MUSIC
Potato mosh
The Dropkick Murphys have been busy honoring fallen soldiers, boosting baseball teams and getting play in a Martin Scorsese film since their last isle gig in 2001
Katy, bar the door. The Boston bruisers are back. Dropkick Murphys will likely make the barnlike Pipeline Cafe balloon with sonic boomlets when they plug in Monday evening.
Dropkick Murphys
In concert: 7 p.m. Monday at Pipeline Cafe, 805 Pohukaina St.
Tickets: $26 general and $55 VIP
Call: (877) 750-4400 or visit www.ticketmaster.com
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They're just in from Australia and are recovering from another record-breaking St. Paddy's run in Boston, playing seven gigs in three days. Working-class heroes, indeed. If you don't leave a Dropkick Murphys show smelling of sloshed beer, flying sweat and leaking testosterone, then you simply aren't enjoying yourself propers.
Call it potato mosh. The Boston band was formed in the mid-'90s by a gang of strapping lads who liked things loud and fun. They played for themselves, equal parts Clancy Brothers, The Clash and The Pogues, with a dash of Woody Guthrie's social conscience. Eventually becoming Beantown legends -- who can resist an anthemic punk song about dead Irish dreamers, suffused with Scruffy Wallace's skirling, snarling bagpipes, particularly when you have a pint in hand? -- the band has been hard at work e'er since.
They last played Honolulu in 2001. Since then, though, Dropkick Murphys haven't forgotten their roots; their roots have embraced them. An Army fan in Iraq requested their "Fields of Athenry" be played at his funeral should something happen to him. Alas, it did, and the band showed up to salute the fallen warrior. Their latest album, "The Warrior's Code," shows they're not kidding. At the request of Guthrie's daughter, they've been writing new music for Guthrie's unused lyrics.
They were also approached by the Boston Red Sox to boost team spirit with a new anthem. In Dropkick Murphys style, they reached back into the past, came up with a 1900 Red Sox fan song called "Tessie" and goosed it into the new century. The song was released just a few months before the team won the World Series.
A curse that lasted 86 years was broken, as well as a few eardrums.
The guys also got some prime film placement from no less a master than Martin Scorsese. The legendary director placed their intense "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" (also from "The Warrior's Code") about halfway through his Oscar-winning "The Departed." It's also on the CD soundtrack.
All of this is reason enough to raise a glass with the band come Monday night.