My Brothers Are Protons, My Sisters Are Neutrons (CMJ 2007 Day Zero: Gogol Bordello, The Stone Pony, 10/15)

(photo via lacitis_ir_bedigs' Flickr)

Gogol Bordello (myspace) front/madman Eugene Hutz gratefully called the place "intimate."

It's tough to figure out the capacity for a place like The Stone Pony.  The area in front of the stage isn't even as deep as The Mercury Lounge, but the room sprawls out to either side.  You enter the club - an area with an island bar and some raised seating - and you're facing stage left.  Off stage right there's some sort of long room with pool tables or somesuch.  I asked two different Pony employees what the room held, got two different answers.  800, 600.  I'm not good at these things, but with the club packed Monday night it didn't feel like there could have been more than 400.

Pretty sure no one was playing pool.

Gogol's already sold out their November 3rd appearance at the 3,000-capacity Terminal 5, so there'll be no wondering why I've schlepped way out to the House Bruuuce Built.  This is one of the best live bands on all the world's stages.  And though this gig didn't come close to last year's amazing, amazing, amazing show at Warsaw, it did have me wondering why I haven't been to every Gogol date since.

I'm an idiot, I guess.  Always a good answer.

Anyway, just take that Warsaw write-up and ratchet things back a bit.  The ceilings at the Pony are low, so there was no crowd-walking or riding out on the drum (a house announcement at the start warned, "No stage-diving, no crowd surfing, no violent dancing; but if you happen to find yourself up in the air for any reason, do not grab on to the water pipes or the show will end immediately").  That meant that, while the band wasn't any less exuberant, it didn't play as long; it didn't have to fill the time it takes to send out and retrieve its members.  The encore was only 40-45 minutes, and I think "Undestructible" alone lasted that long, last time.

They played just about every song from their good new record, Super Taranta!  There were only three or four songs from the stronger Gypsy Punks: "Not a Crime," "Purple" (the first verse in Spanish), and "Undestructible" (which crept out of another song to close the encore).  No Springsteen cover, which is sort of a shame.

The band was supertight, and by "the band" I don't just mean the nine folks on stage.  When Hutz brought his hands together, he was joined on the very next beat by 400 pair.  Every Cossack yell came from a room-sized chorus.  If everybody else in the club didn't know every single lyric, they were all doing a better job than I of faking it.  The dancing was, seriously, Non. Stop. (And unfortunately, I heard that in the pit behind me a girl fell and took a foot to the face; these aren't violent affairs).  There were upbeats when I don't think a single foot was touching the floor.  Behind me, there was a rotund, suspender-wearing, shirtless guy with bushy red facial hair screaming very involved things in... Ukrainian?  Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Hutz ended the main set by dumping his microphone in his fire bucket, rattling it around and throwing it to the stage.  At quarter-to-twelve on a Monday night in October, in an all-dark Jersey beach town, he kept yelling out, "Where's the after party?  Where?"

A great night, but also palate preparation, or an inoculation.  When wallowing in the pervasive okayness of CMJ, it's good to have someone remind you what a really great band can do.  Good to get that out of the way up front.

tags: gogol bordello  concert reviews  

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