Music Round-Up Irish Punk, More a Capella and Local 'Freaks' The Dropkick Murphies Give New England the Boot

Author: Daniel Roda

The Boston-based Irish punk rock group, The Dropkick Murphies, continues its tour of New England after quickly selling out the entire St. Patty's Day weekend in Boston.
We caught their historic holiday performance last year. Footage from this show will be featured in their upcoming live DVD, scheduled for release in 2004, but this time around we were not so lucky. We had to catch them in an abandoned alehouse just outside of Albany. Following the recent marriage of band member Scruffy Haggis, the show featured their new bagpipes player, Spicy McWallis, along with frontman Al Bar, bassist and storyteller Ken Casey, and fellow Irish punk legends.
The crowd was a multigenerational mix of freaks, nerds and punk rockers who, like a peacock, flaunted multicolored mohawks, chains, leather, spikes, etc., and Bar narrowly escaped injury from one such audience member flipping feet first onto the stage. The Murphies had several bands open for them, including Roger Marrot & the Disasters, Relics and Lower Class Brats. The spacious old tavern was incredibly crowded, so much that it was safer in the surprisingly small mosh-pit than amongst the squishy pile of people surrounding it.
Yet, of course, a distinctly punk communal ethic prevailed - nobody gets hurt, nobody gets trampled, and by some miracle, nobody drops his or her keys without having them returned immediately.
The Murphies were a thunderous typhoon of fun, playing such celebrated classics as "Boys on the Docks", and "The Gang's All Here".
They called the female faction from the audience, most of whom were certainly not afraid to mosh, onto the stage for an encore.
It did not take long for everyone else to climb on stage as well, crowding the sportsmanlike Murphies toward the stern and creating a spectacle incomparable to anything we've ever seen at a music venue.
Hundreds of people stood on stage grinning wildly and looked down at hundreds more below. It was - simply - calmed chaos. Then, to make it even more outrageous, singer/bassist Casey ascended into the rafters, and, bass in hand, launched himself onto the crowd.
The sea of fans floated below him until he returned to the rafters. Now, upside down, he hooked his knees over a board and finished the song.
This was an incredible feat of acrobatics for such a gruff, stocky Irishman. The Murphies combine years of tradition and working-class immigrant reminiscence with youthful glory; the fact that they are still playing in isolated warehouses in central New York State suggests that we can trust these middle-aged punk rockers to continue thrilling us for years to come.