“I can’t recall the last time I looked back at the crowd and saw so much teeth during a concert.” So wrote a brilliant young writer with an artist’s mastery of mass and countable nouns about Flogging Molly’s 12:45 pm Friday afternoon (which is really first thing in the morning in Festival time) White Stage set in 2006. The seven of them took the stage, Dave King barked “Hi we’re Flogging Molly and this is what we do”, and within seconds at least 75% of the crowd was grinnn’ an’ bouncin’ an’ jiggin’. Reserved culture my ass.

As you can see from that video, they had actually kicked off the fest at the free Thurday night Red Marquee show, which clearly also rawked, but sadly I missed it.

Something about bacchanalic beer-soaked Euro-trad consistently goes down gangbusters at this Fest. It’s beginning to be a thing here…in 2008 we had Gogol Bordello, and in 2009 virtually unknown Swedish group Räfven, who like Anvil and Vixen before them became big in Japan and bore out the truth of Mark 6:4: “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” Räfven didn’t even have a Wikipedia page when they arrived, and now only have English and Nihongo ones, nothing in their native Swedish.

Flogging_Molly

Ye Olde Worlde Spiegeltent extraordinaire, The Crystal Palace, is the place to see such things, and the Molly have been known to throw down acoustic from time to time,  so I’d be balls out to see them there. The Crystal Palace closing night Räfven set last year was one of my all-time best Fuji memories, partly because it was a fond auld lang syne for all of us who had caught the spirit at several of their other eight shows, and partly because Jeff was finally beginning to safely come to out of his alcohol-poisoning stupor with only his usual moderate level of brain damage incurred, and I could finally breathe easy and cut loose. But even if Flogging M only do a main stage set, it’s still going to be full of love and ecstasy thanks to the reliable enthusiasm of the Japanese crowds, and that’s about all I need.

Here they are earlier this year at the Punk Rock Bowling Tournament in Vegas (which is exactly what it sounds like, except now they also have a Punk Rock Texas Hold ‘Em Tourney), and they are touring Europe this summer before Fuji.

-Kern