"We know that we're just a buncha schmucks that can't
play for shit and sure as hell can't sing, but for
some reason, you guys show up and make this work."
That's Ken "Reverend" Casey's tearjerking speech to
the crowd midway through the Dropkick Murphys'
astounding new live album. And that's the Murphys in a
nutshell. To this band, the audience -- expansive,
devout, joyous -- is always central to the music, and
there's no sentimentality or mendacity about it.
Tireless gigging and principled, literal
anthem-writing have turned the band into a precious
national resource, a voice of solidarity and
opposition that unites rather than divides, and always
fills the clubs. I don't care if the patriotic
snooze-tune rags drone on about Bruce Springsteen or
Alan Jackson, I still insist that the Dropkick Murphys
-- Guinness, bagpipes and all -- are the most
preternaturally American band making music
today. They're patriotic, fierce, committed, strident,
playful, drunk, loud, and powerful, and they don't
gloss over their unflinching commitment to working
people. Including cops and bouncers.
Thus it was that workers, drunks, sisters, fools,
metalheads, and skinheads crowded into Boston's Avalon
Ballroom for three sold-out nights in a row last
March, to see the best St. Patrick's Day celebration
this great nation has to offer. Live on St.
Patrick's Day is the distillation of those three
great shows, and it's a physically exhausting and
essential document from start to finish.
Life is short; art is long. Live albums lie somewhere
in the middle. Usually they just suck, a document for
fans and not much more. But sometimes pop music works
best when you can hear an audience, and from Live
at the Apollo to KISS Alive! to Live
Bullet to Land Speed Record to Totale's
Turns you can see how rock'n'roll history has been
enriched by documents of the edge-of-anarchy blue
sparks that unite performer and audience. When you
remove studio-comfort things like second-guessing and
audio-airbrushing, you get an artist surviving on
their own merits, working and entertaining without a
safety net. What would "Turn the Page" be without an
audibly silent, rapt crowd digging Bob Seger's ace new
tune? Who would give a shit about that arty punk
single "Fiery Jack" if it weren't for the sloppy sound
of Mark E. Smith tossing a vocal grenade into a
half-cocked crowd? Live on St. Patrick's Day
fits into this grand tradition of brilliant live
albums. Audience and band are interchangeable, and
you can taste the beer and the sweat. The guitar
crunch blisters, the mosh pit churns, and the spine
tingles. And if anything you should buy it for the
sticker on the cover: "74 minutes of blue-collar music
for a blue-collar price".
So what's it sound like? It begins as an epic, with
the Boston Police Gaelic Column Pipes and Drums
playing a reel that explodes into "For Boston". Enough
to bring a tear to the eye. (And I should pause to
note that this may be the first instance in rock
history where enthusiastic police officers are playing
for a punk audience.) The sound is loud and clear,
with all the dirt and anarchy intact. Throughout, the
audience often sings along with a fully-abandoned
precision drunkenness that crushes all the speculation
that this sort of fierce populism is the source of
goose-stepping authoritarianism. All the studio albums
are represented here, and the Murphys even reach way
back in the catalog to their 1996 debut Do or
Die for a pint-flying-in-the-air rendition of
"Boys on the Docks" ("united we stand / divided we
fall": even more necessary now for workers on the
Pacific coast), a bright-kerosene singalong of
"Finnegan's Wake", and the wondrous closer "Skinhead
on the MBTA" (here called "Bloody Pig Pile").
My favorite bits -- evoking tender memories of my own
shredded larynx and wet armpits shoved against my face
-- are "Rocky Road to Dublin", "The Gauntlet", "Which
Side Are You On?" (a definitive cover), "Good Rats",
"Gang's All Here", and "Upstarts & Broken Hearts". You
won't stop blubbering after you hear the onstage
marriage proposal that precedes the unstoppable
"Forever" ("I may never be rich, but I know we're
always gonna be happy together. Now there's one
question left I have to ask you . . . "). And a special
highlight is an impressive new tune, "John Law", about
a working cop who's job is just "protecting our sorry
asses". Could this be the first genuinely pro-cop
hardcore tune in music history? Casey specifically
dedicates it to cops who "don't abuse their power",
but even with that qualifier its an extraordinary new
development in the Murphys commitment to workers with
shit jobs everywhere. Then listen twice to the thrashy
version of CCR's "Fortunate Son": dig where their
anger is directed, and how the righteous audience
howls and chants "it ain't me!" throughout. Anger
quickly turns to fun as they play some Boston Bruins
vids and rip through "Nutty", the Kim-Fowley-penned
instrumental soundtrack to a puck slapped against the
net.
The encores include Gang Green and Standells covers
that top things off with a bit of local pride and
besotted joy. Though I've heard a skank cover of
"Alcohol" once or twice in the past, the thrashy
ethanol that melts the amps here will echo in your
memory. And "Dirty Water"! This Boston theme song has
been used and abused countless times since 1966, but I
think the Murphys do a fine job of revitalizing it and
shoving it into the future. Al Barr's abrasive singing
echoes and rivals the snarling original, and he
finally reclaims the song for Boston (after all, the
Standells were an L.A. band with an ex-Mouseketeer on
drums!). Hardcore was a revolution, but the Murphys
are all about the revolutionary continuity, rather
than the marketing-begotten "change" in music history.
(Remember: it was Minor Threat who recorded another
memorable Standells cover with "Good Guys Don't Wear
White", and that was 20-odd years ago!) I think
it's from this sense of generational commitment and
continuity that Casey can dedicate the Murphys
rendition of "Amazing Grace" to his grandparents,
sitting in the balcony as the pit below pogoes into
the future . . .
— 14 December 2002
