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areuonsomething.com I've been going to Wildwood, New Jersey with my family and my friends for around twenty-five years. I could tell a long story about how grand and fucked up those trips have been, but that's another story, and if memory serves, I already wrote it. Anyway, I was sitting on my boat with a few close friends (yes, I own a boat) and we were planning a trip down to the south Jersey shore. We hadn't picked a date yet, and were hammering that out when one of my pals stopped everything to ask what CD I was playing. I told him it was a band called Flogging Molly, and he said he loved it. Everyone on board that day fell for the band, as I had the first time I heard them about a year ago. As we listened, I remembered that I saw somewhere that they were playing in Atlantic City the first week of August. I mentioned this to the guys, and our Wildwood trip was settled. We'd go the first weekend in August, and we'd backtrack north to Atlantic City one night to check out the band. Fast forward a few weeks, and me and the boys are sitting in the House of Blues restaurant at the Showboat Casino in Atlantic City. We were sucking down Miller Lites, eating overpriced, but really quite good cheeseburgers, and waiting for showtime, upstairs in the House of Blues Music Hall. Chuck looked at me and said, "So do you know anything about these opening bands?" "I think there's just one, some band called Throw Rag, and no, I don't know anything about them," I said. "Well it says here," he said holding up a flyer for the show that he'd snagged on the way in, "that before Throw Rag there's a band called Gogol Bordello." "Holy shit, really?" I asked excitedly. "Yeah, you know them?" Chuck asked. "I've heard one song of theirs. It's some crazy-ass thing about people wearing purple. They're cool. They combine Gypsy music and Punk." John and Charlie looked at each other, and shrugged. We paid for our shit and headed upstairs. When we got there, we were thoroughly searched, by not one but two security guards. They went through all my camera gear even though they clearly saw my press pass. They wanded us down with metal detectors. They checked our ID. They stamped our hands. And then they let us in without taking or even looking at our tickets. Good work fellas, keep it up. We got inside just in time to see Gogol Bordello take the stage. Holy Shit! Gogol Bordello are like some kind of tripped out Gypsy carnival on speed. You look at the stage and there are people everywhere, some in costume, some not, all playing, all kinds of instruments, from guitar, bass, and drums, to fiddle, symbol, and at one point bucket . . . yeah, bucket. People are throwing shit. People are dancing. And in the middle of it all is Eugene, the band's mustached guitar playing, lead singing front man. He's running all over the place, screaming and playing, and strangling the girls, and diving into the crowd, and climbing up his mic stand like it's a tree and not just a skinny- ass piece of metal. The energy they put out is incredible, and the overall experience is well . . . Holy Shit. Up next was Throw Rag. They had the unenviable job of going on after an outstanding opening act and before the headliner. All the same, they played a strong set that was highlighted by the guy playing the washboard and occasionally singing, going completely nuts. He tried to seduce me at one point, mentioning my "big lens" and then went back to freaking out. It was fun to watch and the music was good. What more do you want? Oh, you wanted a pack of crazy gypsies and drunken Irishmen playing fusion punk rock? Well, you can't win 'em all. What happened next was one of those rare moments in my life. Something that's happened to me only three or four times before in close to a thousand sweaty music hall evenings. The band completely destroyed me. |