Picture a room full of sweaty, mostly-drunk rock fans and punks of varying stripe clamoring for the headline act of the night during a sound check that includes a banjo and an accordion at full volume from massive Marshall stacks. To those unfamiliar with the Dropkick Murphys this may seem like a strange juxtaposition. Hell, I've been a fan of the band for nearly ten years and I thought it seemed odd. But the lights went down, the crowd chanted the traditional “Let's go Murphys! *clap clap clap-clap-clap*,” the aforementioned banjo launched into the opening of State of Massachusetts, and it all fell into place.

Part of the appeal of a live Murphys show is that so many of their songs have choruses and interludes written to be sung and shouted by audiences who can't sing. Boys on the Docks, one of their earliest songs, has about five lines at once for the masses to chant raucously. The audience also sings the first verse in the traditional Amazing Grace before it gets quite a bit louder than tradition would hold. And one of my personal favorites, Barroom Hero, has the entire intro and frequent chants of “oi oi oi!” left to the crowd. At one point Ken Casey said to the audience “hey, how about a drinking song?” Funny, but it gets better. They called up as many women from the audience as the stage would hold to serenade them with “Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced,” a humorous song of amorous male boasting. The end chorus includes a short line wherein a woman insults the singer's manhood, but the young woman randomly chosen onstage didn't know the line, which was funny anyway.

Standout songs included my personal favorites listed above, as well as their new material. Usually a crowd will go nuts for a band's familiar hits and take a break during the new stuff. Many in this crowd knew the new songs already and sang along. You don't often see that level of support for newer material. My favorite of the new songs was Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya, loosely to the tune of When Johnny Comes Marching Home. They ended the show as they always do with Skinhead on the MBTA* and let a bunch of people on stage. I was about twenty feet back so I made my way forward and I was three feet away when security stopped letting people up. Nuts. They then launched into Citizen CIA, an amps-to-eleven blasting double tempo parody of military recruitment and the policies of said agancy. What a night.

*It should be noted that skinhead refers to the original, or traditional skinhead subculture and not the facist offshoot. There's a big difference. The song is a parody of Charlie on the MBTA.