Dropkick Murphys serve Vancouverites some verbal abuse

By Lliam Easterbrook
[creative arts bureau chief]

“That’s me on the ice motherfuckers!” yelled Ken Casey, the Dropkick Murphys lead vocalist and bassist, while holding up a blown-up cardboard picture of himself on the ice at Vancouver’s very own Rogers Arena, raising Stanley’s Cup above his head while celebrating next to a bunch of Boston Bruins. Oh—and I forgot to mention, that was after the Murphys made a poignant entrance to Queen’s “We Are the Champions,” which power-balladed its way through the Commodore Ballroom’s house speakers.

So what do you think a packed house, chalk-full of tattooed, jean-vested, Celt-inspired punk rockers – reeking of booze and sweat and still grieving a game 7 heartbreaking loss at home to the Boston Bruins, did?

Well, aside from a few plastic cups thrown onstage — and one rowdy patron who spat water at Al Barr, the band’s other lead vocalist – abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

Now you’d think a town that had just wrecked and scorched the better part of the downtown core only a few weeks ago would storm the stage, apprehend the entire band, draw and quarter each member in some twisted sense of vigilante justice, and then vanish into the night, spiked Mohawks et al. But as the Murphys raced into “Hang ‘em High,” (a song exactly fitting my thoughts at the time), the first of their newest LP, Going Out in Style, nothing happened. Well, except more drinking and sweating. The only thing I could think of as I went to the bar and grabbed a beer and a shot of Jameson whiskey was, Man, these guys have a strong following.

And that part is true.

With a cult following as loyal as the Murphys, since their inception in the late 90’s, they can do no wrong. Even when Casey tried his rabble-rousing best to angst the crowd into some kind of action.

But just as Vancouver is known to be flakey, it appears we are just as absent and pastry-thin with our anarchic convictions as well.

Where Casey and his band mates are punk in their “Fuck You” attitude, Vancouver civilians, it seems, are just a bunch of punks.

As the night progressed the Murphys ventured into all their staples, blazing renditions of  “Citizen CIA,” “The State of Massachusetts,” and the always anthemic “Shipping Up To Boston”—from Scorsese’s The Departed. But they also slowed it down, at times engaging the audience with their blend of traditional Irish folk and post-punk balladry.

Songs like banjo-tinged “Cruel” wafted over the audience like the haze of a whisky binge, causing everyone in the house to sway and slug down another beer.

But when every other song is a drinking one or an anthem not-good-enough-for-a-stadium, and when your fellow Vancouverites don’t seem to give two shits that the guy onstage is wearing a Boston Bruins jersey, egging on the city with a life-sized picture of himself holding the Stanley Cup on your home ice while uttering the words “From the bottom of my heart, Fuck You,” after tossing the sign into the crowd, you just want something to happen, man! And it didn’t –– so I just grabbed another beer, another shot of Jameson and went back to laughing at Vancouver for its ridiculous flakiness.

But I digress; to quote the Irish poet Yeats: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” and I guess in a way that sums up the crowd on Saturday night. Even more so, the rest of Vancouver.