_Noise_Conspiracy.jpg "The (International) Noise Conspiracy - 002-09-17: 9:30 Club, Washington D.C., USA")
Flogging Molly
July 11th, 2006 at 02:02
If I told you that I’d spent the evening sweating heavily in the proximity of hundreds of other sweaty men, trying my best to join in with the jumping about, you’d think that I sound mental. Add live music to this, and its a perfectly normal thing to do.
I’ve had an excellent evening: I’ve been to see Celtic-Punk band Flogging Molly at the Carling Academy, in Birmingham. Thankfully, my friend Matt was doing the driving, as the journey, whilst awful in the first place (Big motorway into the centre of the second biggest city?! No thanks), was made worse by the fact that the junction we needed to leave at in order to be not hopelessly lost in Birmingham was closed.
We ended up driving through central Birmingham- including what was mostly a pedestrianised area, and the huge Bullring shopping centre. In the end we had to ask two police officers (“pigs“) for directions.
We got there perfectly on time, though, which was nice.
The first band on were called Twopointeight, and were Swedish. And they were excellent. I’d have bought their CD had I not been (literally) skint. Before one of their songs, they said “put your hand up if you hate the police!”- despite the insitutional racism, botched terror raids, inherrent negligence and general brutality, my hands remained down, as two very nice police officers had helped us find the venue earlier.
The second support, Failsafe, were good too.
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Flogging Molly eventually came on stage and the crowd kicked it up a notch. They played all of the two songs I’d heard prior to the gig… Drunken Lullabies was well recieved by a lively crowd, and they finished their non-encore bit on What’s Left of the Flag. Fantastic. They’re quite unusual for a punk band as they have an accordianist and violist who aren’t just there as a bit of a gimmick, and are actually integral to the musical output. I wasn’t quite sure if this would mean that the audience will stand and watch reverently, as you might expect from a folk gig, or would go wild like at a punk gig. Thankfully, they did the latter, which made it more exciting.
There was a good bit when the lead singer said “this song is about someone is stupid”, and got the audience to make a “one fingered salute” gesture, before revealing that the song was about George W Bush. It was a relief that their politics are in the right place, as I’d seen another audience member with what looked like a Nazi cross tattoo, although I should have expected it, what with them featuring on the Rock Against Bush compilations.
At the end I bought a Flogging Molly t-shirt and CD, with money that I can’t afford to use, but it seems worth it.
They were dead good.
The journey home wasn’t quite as good- we took the wrong direction on the M6, and didn’t realise until we figured that Wolverhampton was in the wrong direction for home. On the plus side, the diversion meant that we went to a service station where I bought quite possibly the world’s biggest (and most expensive) chocolate-chip muffin. For £1.90.
In summary: drive, park, punk, drive, fantatic.
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