I'll Tell You a Story, Believe Me It's True: Phillyist Reviews Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly

In the interest of full disclosure, we have to tell you that this particular Phillyist grew up in the Boston area, so this review hurts us more than you know.

We...really thought that Flogging Molly did an awesome job.

If we paid any attention to our mother's advice about not saying anything if there's nothing nice to say...we would probably never say anything about a show at Festival Pier ever again, much less a punk show.

Before the Dropkick fans start emailing us, we should say that we thought they were as good as they could have been - we screamed ourselves hoarse during the show and happily walked into our day job on very little sleep.

That said, we have been Dropkick fans for years - our family lives in Brockton, Massachusetts, for God's sake.

But we kind of hated the show. A lot.

We've grown accustomed to the idea that Dropkick is better on albums than they are live - when you have bagpipes and tin whistles and drums and guitars and pianos and mandolins and accordions and THEN voices, there's a lot of sound to adjust. We know this. It just... would have been nice if we could have heard, say, anything other than the bass and the drum.

That said, the live version of "Shipping Up to Boston" with Flogging Molly's string section? Kicked. Ass. This Phillyist called her husband during the show freaking out about the fact that there was a live string section during an ostensibly punk show. Highlight of the show, without question.

Our issues with the audio notwithstanding, we are simply amazed at... okay, look. We're just going to say it. We are kind of gobsmacked by the fact that we actually watched a dude with dreads wearing a "kilt" (we are kind of convinced that this is a plaid skirt he bought at Target) and Tevas try to "teach" his drunken friends how to...do an Irish jig? We think? We're not sure. All we know is that we had a large whiskey and "coke" (heavy on the former and easy on the latter) end up on our jeans while the morons in front of us...did their best impression of kicking around a hacky sack. We're still not sure why a hacky sack ended up at a punk show, but we'd kind of like to slap you, dude in the Tevas.