Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Ljubljana / Cvetličarna / Slovenia
Concert date: June 14, 2016
Attendance: 1100
Ticket price: €33.00
Dropkick Murphys, the hugely successful Boston Celtic punk rockers, have become a true »adopted« fixture of Slovenian concert venues over the years. The band, with eight studio albums in their pocket and officially at work on their upcoming ninth, to be titled »El Paso«, is celebrating 20 years of existence this year. Their new visit, announced for the Slovenian capital, sold out in no time. So a few days before the show, the organizers (in agreement with the band) decided to move it to Cvetličarna, which, with the balcony open, takes a good 1100 people (CUK Kino Šiška can officially hold only 800). On the day, punk rock fans waded into Ljubljana from all corners. From Italy, Croatia, Serbia, even Austria. Well before eight o’clock, hordes of party-starved fans were gathering in front of Cvetličarna, where they mercilessly decimated the supplies of alcoholic brews. Around eight in the evening, the sky opened up. And it poured and poured. Buckets again. But it didn’t dampen the good vibes that ruled on show day.
About ten minutes before nine, Pigs Parlament took the stage, a septet from Goriška Brda. With two studio albums in their pocket (time to start thinking about a third, guys and gal!), they proved an excellent and fitting choice to warm up the soaked heads to proper club temperature. In a cheeky half-hour set, which the good-hearted, positive-minded folks from the coast salted with a few liters of white wine, poured straight into the front rows through a funnel and a hose, the band showed off a confident stage format that made it clear they’ve been playing together for a long time and that the crew knows each other very well. The sound was, as expected, less distinct, especially when it came to the guitars. In that respect, one would have been enough. The trumpet and banjo benevolently livened up the band’s sonic picture, and through a colorful mix that picks up elements of ska, the bounce of hardcore and the rowdy wildness of skate punk, as well as elements of folk melody, where they poured oil on the fire with covers of The Pouges (Dirty Old Town) and Flogging Molly (Drunken Lullabie), they brought their show to a more than successful end. A nice overture, then.
Dropkick Murphys took the stage at exactly ten o’clock. The venue was packed to the last corner. The heat kept rising, all the way to boiling point. Fast. People armed themselves with beer, and when the silhouettes shoved their way up to the (still) darkened front of the stage to hit The Boys Are Back, the crowd exploded and started showering Cvetličarna with beer. A ritual, in other words. No point wasting words on the seething, good-hearted energy that brought the place to life and drove the whole get-together in a big way. The crowd was going nuts from the first to the last moment of the show, while Dropkick Murphys delivered an extraordinary stage performance, packed with an unbelievable surplus of energy. The band raged from song to song, and the crowd bounced and tumbled right along. They really lost it for the by-now-adopted You’ll Never Walk Alone and Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya, carved of course into sped-up, furious versions of the Dropkick Murphys recipe. During the show, the accordion and bagpipes were harder to hear, same goes for the stretch of songs where an acoustic guitar joined in, but the rest clicked. Generally, with all that unleashed energy, which is what the crowd came for. And that, of course, counted. In the grand finale, during Kiss Me, I’m Shitfaced, the band, as expected, hauled a bunch of girls onto the stage, so by the end of the show the band members literally »sank« among them and you couldn’t see a single one anymore. In the very end, only the girls and bassist/vocalist Ken Casey actually remained on stage. He stayed in the venue for more than half an hour, taking photos with fans, signing autographs, chatting with them.
Just as expected. A frenzied show, a true-blue punk rock lightning bolt to the head of the crowd, drenched in a hurricane of beer, thoroughly weighed down with the merrymaking of Celtic folk culture. One show was not enough. It would be interesting if Dropkick Murphys added another date to the sold-out one in Ljubljana. It would probably sell out too. So as soon as the show ended, the wait for the band’s next visit began!
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