Anthem tornado about to whirl in

Mar 25 2008 by David Whetstone, The Journal

The kings of Gypsy punk are coming to town. North East actress Tracy Whitwell explains why she’s a fan of Gogol Bordello.

HOORAY, the Gypsies are coming! And no, I’m not talking about those old ladies in caravans at The Hoppings who tell you you’ll marry a tall dark stranger.

What I’m talking about is a bunch of ridiculously talented folk-punk musicians led by a lanky dervish of a man with gold hoops and an impressive waxed moustache who goes by the name of Eugene Hutz.

They’re coming to the Carling Academy in Newcastle on Friday. And I’ve got tickets!

If you YouTube Gogol Bordello, you will find videos of a crazily dressed Eugene bellowing clever (and often Ukrainian) lyrics like an incandescent buffalo surrounded by a raggle-taggle gang of musicians playing their hearts out.

You’ll find a bearded violinist (Sergey Ryabtsev), knocking on 50 with the body of a 30-year-old, playing like the devil’s in him and two gorgeous dancing girls goose-stepping around the stage banging big drums and ululating.

But that’s just the beginning – because, live, they are unstoppable and their front man is on a mission.

Eugene Hutz was born in Kiev in 1972. When the Chernobyl catastrophe occurred in 1986, his family evacuated to western Ukraine and he spent his teen years soaking up as much black market indie music as he could find.

Then, having had his fill of the Soviet Union, he decided to emigrate, guitar in hand, to the Big Apple.

There, he met like-minded musicians and eventually they formed Gogol Bordello.

Their first CD, Voi-la Intruder, was released in 1999 and by all accounts there were already murmurings in New York about this strange and fantastical new sound and the accompanying stage act that made them a must-see.

The line-up is diverse, to say the least. As Eugene so colourfully puts it, they are “an orchestra of immigrants jamming in A minor”.

Sergey Ryabtsev (violin) and Yuri Lemeshev (accordion) are both Russian.

Oren Kaplan (guitar) is Israeli; Thomas Gobena (bass) is Ethiopian; Pedro Erazo (percussion) is from Ecuador; and the all-singing, drum-thumping dancing girls, Pamela Racine and Elizabeth Sun, are Thai-American and Chinese-Scottish respectively.

Only the drummer, Eliot Ferguson, hails solely from America (Florida).

Together they pool their influences and come up with a sound that has been described by comedian and Gogol Bordello fan Phill Jupitus as “a bit like The Clash having a fight with The Pogues in Eastern Europe”.

Their influences have been cited as from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to Fugazi, Mano Negra and Taraf de Haidouks and they remind me very much of the mighty French band Les Négresses Vertes in their heyday, with perhaps a little more gunpowder under their seats.

Eugene is very, very passionate about Gypsy music. Both he and Sergey have Romany blood and are the driving force of the band.

They feel that Gypsy music is a “goldmine of authentic energy” and “one of the last forces on the planet against sameness”; and it seems a testament to their passion (and determination to bring their form of music to the masses) that Gogol Bordello aren’t playing The Sage Gateshead this month as a “world music” band but are playing a rock/indie venue with a hard-core of loyal young fans who are usually less than receptive to “foreign music” but who love them with a passion.

When I eventually got tickets to see them last December (in Wolverhampton; don’t ask), the drive was long but the show was extraordinary, not least because of the fans.

While the band unleashed their tornado of violin and accordion-led anthems, there was the usual proliferation of lust-bound student types dancing frenetically, eyes fixed hungrily on the semi-naked torso of the front man. Par for the course with a lead singer as charismatic as Hutz.

But more interesting was the very old lady in a wheelchair, hands crippled with arthritis, bouncing up and down for a good hour or so; the bald man with his respectable wife pogoing like a good ’un; and the two schoolteachery-looking women in their fifties who started dancing into me a bit too hard to try to get to the front.

The crowd was just so ... diverse. And Gogol Bordello seemed to bring out the rebel in everyone who was there. And now things are moving faster. Eugene has starred in movies, he’s had a documentary made about him and he’s had at least one character in an indie movie based on him (Wristcutters: A Love Story).

Plus he and Sergey performed at Live Earth with Madonna, who just directed her first short film starring – yup, you guessed it – Gogol Bordello.

So please, get a ticket while they’re still playing gigs where you can see the stage without binoculars. You won’t regret it, I’ll bet me banjo on it.

Gogol Bordello play Carling Academy, Newcastle, at 7pm on Friday. Email boxoffice@newcastle-academy.co.uk or call (0191) 260-4650.