For a brief moment, as Flogging Molly prepared to step onto the stage of the 9:30 club on Monday, panic ensued in the crowd. Ringing out over the speakers was Flogging Molly's acoustic cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song." The presence of possibly the most-covered song in punk history stoked the fears of the crowd. Has four straight summers on the Warped Tour caught up to Flogging Molly? Are they now just another gimmicky punk band?
Then seconds later, the audience found the answer to be a clear "no." As the band came out and began with "The Likes of You," which segued into "Drunken Lullabies," it was clear that Flogging Molly had not wavered from their agro-Irish folk sound. Indeed, their new album "Within a Mile of Home," which debuted last week at No. 20 on the Billboard charts, maintains the course that the band's 2002 breakout "Drunken Lullabies" charted.
Though the band steered clear of anything that could be described as punk, the crowd seemed unaware of this. At times, the show looked more like an iPod commercial than anything, as mohawked leather-clad punk rockers bashed each other's brains out to the tune of a violin-heavy folk ditty.
The band mostly stuck to crowd-pleasers like "Rebels of the Sacred Heart" and "Selfish Man," but closed the show with the title track of their newest album.
One highlight came midway through the show, when most of the band left the stage as drummer George Schwindt and guitarist Dennis Casey (no relation to Dropkick Murphys vocalist Ken Casey, shockingly) jammed for several minutes.
Though ostensibly not billed as part of the show, a significant moment came before Flogging Molly took the stage, when a video prepared by Punkvoter aired on a screen over the stage. The video featured Jello Biafra, looking very much like a dad who forgot to do the laundry and had to wear his son's clothes, call on the youth in the crowd to join his partisan voting movement.
Before Jello was done, the audience was also subjected to Will Ferrell parodying President Bush, as well, as about six full minutes of clips of Bush administration officials talk about weapons of mass destruction. The video lost the crowd's interest pretty quickly, and on top of that it was inappropriate for an a-political concert.
Opening act Street Dogs whetted the crowd's appetite for Irish rock quite nicely, playing catchy Boston-flavored punk. Dogs singer Mike McColgan used to sing for the Dropkick Murphys, so it's no surprised that the Dogs sounded like a stripped-down version of "Do Or Die" era Murphys. They performed a rousing energetic set, highlighted by a cover of The Clash's "Career Opportunities"
