For my birthday this year, my husband presented me with Flogging Molly tickets, which is hands-down my favorite living band. The concert fell on a Wednesday night in Oakland. We're not particularly impulsive people, and taking off and driving an hour and a half to see a concert mid-week like that, on a school night, as it were, isn't something we do generally speaking. The last time we did something like that was eight years ago when we decided that we had to fly to Vegas to go to The Star Trek experience before they shut it down. (Which. Was. Awesome.)
As part of this birthday present, my husband got my sister in on it and worked out a fun cousin sleep-over for our kid so the logistics were handled and all I had to do was show up and have a good time. (And get my boss to give me the time off, but he's a Mollys fan too, so he totally understood.)
So Wednesday night, I found myself in the Fox Theater in Oakland waiting for the band. If you've never had occassion to step into the Fox Theater in Oakland, find an excuse. The phrase "they don't build them like that anymore" comes to mind. Drinking a beer with my husband, leaning against the orchestra section railing, with the lights low and people drifting in, all excited to see the same thing, staring up at the starry carved ceiling... It would have been the highlight of my week. Except then the music started and that topped everything.
I haven't been to that kind of concert in ten years. You know, the kind where your ears are ringing afterwards and your voice is shot from singing/screaming along with the band and you're sore all over from dancing for hours straight. The last time I'd done that sort of thing, however, would have been a Flogging Molly concert too. I've seen them live a handful of times before. I always love them in concert and this time is no exception. That's pretty much a given. I can't say that much new about the experience except that it was tons of fun, and to pass on that the band said that after this tour, they're heading back into the studio to record a new album, which makes me all kinds of happy.
I'd surprising rather tell you about who they played with. The band was touring with another group called "Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls", who was no one I'd heard of and, in my view, was just another opening band between me and Flogging Molly. Except they were awesome. It's an English band that self describes as punk. iTunes calls them alternative, and wikipedia calls them Punk/Folk/Acoustic Punk if you can get your head around that mashup. No one seems to know quite what to do with them. Well... I do. Put them on really fracking loud on my stereo and dance around my kitchen in my socks, which is what I've been doing pretty consistantly since the concert. The band plays about the happiest punk music I've ever heard and the lyrics are brillant. I love a good poet who knows how to hold a guitar.
So, friends and neighbors, in the off chance that you've never heard of Flogging Molly allow me to introduce you:
As a starter album, I'd like to point either to their most recent album Speed of Darkness, or their first album Swagger, but really, they haven't done a bad one.
And if you already dig Flogging Molly, check out Frank Turner and see if he's up your alley.
Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls
I picked up two of his albums already, Tape Deck Heart which has a great flow through as an album and some killer tracks, and also his most recent album Positive Songs for Negative People. The iTunes version of that one has a really cool bonus acoustic set at the end which I enjoyed.
The day after the concert, we met up with my sis and took the kids to the zoo. It's fun watching the monkeys play. We also enjoyed seeing the animals. And since we were in Oakland we squeezed in a trip to Hockey X. Speaking of hockey, the team played a pretty good game on Sunday and we somehow wiggled ourselves into a spot in the semi-finals, which is pretty astounding after starting the season off with a 10-game losing streak. (Yes, thank you, we're very proud.) My work week was split up around the concert of course, but on either side of that, I got to partake in a fun and facinating work project that I've never done before so that was pretty awesome too.
And that's been my badass week. Hope you had a good one. If not, go download some of that music I was talking about and it'll get better.