Gogol Bordello Warehouse Live October 31, 2014
Gogol Bordello's Houston fans came to Warehouse Live for a Halloween show. The band made sure it turned into a Dia de Los Muertos celebration by playing a set that flipped the calendar and was anything but dead.
According to front man Eugene Hutz, it's been a year since the eclectic and energetic band played here and it's like some of you never left the foot of the stage. Warehouse Live's Ballroom was packed with rabid followers. Many were in disguise for Halloween, but their true selves were revealed when the band cranked up for "We Rise Again" at ten minutes after 10 p.m.
Fans who had waited a year to see the gypsy punks again were patient with the late start, occasionally chanting "Gogol! Gogol! Gogol!" to pass the time. That enthusiasm was rewarded with an opening run that showed the band wasn't playing around. "We Rise Again" and "Wonderlust King" sandwiched "Not a Crime," which had the whole room in motion.
"Not a Crime" is an especially great front-of-the-set song because it establishes the bond between Gogol Bordello and its devoted. The connection is something along these lines: we will sing and dance onstage, you will sing and dance out there in the audience. That Simon Says went on all night, to everyone's glee.
It was a little less evident on a song like "Dig Deep Enough," from the group's latest album, Pura Vida Conspiracy. The chorus, "We who seek long enough, dig deep enough, stay strong enough...find diamonds in the rough," demands a little more consideration than some of the band's chant-worthy catalog.
Hutz stripped off his jacket and was bare-chested by song five, "The Other Side of the Rainbow." That song was the set's extended jam, designed to show off a very capable band. It led into "My Companjera," which was probably the best-received song of the night, challenged by an urgent and frenetic "Immigraniada (We Comin' Rougher)" and "Start Wearing Purple," one of the songs that put Gogol on the musical map.
They rocked that bad boy, too, but that was a rock-stars' song, the one even the casual fans know. "My Companjera" came from a more informed place. It's the kind of song that the die-hard fans know all the words to and, by the time it's done in the live set, the new fans know enough of to sing at the tops of their lungs.
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