that wandered through the audience during the band’s set.

Rubblebucket’s music is an eclectic mix of styles that takes elements of indie-rock, funk and even electronic music and sloshes them all together into what’s best described as “dance music” on uptempo, horn-laced songs that make it impossible to stand still.

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