Gogol Bordello spells punk rock "G-Y-P-S-Y" at Sonar

"If you don't like Gogol Bordello, then you don't like fun," said Matt Dupree of Ground Control magazine. Fun was exactly the atmosphere at the Gogol show at Sonar this Tuesday. If you were doing anything else it better have been so soul-shakingly, head-throbbing, smile-so-much-your-face-wants-to-split-in-half fun that the other "best moments of your life" joined the party and got wasted and forgot themselves. If it wasn't then you might have missed the best time you might have ever had. To you I offer my condolences.

The history of Gogol Bordello is really a portrait of the lead singer, Eugene Hütz. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Hütz grew up listening to punk rock, which would continue to influence his life and his music. It was after the Chernobyl disaster that Hütz was introduced to another important source of influence: Gypsy culture. Hütz recounted his Chernobyl experience in a recent NPR interview saying, "I was listening to BBC radio when the DJ said, 'For the citizens of Ukraine: There was just a disaster in Chernobyl and it's not likely your government will tell you about it.'" He was a teenager and the evacuation took him on a journey to his family's ancestral village, exposing him to his gypsy past. For the next half decade, Hütz and his family were thrown around Europe as victims of the refugee system before they found themselves in Vermont. Eventually he made it to New York City where Gogol Bordello was born. The band has gone through several cycles of members but now the lineup includes Sergey Rjabtzev, a Russian violinist, Tommy Gobena, an Ethiopian bassist, Yuri Lemeshev, an accordion player from Russia, Oren Kaplin, an Israeli guitarist, Eliot Ferguson, a drummer from America, and two strikingly beautiful "percussion dancers" Pam Racine (an American) and Elizabeth Sun (from Scotland).

The wait for Gogol to take the stage was excrutiating and perforated with cock-teases. Every time some roadie came on stage to adjust a microphone, a roar of applause would erupt and then quickly diminish when everyone realized it wasn't anything significant. The band finally took the stage at 10:20 with the temperature of the room somewhere around 100 degrees. They threw themselves full force into "Super Theory of Super Everything" a track off their summer album, Super Taranta. Everyone in the crowd exploded in pogo fist pumps during the chorus of "I don't read the Bible, I don't trust disciples even if they're made of marble or Canal Street bling." As the song started a man in a pirate costume turned to me and said "Good luck," saluted me with his beer bottle, and disappeared into the writhing mass of bodies in front of the stage. I kept my place in the pit for the first song and I don't ever remember my feet touching the ground. About 30 seconds into "Not a Crime," I saw grown men run, smiling, away from the pit, sweating, delirious and giddy. Luckily, the Sonar main room was just small enough so that the action from the front row rippled all the way to the back.

The energy of the band is so infectious that people who had come to the show without any knowledge of the band were swept up into the foray and spat out later as gleeful victims of the mosh pit whirlpool. Early on in the set the band played my personal favorite song, "Wonderlust King." It's a song that touches on the gypsy tradition of the nomadic life but its contemporary charms like "Chinese moving in, building discoth??ques, homemade sex toys and whatnot," wink cheekily at encroaching globalization and the challenges it presents to the inherent desire of men to be free and travel.

In two hours the band pounded through songs like "60 Revolutions," "Think Globally" and an ironic favorite, "American Wedding." When they finally got around to playing "Start Wearing Purple," ?- a song that has particular significance for Baltimore, since the Ravens used it as their unofficial theme song a few seasons back - the band taunted the audience with it for at least three minutes. They would play the intro and just before growling out the first lyrics they would cycle back and play it again. Agonizing? Yes. But the end result was a beautiful, beautiful thing. After the last song the audience began chanting, "One more song!" and when Eugene reemerged for the encore he responded to the chants with "One more song? Don't be ridiculous! The night is just begins!" His endearing muddling of the English language, which is really a more literate version of Borat's, gives Hütz an even more intangible air of mysticism. The encore began with "Alcohol" and ended with "Harem in Tuscany."

The show ended with everyone on the verge of vomiting from two solid hours of extreme dancing drenched in their own sweat and, delightfully, in the sweat of others. After the show, Hütz remained onstage to announce that he would be DJ-ing the afterparty at Red Square. Hearing that in the same night I would not only get a Gogol Bordello show but also experience Hutz's legendary DJ skills, was akin to hearing the voice of God. All I can say, ladies and gentlemen, is that dreams do come true. They really do.