PHOTO: Todd Owyoung 

The dramatic entrance followed after a few direful verses as they immediately broke into "Famous for Nothing," the first track of their latest full length.

w/Everybody Out and Big D And the Kids Table
The Pageant, St. Louis

Live rock 'n' roll smells like stale beer and cigarettes mixed with sweat laced into air so thick you can eat it by the slice. All these elements were palpable by the time the Dropkick Murphys took the stage of The Pageant. I was wedged in standing-room-only between a family of four complete with kids who looked around eight years old with their midget father, and two large skinheads. It was going to be a hell of a ride.

Though the two opening acts had already planted the seed for that familiar tinnitus for which I've actually grown a soft spot over years of concertgoing, when the Dropkick Murphys finally gave in to the now trademark "Let's go Murphys" chant emanating from the crowd, I could hear everything perfectly. Initially the stage went completely dark and the audience, expecting some grand entrance, cheered wildly. Instead of a dramatic flash of light or guitar crash, though, the stage remained dark and there was only a sonorous female voice singing the verses of "The Foggy Dew," a sad and haunting Irish lament probably written by Peader Kearney or Canon Charles O'Neill around 1920 about the 1916 Easter uprising in Dublin.

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The band didn't disappoint the audience, though, and the dramatic entrance followed after a few direful verses as they immediately broke into "Famous for Nothing," the first track of their latest full length The Meanest of Times. The charged introduction continued without pause as they melted the end of the first song into the beginning of the next, "Boys on the Docks," now famous at Dropkick Murphys shows for inciting the audience to bellow the chorus with frontman Al Barr and bassist Ken Casey, who share lead vocal credits.

A glance around the venue was an exercise in revealing the far-reaching popularity of the band. Mohawked, leather-jacketed teenagers situated themselves next to men with military high-and-tight haircuts. Charcoal-headed women in their fifties stood by children barely ten years old, and everyone, even the bouncers, became infected by the energy and flagrant animation coming from the stage.

The set list included gems from the band's extensive catalogue that goes back over a decade into Boston. Several tunes bore dedications: "Curse of a Fallen Soul" went out to a St. Louis friend and former driver of the band who is no longer living, and "Fields of Athenry" to a soldier friend of the band who was killed in Iraq. Singer Stephanie Dougherty of punk outfit Deadly Sins lent her voice to "The Dirty Glass" and belted the lyrics out with voluptuous intensity alongside Barr and Casey. The shared sense of fame onstage continued to the end of the set with "Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced," when Casey invited approximately 30 women from the audience up to dance.

The incendiary five-song encore ignited the audience's excitement one last time, beginning with "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," followed by a brief pause in which Barr challenged with a yell, "All right St. Louis, let's see what you still have left inside." Instantly, the jackhammer riffs of "Shattered" were detonated by Casey's bass and erupted out of the amps. The pace didn't slow until the end of the fifth encore, "Citizen C.I.A.," and by the last note of the last song, some 70 fans had taken the stage.

Buy their CDs. Enjoy them at home or in the car. But by God, see them live if they're onstage anywhere within a hundred miles of you. | Jason Neubauer

Complete Set List:

The Foggy Dew
Famous for Nothing
Boys on the Docks
Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya
Heroes of Our Past
State of Massachusetts
Black Velvet Band
Ten Years of Service
Vices and Virtues
God Willing
Amazing Grace
Upstarts and Broken Hearts
Loyal to No One
Curse of a Fallen Soul
Flannagan's Ball
Which Side Are You On?
Fields of Athenry
Tomorrow's Industry
Caught in a Jar
John Law
The Dirty Glass
Fairmount Hill
Worker's Song
Captain Kelly's Kitchen
Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced

Encore:

I'm Shipping up to Boston
Shattered
Barroom Heroes
Skinhead on the MBTA
Citizen C.I.A.