Author: Sebastijan Videc
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Venue: Kino Šiška / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 25.06.2014
Attendance: 1,000
Ticket price: €18 (Early Bird), €23 (First Minute), €27 (advance sale)
Ireland. A little green island, a stone’s throw and then some west of Great Britain. Known for its color, its famous dark stout, and a certain fella named Flatley, who in the mid-nineties started driving the world nuts with the so-called river dance (riverdance). But what is it about that Irish thing that draws in Slovenes, and not just us but the whole world? You can find Irish pubs in every corner of the globe, the aforementioned beer too, and when St. Patrick’s Day rolls around, it seems like the whole world is breathing in the Irish spirit.
We’ll leave the search for answers to the philosophers, but the fact is that Irish/Celtic melody is damn contagious, and combined with a few drinks and good company, it’s practically a seriously addictive drug. The first and biggest to put the popularity of Irish music to the test were undoubtedly The Dubliners, who over five decades of playing circled the globe many times and sold out halls like it was nothing. The rise of so-called “celtic punk rock” bands in the eighties is therefore no big surprise, since combining traditional Irish instruments with a classic rock lineup brought a fresh wave to this genre of music and made it more approachable for younger generations. Both the English Pogues and the Irish-American Flogging Molly still prove, after a few decades, that this genre is extremely popular, and I’d add the Styrian polecats Happy Ol’ McWeasel, who with their (youthful) energy stand quite worthily shoulder to shoulder with these idols of theirs.
Flogging Molly visited Ljubljana for the third time. Third time’s the charm? Judging by the crowd’s reaction, there’ll be a fourth. All three shows so far have sold out, and the decision to move the concert from the Gala Hala summer stage to Kino Šiška because of the unpredictable weather certainly made room for a few extra tickets for party-hungry fans. The crush in the hall was actually so intense that the organizer decided not to set up a fenced-off area for photographers, but in my opinion that’s always a questionable call, because not only do photographers risk their precious gear in a raging crowd, it can also, as it always turns out, lead to direct contact between the audience and the stage and all the complications that come with it.
The stage lights went down at quarter past nine, and Marley’s ‘Get Up, Stand Up’, blasting from the speakers, announced a good hour-and-a-quarter-long show that most people will never forget. The Americans kicked things off with ‘Screaming at the Wailing Wall’, from their third album, and immediately caused total chaos in the floor area of the Cathedral. Bodies flew left and right, and the obligatory beer flew with them. Somewhere around the third song the first stage dives began, and by Drunken Lullabies full, thankfully plastic, cups of beer were flying through the air: into the ceiling spotlights, onto the stage and above all onto the crowd. If you were one of the ones who got drenched, let me console you: beer is good for your skin, and people abroad even pay to soak in it, while here you got it all-inclusive in a package with a great concert!
There’s not much need to ramble on about the band’s performance itself. The guys and the lady have enough live experience and the right kind of music in their fingers to easily get a packed hall going, despite the fact that their last record came out in 2011. Dave King, the leader of this septet, is a born frontman. Whether it was jokes about the smell of his armpits, the best-looking member of the band (Bob Schmidt), a dedication to the guitarist’s recently deceased father (Dennis Casey), a dedication to his mom in Dublin, or the interlude where he started singing the Iron Maiden classic ‘Run to the Hills’, whose chorus the fans belted out loudly in unison – clearly King’s hard rock roots haven’t dried out yet. Keeping him company on his right, with tin whistle and fiddle, was his wife, Bridget Regan, who was perhaps the most reserved member of the lineup. Plenty of stage diving, surf crowding, moshing – terms that are hard to find proper translations for – along with dancing and loud singing saw the band off to the finish. Flogging Molly are announcing a new studio album for 2015. A good excuse for another visit to Slovenia?
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