Friday, April 14, 2006
The Dogs Were Barking, The Monkeys Clapping
If you could put the Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd of the old SNL — the Wild and Crazy Guys combo, with their fractured pseudo-Eastern European dialects, (remember their “Czechoslovakian vacuum cleaner”, that looked like a 55 gallon drum with a clothes drier hose?) — and insert them into a Klezmer band, give them too much beer, and then put them on a small stage, you’ve got Gogol Bordello — the world’s greatest maniac band.
At least that was how it felt last night when I saw them on Jimmy Kimmel. They were so good they made me laugh with pure pleasure. It was a circus of dada energy and meaningless joy. They do what many in the fine arts try to do, mixing all sorts of influences into a nutbrain mix. But Gogol Bordello is without pretension in their performances — they lose it, (or seem to, they are actually great musicians), for the fun of it. In the Kimmel appearance they performed Never Young, in which one of the women falls backward as Eugene Hutz, the lead singer, supports her, she shouts maniacally, on cue. Then Hutz, with a goofball Commissar mustache, goes out into the audience, and performs the same trick, this time with the middle-American audience, all now standing. The women in the audience drop back, one by one, into Hutz’ arms, and shout on cue. How can you beat that? This group of maniacs has taken old-time rock and roll to a new level of ecstatic, riotous joy. Check out their Gypsy Punks album — especially terrific.