Flogging Molly Show Review

Posted by: Dave Berry | Jan 8, 09

There aren’t many bands out there like Flogging Molly, and there certainly aren’t many bands out there that can pack as many people into the Fillmore Auditorium here in Denver as Flogging Molly did on December 30th, 2008, and according to my esteemed roommate, again on the 31st as well. It was wall-to-wall madness, but it was the kind of madness that is, above all, damn good fun.

 If you don’t know about Flogging Molly by now then you are pretty damn out of the music scene by anybody’s measuring stick. But if you ARE one of those sad, sad people, they sound like Irish folk music drowned in beer-fueled American punk rock, but heavier on the Irish side seeing as they are from Ireland after all.

The journey to the show was a trial, not because of the distance I had to travel, but on account of certain parties involved (ask me personally about that one, there’s quite a long story behind it). After we finally did get in we had already missed the two opening acts. I can’t even remember their names but I missed their sets so who cares?
So in trying times such as these I had to do the most important thing; find the biggest beer for as cheap as possible, which is no easy task at the Fillmore when you can navigate freely, let alone when it’s packed from the stage to the back stairs. Thankfully there was a beer stand at the back of the floor selling PBR 24’s for $7, which beat the High-Life 16’s for $6. I got my tall can, left my girlfriend in a seemingly safe location with her sister, and tried to make my way to the stage.

Flogging came out with a barrage of classics from the Drunken Lullabies album. Right when I thought I had moved into a good position with my cohorts they hit us with the title track from Drunken Lullabies and my $7 beer turned into a Pabst-sprinkler that soaked everybody who were pressed up against me. I tried to get that damn beer into my mouth, I honestly did, but something happens to people at Flogging Molly shows; they pogo and jig their asses off, on top of drinking too many one too many an $8 Guiness.

I finally gave up on trying to drink my beer when it became obvious that it was nothing more than foam and tried to watch the rest of the show from further back on the floor. this worked a little better and i got quite a view of Lightning Storm. That is quite a powerful song and I feel very lucky to have seen it live.

Then the set-break went down and frontman Dave King came back out on stage solo and did one song acoustic (I forget which one), then followed up with Black Friday Rule, with the first half solo then joined by the band for an epic closer.

It had been a while since I’ve seen a Flogging Molly show and I hope that I’ll never have to say that again. If you’ve never experienced the radness that is Flogging Molly live then you owe it to yourself to see them the next time they grace the stage in your town. I didn’t have the chance to roll over to the after-party at another bar somewhere downtown, but I doubt that would have been a great time to actually sit down and talk with the band about other things than the standard, drunken drivel that usually pours from super-fans mouths. Hell, this show was so good I’m actually not pissed about my $7 beer getting sprayed all over the place.

Flogging Molly on the web:

www.myspace.com/floggingmolly

www.floggingmolly.com

Shred hard,
Dave Berry