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Songs, Spree, Striptease
The Real McKenzies @ Rock Café, Praha, 10.2.2010
After some boozing with fans in the bar, the musicians made it onstage and started calmly and quietly, like a bunch of folkies. After all, it was a special acoustic gig – perhaps not by the band’s choice but simply due to the fact that the venue is currently banned from holding noisy performances because of insufficient soundproofing. Soon, things got wilder, and the noise level rose when bagpipes joined the din but still remained quite merciful to ear-drums. The songs? Maybe "paddy punk" is a hackneyed phrase, but they seemed to match the label. Quick, boisterous, Scottish-flavoured, peppered with madly speeded up traditionals and with keywords such as "fuck" and "bastard". Perfectly going together with the amounts of beer and scotch consumed onstage and building up a properly jolly mood. To sum up – it was two hours of sheer fun. To elaborate – here are some random highlights:
- In the beginning, the frontman Paul McKenzie announced that he wanted to get high on music. What a noble intention. A few songs later he asked if anybody in the audience had a joint. (Even noble intentions of mice and men sometimes go awry...) A generous soul from the public supplied a small, but still useable joint and handed it to the nearest piper, who already looked stoned when he first wobbled on the stage and continued to confirm the impression with his every move. He accepted the offered delicacy, took a deep pull of it and passed it to his band mates. When the joint finally reached Paul McKenzie, he declared that he needed it because otherwise he would quicken up all slow songs. Noble reason – the only catch being that the band didn’t have any slow songs in their repertoire that night. Or did the quick set simply prove that the joint wasn’t strong enough?
- At least 1/4 of the eight-piece band showed their true Scottish spirit by demonstrating that, just like true Scotsmen, they don’t degrade their fancy kilts by wearing something beneath them. The guitarist even took the demonstration one step further by coming to the very edge of the stage, turning his back to the audience, lifting up his kilt and offering his bare buttocks to fans. He earned an energetic slap from a guy in the first row. Which must have been a bitter disappointment if his naked flesh hoped for a caressing hand of a female fan...
- Romance blooms everywhere, even directly on stage. After several songs, two young girls peeped from the backstage. Paul McKenzie lit up like a Christmas tree: "Our girlfriends have arrived!" He rushed to the side of the stage and procceeded to passionately kiss the one who belonged with him. When he finally had enough of the kiss – it did take a while – he moved back to the mic and gave a heartfelt rendition of the traditional "Wild Mountain Thyme". By his singing – if it can be called singing at all – he butchered the song almost beyond recognition, trampling all delicate thyme to ground, but he surely poured his heart out, changing the line "And if my true love she won’t go, I will surely find another" into "I will NEVER find another", with mighty emphasis on "never". Promises, promises... Later he at least sealed them with another mighty kiss, standing on the edge of the stage, and hugging his girl, who had moved to the first row of the audience in the meantime. But before the girl’s hand could have crawled too deep under his kilt, he made it back to the mic.
- Lively exchange with the audience took place – beer bottles changed hands, whiskey, cigarettes, lighters. One guy from the audience, dressed in a proper Scottish outfit, offered a cute little metal hip flask to Paul McKenzie, explaining it was 15-year-old single malt scotch. Whatever was really inside met with appreciation. The band members messed on stage, creating a glorious chaos, disappearing backstage and coming back, seemingly without any plan. Well, when you have three guitarists in a band, you can surely miss a musician here and there and nothing happens.
- Paul McKenzie mostly employed his vocals, but occasionally spiced up the songs by playing wind instruments. For a couple of songs he extracted a shiny tin whistle from his inner pocket. However, when you stand about a foot from the mic when blowing into a whistle, you can hardly produce anything more than sounds of silence interspersed with some quiet beeping. An example of a musician playing with an instrument instead of playing it? Or of a musician with a shy instrument...
- To everything there is a season – eco-appeals included. The song "Maple Trees Remember" was introduced by a spirited tirade against bastards ruining Canadian nature. A clear proof that even punks can have green thinking.
- The last encore was "Bugger Off" – which with its powerful chorus ("bugger off, you bastards, bugger off, fuck you!") sent a clear message to the audience what was expected of them at that moment. But it surely was a happy ending.
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