The iconoclastic Dropkick Murphys songbook has quickly become an all-time Boston punk treasure, and its contents were on special display last Saturday night at Avalon. It was the second of three sold-out St. Patrick’s Day weekend shows for the local road warriors, and the festivities were being recorded for release on album and video. Needless to say, they pulled out all the stops, the most memorable of which was their debut cover of the Standells’ "Dirty Water" — an inevitable new Dropkicks standard if there ever was one.
That emotional high point came at the end of the set, right before Ken Casey’s stage-diving "Skinhead on the MBTA" antics. But the holiday favorites flowed like Guinness all night. Casey dedicated the band’s punked-up version of "Amazing Grace" to his grandparents, and the hordes of grandchildren in the very all-ages congregation did the rock-and-roll equivalent of dancing in the aisles. The band covered both sides of the Irish-American equation on the most crowd-pleasing one-two punch of the night, following their hearty run through "The Wild Rover" with a blazing version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s "Fortunate Son," which found frontman Al Barr at his gravel-throated best.
As usual, the Dropkicks’ original material held its own against the pub-rock standards, and the visibly sober seven-piece played with a fire that befits their status as one of the most beloved punk bands in the world. The nostalgic sing-alongs "Barroom Hero" and "Caps and Bottles" had the floor in a frenzy; "Forever" and "The Torch" were dewy-eyed soundtracks to the beer line. The holiday celebration kicked into full gear with "Good Rats," which started with an audience-wide hug that soon broke into a frisky group jig.
Home-town pride ran rampant in the form of between-set Bruins fight videos and a guest appearance by erstwhile pop chick Kay Hanley, who pogo’d her way through "The Dirty Glass," her belligerent new collaboration with the Dropkicks. The Masshole pop-punk crossover vibe extended to openers Piebald, who have been playing around these parts for longer than the headliners but had not, as frontman Travis Shettel pointed out, ever shared a gig with them. Piebald did elicit a few predictable "emo sucks" chants. But by the time they got off the stage, following an incendiary, Queen-sized run through the B-side "We Cannot Read Poetry," they had definitely made some new friends.
