9/16/2005 A Loose Review of Gogol Bordello's Gypsy Punks w/ some extra thoughtsThe good blood has always flowed through the gypsys, as it still does with every travelin band trying to make it in an gamma-ray zapped America & those still hoboing & tramping it out on the rails & still forming jungles trackside despite the uber-bulls with no souls bred meaner than ever these days, & some of the old hippies although I know that's been ruined from the beginning (I've been in there & seen it with good people amongst the trustafarians) with yuppies & their spawn infiltrating & ruining that scene like they do all things with soul, for example the grand urban neighborhoods & majestic countrysides of the USA.Hear the song "Free Born Man of the Traveling People" by Ewan MacColl. Hear the Clancy Brothers sing it & if you ain't down with that than I'm not sure this is the planet for you. Every tinker, rolling stone and gypsy rover should have a Gogol Bordello CD tucked away in his pack. I don't have any hip little phrases to promote the why of why you should get hip to Gogol Bordello. That's up to the Alternative Press & all those magazinees. Gogol Bordello is the Eastern European Pogues if you want a simple explanation. But they aren't a copy of the Pogues, it must be pointed out in this day of clones. (Although there have always been clones ever since musicians started to get paid. In all business folks will copy original ideas that make money.) They are pirate-y, like the Pogues were, & there is a rum-drunken captain who steers the ship over rough waters. It's clearly an influence. The important thing is this band loves music. MUSIC. As a tool of fun and divine Screwing Around in a place where there is no nervous preparation for the big gig but where the gig is just a grand extention of how you live always. I've always just Screwed Around with my guitar & wanted nothing else. Anytime it became "practice" it became loathesome to me, any time, since I was ten years old & first started playing. Nothing made me good at 6 strings on wood unless I was just Screwing Around. You feel it & there is no explanation for it. There is no work in the sense that we Catholic Pittsburghers know it where work is a sacrifice like thorns in the skull. That is not music at all. Music is music. It's fun & it's what you do after work. Music is completely ruined to shit if it is taken in the coffee-headache seriousness of an executive mindset. That offends me more than a man wiping his ass with the pages of the Bible, which I've done in a small room overlooking Divisidero St in San Fransisco. Along with the gypsy punk, Gogol have tasteful spices of ska & even some spanish music in there, with a rastaman occasionally shouting from an echo-ey chamber, alluding to ganga & the right of every one of us to partake in its holy graces, "IN DEE OLD TIME IT WAS NOT A CRIME" & there are plenty of revolutionary under- & overcurrents, which we need. Ugh, I know you're thinking "politcis" & "political songs" which has nothing at all to do with revolution & the roots of all revolutions which is a search for truth in the midst of temples built on layers upon layers of lies. There are no politics here. Read a good book or something you dummy. Or you can just listen to the lyrics of "Illumination" dont believe them for a moment, for a second do not believe my friend when you are down they are not coming with a helping hand of course there is no us & them but them they do not think the same... they never step on spiritual path they paint their faces so differently from ours and if you listen closely that war, it never stops be them new romans don't envy them my friend... Right on my Ukranian brother. & I don't believe for one second that a good band that blends genres sits down and says, "Yes lets add a bit of ska in there, then put some punk and don't forget the traditional music, sir, jolly good. People like that traditional stuff." Sure it is conscious on some level but any band that starts off saying, "Gee, we're going to be a genre-blending band" ends up sounding phony. Gogol Bordello does like Whitman said & takes all sides & filters it through themselves. I suggest getting hip to Gogol now & see them live before they inevitably crash or dissolve. That's what I'm doing anyway. Good Music like this typically doesn't last very long, tho I hope they go on till death do them part. They have a few more good albums in them at least, but fights & alcohol & all the usual band whatnots will inevitably occur among geniuses & genies. |
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