Review: Dropkick Murphys at House of Blues, March 13

Bostonist arrived at the House of Blues on Friday evening just in time to hear openers H20 suck the life out of a couple of D.C. punk classics, "Minor Threat" and "Waiting Room." The audience appeared to react indifferently to the group. Outside of the twenty-or-so diehard fans chanting along to every Street Dogs-inspired tune, most people barely seemed to notice anyone was onstage.

That changed once the Dropkick Murphys ascended the stage. As the curtain fell to reveal a set of banners emblazoned with Catholic church awnings and Gregorian chanting beamed through the PA system, the crowd came alive and began swarming in the pit below. One guitar lick later and it was pandemonium on the floor for the solid hour and a half the Murphys played. The band pulled out all the stops for the show, as they were joined onstage by a handful of stringed instruments and a young Irish folk dancing troupe.

Technically, the band was flawless: not an instrument sounded out of tune, and they performed in perfect synchronicity. This may have also been the problem - after a good half hour, the songs began to seep into one another. That is, with the exception a special performance of the Murphys' previously-unreleased song "The Chosen Few" (the track has been streaming on the band's myspace page since the summer). "Chosen Few" is so unfortunately terrible one would think it would have been crafted by the worst comedy writers as a spoof of the Dropkick Murphys. Instrumentally, the song doesn't divert too much from the band's well-crafted (as in thoroughly traveled) sound; lyrically, "Chosen Few" is on par with something a drunk five year old might have scrapped together with a rhyming dictionary. It's honestly quite painful to recall the fact that the song name drops the "new" New Kids, proudly calls out the year the song was written (pssst, Dropkick Murphys, it's no longer 2008—your song's obsolete), and references acts by local politicians most hometown Dropkick fans would never be able to recall. Bostonist wasn't the only one befuddled by the song: about halfway through the ditty and most of the audience stopped reacting altogether. You know it's a bad sign when even the hardcore fans stop moshing and blankly stare into space.

Fortunately, Dropkick managed to sidestep the "Chosen Few" gaffe with a resounding encore. Opening with an altogether clever cover of The Who's "Teenage Wasteland" "Baba O'Reily" (thanks for the note, corker21), Dropkick delivered what the fans wanted most, and it wasn't just "I'm Shipping Up To Boston." The encore packed more passion in a ten minute window than the entire hour and a half regular performance. It was only night two, and at the end of the set the various members of Dropkick quickly left their instruments behind without responding to a single, impassioned "you rock" from the large chunk of fans that rushed the stage. Clearly, the tradition of playing seven shows in under a week has more or less made the performance and entire execution rather robotic, taking the catharsis that made so many fantastic punk rock performers out of the show altogether.

Although Dropkick's performance was mired in the histrionics of putting on a big rock concert, complete with shout outs to local sports franchises and even calls to purchase alcohol to support the House of Blues, most folks got what they were expecting: a nearly two hour long Dropkick show. It may be replicable, but it didn't seem to matter. And when it all comes down to it, it's the people that make traditions worthwhile, and there certainly is a reason that the Dropkick Murphys continue to perform a massive block of local shows over St. Patty's Day weekend. It's as if the entire city of Boston comes out to see these gigs, and it's not just the punks, macho jocks, and Southie residents. There were folks with greying hair jumping around the mosh pit, five-foot tweens belting out lyrics left and right. There were even more African-American attendees than Bostonist has ever seen at a local punk show. Needless to say, there's a reason people seek tradition. If The Dropkick Murphys are the ones to bring the city of Boston together, then so be it.