Gogol Bordello @ Irving Plaza, NYC
Live Reviews | Jul 23rd, 2007
My esteemed colleague and RJ co-founder Bryan invited me to this madcap evening of debauched lunacy. I accepted because Irving Plaza is around the corner from Heartland Brewery, which pours forth a most delicious frothy beverage known as the Red Rooster.
Unfortunately, when I arrived outside Irving Plaza and shared my idea with Bryan to leave the line he was waiting on for an hour so that he can watch me get drunk he refused. I fumed but had to respect his beliefs. You see, he is a Jehovah’s Witness. Or Straight Edge. I forget. Point is, his body is a temple, and not the cool temple where you get Christ bloodwine.
Eventually we were allowed inside, and Bryan bolted to his “sweet spot,” an area of the balcony where you can get an unobstructed view at the expense of, well, being on the balcony, which makes you feel lame and old. But damnit, he was right. It was a sweet spot.
Some legendary DJ named DJ Old Guy or something spun unrecognizable world music and obscure reggae to point out how little even we amateur musicologists know about music, the world, culture, and life. Someone shouted that he was the DJ for the Clash and the Pogues and some other old bands no one cares about anymore. In any case, it was awesome.
The good music ended when the opener came on. The singer came out in a sleazy suit and fedora and snaked around on stage while spouting bad beat poetry. The band backed him by playing frustratingly bland post-punk and looking ashamed to be there. I didn’t catch their name, but I called them Hipster Daddy-O and the Sucktones. They would have been the worst opener I’d ever seen in my life had I not received the dubious pleasure of seeing suck-ass Candlebox THREE TIMES when they toured with Rush in 1994. (I’m still angry that Primus replaced Candlebox mid-tour, but not soon enough. Damn you, Candlebox.)
Gogol Bordello came on, and from my high vantage point, I had an amazing view. Of the women below me. Apparently, chicks love the Gogol Bordello, and the band pulls in all sorts of chicky chicks hippie chicks, punk chicks, ska chicks, Queens by way of Eastern Europe immigrant chicks, hipster Brooklyn chicks, sophisticated Manhattan chicks, older chicks, younger chicks, one chicks, two chicks, red chicks, blue chicks. Every time I looked down, I saw cleavage. It was a glorious night.
Sadly for my gender, the male attendees seemed oblivious. The men on the floor pogo’d along to Gogol, but drunkenly, and in time with the band, rather than wooing the women around them with showy dance moves. Circle pits started up and nearby ladies fled for their lives. These guys were doing it all wrong.
I looked around me. On the balcony, the women were dancing, but the men stood like statues, lest the boogie bug bite them and make them look foolish. Even Bryan, who I’m sure flails along to bands in the safety of his bedroom, probably in his underoos, was stiffer than an erection on a corpse. I decided to take advantage of the situation. If I started dancing, I figured, pretending to really be into the music and not afraid to show it, the girls by me would want to dance with me too. And, as any reader of evolutionary behaviorism could tell you, when dancing with a partner, mutual attraction increases as your bodies sync up and mimic the mirror motions of sexual intercourse. And if I were to find myself dancing with a group of ladies? Well, the possibilities are endless… and sexy.
So I moved away from my sweet spot, which was quickly filled by three young, hot girls, who looked to be from Long Island and who all sported small, safe tattoos on the backs of their shoulders. I started dancing by these girls, but now their backs were to me, so they couldn’t see the hot booty shaking going on. I purposely attempted some “accidental” human contact, like a swinging arm or elbow hitting their side and so forth, but I was ignored, even when I proffered apologies.
I scanned my area. An exceptionally hot, dark-eyed girl was dancing seductively around her stationary boyfriend. She would grind against him, and then yell at him in Ukrainian for not flinching. She moved a little away from him and danced on her own. I did a little fancy side step and slid into “accidental human contact” territory. I tried to stay in my groove, but also syncopate our moves so that when her arm swung backwards, mine would swing forwards, thus affecting some serious AHC. But I was impeded by the glare of her boyfriend and the observation that I had situated myself under an air conditioner that was leaking dirty water onto my head. Foiled!
An older woman, a bit hefty, ambled into my vicinity. I shimmied and shuffled until I was near her, but after one AHC she mistook my intentions and backed away, thinking me dangerous or in need of more dance space.
This went on for hours. It was a dance in the literal sense, but also metaphorically. It was a dance between desires and boundaries. A dance between solitude and companionship. A dance between shyness and exhibitionism, between hope and rejection.
At this point, I couldn’t stop my mating dance even if I wanted to. I was like a tropical bird that will sing for days until its call is finally answered. I danced between songs, during solos, in the lull before the encore.
And it was then that realization hit me. I stunk. I smelled like absolute shit. I was in a warm, cloudy mist that formed from my armpits. The water dripping down my legs wasn’t from the air conditioner, but from my sweaty ass crack.
In dancing all night to attract the ladies, I was actually repelling them. I realized why I had all the room in the world to dance about, while everybody else was packed like sardines.
And as the night ended, I realized why so many men stood so still. After the show, the guys and girls coupled up, the men smelling great while the women were exhilarated from expending their own energies and all keyed up for sex. These boring guys played it cool and they kept cool. And they were now going back home with these chicks. These chicks who were rightfully MINE!
It made me think about life, about how the hardest workers aren’t always the winners. The hare gets beat by the tortoise, the bosses lean back with their feet up, the overnight successes never pay their dues. It’s a wheel of injustice that we unfortunates have to turn.
