March 3, 2006
Would you visit a brothel created by the mind of ‘the Hieronymus Bosch of Russian literature’? Well, if you did, you might just find this haphazard gaggle of musicians were the house band.
The enthusiastic and cheery-looking Fighting Cocks (hilarious before it became clear that they couldn’t play their way out of a paper bag, or indeed do anything apart from jiggle to a bad gabba backing track) were a superb and pleasingly pretty foil to GB’s self-styled gypsy punk musicality (there’s nothing like a bad support for making you look your best). A true rock showman of the old school, thickly-accented Ukrainian frontman Eugene Hutz had stripped down to his skin-tight Union Jack t-shirt before you knew what was happening, and whilst he cavorted about the stage like an insane moustachioed chicken, the bounce of the Zodiac’s sprung floor could’ve mixed your drink.
My initial disappointment to see that the line-up was entirely male (their press shots show a raggle-taggle mixed-sex gypsy crew) was quashed when the thai-american female ‘percussionists’ leapt onto the stage, only to change to another kind of let-down (considering how many women are talented musicians, why the hell do so many end up as glorified dancing girls?) – but as it was the death-defying feats and rock n roll attitude of the ladies that made up the finale, they earned my respect through other means. Like a cross between a circus show, Iggy Pop and a jewish wedding band, you won’t often see a full-on punk singer (or better, shouter) accompanied by a two-octave accordion and electric fiddle. These two more senior members of the band were the real pros of the performance, despite the focus of attention landing more readily on the dirty, half-clad, crowd-mounting madman (I’ve never before seen so much audience stage-crashing - even the bouncers looked worried), and Russian fiddler Sergey Rjabtzev rasped so many hairs off his bow that he gave it to a fan as a souvenir.
My only criticism is that – as is often common at the Zodiac – the mixing seemed to turn up the punk (drum kit, bass and electric guitar) and turn down the gypsy (accordion and fiddle), which I was often straining to hear above the deafening backing. A bit of circle dancing wouldn’t have gone amiss either – but amongst the crush (it was a sell-out) and the leaping sideways to avoid people falling on my head there just wasn’t the room.
All too easily mistaken for a caricature of themselves, these guys are in fact 100% genuine, and thus as much fun to match. Yeah. Start wearing purple or else.
Listen at www.myspace.com/gogolbordello
The enthusiastic and cheery-looking Fighting Cocks (hilarious before it became clear that they couldn’t play their way out of a paper bag, or indeed do anything apart from jiggle to a bad gabba backing track) were a superb and pleasingly pretty foil to GB’s self-styled gypsy punk musicality (there’s nothing like a bad support for making you look your best). A true rock showman of the old school, thickly-accented Ukrainian frontman Eugene Hutz had stripped down to his skin-tight Union Jack t-shirt before you knew what was happening, and whilst he cavorted about the stage like an insane moustachioed chicken, the bounce of the Zodiac’s sprung floor could’ve mixed your drink.
My initial disappointment to see that the line-up was entirely male (their press shots show a raggle-taggle mixed-sex gypsy crew) was quashed when the thai-american female ‘percussionists’ leapt onto the stage, only to change to another kind of let-down (considering how many women are talented musicians, why the hell do so many end up as glorified dancing girls?) – but as it was the death-defying feats and rock n roll attitude of the ladies that made up the finale, they earned my respect through other means. Like a cross between a circus show, Iggy Pop and a jewish wedding band, you won’t often see a full-on punk singer (or better, shouter) accompanied by a two-octave accordion and electric fiddle. These two more senior members of the band were the real pros of the performance, despite the focus of attention landing more readily on the dirty, half-clad, crowd-mounting madman (I’ve never before seen so much audience stage-crashing - even the bouncers looked worried), and Russian fiddler Sergey Rjabtzev rasped so many hairs off his bow that he gave it to a fan as a souvenir.
My only criticism is that – as is often common at the Zodiac – the mixing seemed to turn up the punk (drum kit, bass and electric guitar) and turn down the gypsy (accordion and fiddle), which I was often straining to hear above the deafening backing. A bit of circle dancing wouldn’t have gone amiss either – but amongst the crush (it was a sell-out) and the leaping sideways to avoid people falling on my head there just wasn’t the room.
All too easily mistaken for a caricature of themselves, these guys are in fact 100% genuine, and thus as much fun to match. Yeah. Start wearing purple or else.
Listen at www.myspace.com/gogolbordello