Gypsy Punks and a Pair of Crutches

Things are getting better! Only five days ago I could barely bend my knee to 90 degrees and I was still using crutches for long distances. Now I am completely off the crutches, and after seeing the physical therapist, I can bend my knee up to 125 degrees. My target is 150, to give some perspective. I apologize for the profound banality of this section of the post, but not much else is going on. It's tough to wax poetic about life when all it consists of is doing leg exercises and getting excited about being able to walk up the stairs without limping or holding on to the wall. Actually, I do have something mildly momentous (I love contradictions) to report. I am returning to Stone on Monday for my first day of work since the surgery. I will be easing back into things gradually--I'm still not allowed to do any "excessive walking or standing," meaning anything more than 15-20 minutes at a stretch. And in other fine news, my good friend Steve was here visiting all this past week, and that was wonderful as all hell, although still not anything that's going to make an entertaining blog entry for anybody else. We had long conversations together! We went out to DINNER! I was just reveling in his company--he lives in another state and I don't get to see him very often at all. This visit marked nearly one year since I last saw him.

Well, the night he got here, something really noteworthy DID happen. We went out to the Gogol Bordello concert, and boy howdy holy crap oh my god was it the best thing ever! The photo at the top is a fraction of the band practicing stage antics in the Alps, incidentally. I had originally planned on going with my brother and another guy from Stone, and Steve just couldn’t bear to be left out, so he went, too. They performed at the House of Blues, which I’ve never been to before, and it was (say this with an outRAGEOUS French accent) verry nice. I liked that there were several different rooms to hang out in if you so chose. If I had been there with a non-gimpy leg and if it was any other band playing, I would have explored more (you wouldn’t ever want to miss the visual spectacle of Gogol Bordello onstage, believe me). There were comfy couches and everything in one of the bar areas, where you could still hear the music just fine, but it was at a much more reasonable number of decibels so you could have conversations without screaming directly into people’s ears.

Because my knee prevented me from standing up for the duration of the night's festivities, I got to sit in the special gimp section. They gave me a chair and roped off the area so people wouldn't trip over us and cause more damage and drama. It mostly worked. There was an extremely nice couple sitting next to me who were very helpful and instrumental in trying to figure out where the heck Steve and Ken had gotten off to before the concert started. The only frustrating thing about the evening was that I couldn’t stand up and jump up and down and thrash around and dance like one possessed or try to get on the stage. These are all things that are more or less obligatory at a Gogol Bordello concert. Trust me. I liked that they not only allowed audience members to jump on the stage and join the fray, they invited and encouraged them to do so.

The band is truly amazing. Even if you didn’t care for their music (are there people who do that?) I challenge anyone to go see them live and not yell and scream and thrash around. Their energy is astounding and boundless and infectious. They don’t just play music, they put on an exhausting, exhilarating and insane show. Accordions. Two screaming women in crazy costumes like grown up violent Punky Brewsters. Cuss words. Lyrics shouted out in unintelligible Ukrainian accents. Cymbals and giant drums. Mandatory audience participation. Crowd-surfing band members. These are shallow attempts to convey the unbelievable colors, sounds and energy of the concert, but there is really no way to do so with words. They did two or three encores, or ten, I'm not sure. Not enough. I have never, and I mean NEVER, seen an audience react to a show the way this one did. Every single person was moving; it was a sweaty sea of people jumping up and down in a frantic tempo and clapping their hands high over their heads. I know I've already pretty much said this, but this was truly one of the most spectacular (very much a spectacle) concerts I've ever attended. I was even inspired to buy a t-shirt, something I've only done on one other occasion since 1988.