Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Gogol Bordello & In The Whale @ Fillmore


You can never go wrong enjoying yourself at a Gogol Bordello show.  And tonight is no exception.

In The Whale had just started when I arrived and I'm so glad I saw all this.  This may be my new favorite band.  Rock n roll is not dead.  This 2 piece from Denver know what great music is, and how to get a crowd into.  Sure it is an unknown opening band, but in the end people were going mental.. Girlfriend was the highlight.  With the help of Gogol hype-man, Pedro Erazo, In The Whale bought the crowd, literally, to it's knees during Girlfriend, only to send them into a frenzy at the screaming last chorus.  It was absolutely wild!  I'm sure In The Whale left with a number of new fans tonight (but the Peyton rules, Cam sucks during the last song may have put a dent in that).

It was disappointing to see the Fillmore only half full tonight.  Charlotte will happily complain when good bands play all around us (Asheville, Carrboro, Greensboro, Atlanta etc) but when a great one comes through you get a piss-weak turnout.  This didn't matter to Gogol Bordello.  Actually I think they wouldn't care if no-one showed up.  They will have an awesome time regardless.  From the opening notes of  Break Into Your Higher Self singer, Eugene Hutz, was in full swing.  By Immigrant Punk he was too sweaty to have a shirt.  And nobody in the audience wasn't dancing.  Dogs Are Barking and Think Locally, Fuck Globally are familiar to me and definitely highlights, as was the friend they bought on stage to add a flamenco sound to a few songs - not sure who he was, but he was amazing.  A four song encore ended with Hutz throwing a drum into the crowd, stage diving after it, and standing above an adoring crowd, like that's what you always do.

I left the show upbeat and exhausted, I can only imagine how long it took the band to come down from that kind of 2 hour high energy.

Gogol Bordello Setlist The Fillmore, Charlotte, NC, USA 2017

The Crap Facts:
This is my 419th concert.
This is my 19th concert at The Fillmore.
This is my 56th concert in Charlotte.
This is my 63rd concert in North Carolina.
This is my 225th concert in the USA.
In The Whale are the 492nd band I've seen.
In The Whale are the 100th different band I've seen in North Carolina.
This is my 4th Gogol Bordello concert.

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