Live Review : Dropkick Murphys Live Stream at Fenway Park, Boston U.S.A. on May 29th 2020

How do you do a socially distanced gig when you have eight members? You play on a sports field! Not a stage set up at the end of a stadium but literally on the field of play. Tonight is by far the most ambitious and large scale live stream event that has been attempted. The Dropkick Murphys are never one to do things by halves and here they are playing on diamond at the Red Sox home, the legendary Fenway Park (for those that means nothing to, its like playing on the crease at Lord’s Cricket Ground) in order to benefit local Boston causes. It is also a big deal because of the pre-advertised inclusion of one B. Springsteen. Though to be honest (spoiler alert) his involvement is a fleeting cameo at best, as he appears for just two solitary tracks on the big screens high on the stands, like some deity looking down on his creation.

As with any good creation tale we start with black and in fact there is a lot of black to begin with as the stream itself doesn’t actually kick into life till a good fifteen minutes after its advertised start time. We then get padding in the shape of videos, celebrity endorsements and lots of pleas to donate. It is at that point you realise this is essentially a glorified American telethon. Live Aid with just one band (and a drive through appearance from a rock god).

It is quarter to eleven by the time we finally get footage of the band slipping on Red Sox baseball shirts and strolling out onto the field of play. The set up is minimal but effective. The six instrument playing members are lined up in a V shape along the two sides of the famous diamond. Each with their own station that they stick to for the entire show. Each at least two metres away from any other living soul. There is solitary camera man by the drum riser, but the action is captured in the most by a squadron of drones that fluttering around the band like angry bees. Co-lead vocalists Ken Casey and Al Barr are positioned by the pitchers mound and spend the next hour and forty minutes constantly prowling around the in-field. They never stand still, but crucially they never get within two metres of each other. It is like watching some beautifully choreographed stomping competition. They are always on the move, consumed in the songs that they are singing. But like some sixth sense (to be honest they have been working together for twenty-two years) they always know where the other is and avoid that space. One goes left, the other goes right. One goes towards the home plate and the other heads up to the pitchers mound. It’s a hypnotic sight and may well foreshadow what gigs will be like in this in this post-Covid work. The ghost of Bowie draped over Ronson is well and truly exorcised. 

Musically it is what you would expect. There is not much variety to the Dropkick’s brand of commercial Celtic-punk but what they do, they do really well. The Stiff Little Fingers and Clash influences are always trotted out, but I also hear Thin Lizzy in their stuff as essentially it is AC/DC bar boogie twinned with Irish Folk. Whilst at a number of points they complain of being rusty and not show ready, there are still on incendiary form and own the field. The lack of physical interaction between what is usually a highly tactile band is disconcerting, but the lack of audience actually isn’t. Watching a band perform spread out across a sports field is such a bizarre sight in itself, you don’t actually miss the crowd simply because your brain doesn’t expect them to be there in the first place. 

As is expected with this band alongside staples of 'The Boys Are Back’, ‘The Warrior’s Code' and 'Tessie' we get a fair few covers. I could have done without Gerry Cinnamon’s 'The Bonny’, but both ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory' and 'Amazing Grace' place the intend lump in the throat and remind us of the reason why we are watching this from our couches rather than the stands. 'Dirty Water' is also a cover but by now the Dropkick Murphys have claimed squatters rights over this track and it is performed in its usual victorious manner, brimming with pride in the town that it talk off. The usual audience call and response section actual feels poignant rather than awkward as Ken encourages us to scream back from our sofas.

The Boss’s much vaunted appearance is next and to be honest it is rather anticlimactic. We were promised a two way session with Bruce joining in with their stuff and the Dropkick’s raiding his admirable back catalogue. In the end, we get him joining in on 'Rose Tattoo’, which to be honest he has done many times before and the Dropkicks backing him on 'American Land' which isn’t even a Springsteen track. Then no sooner as he appeared hovering high above them on huge screens he is gone and my hopes for a Celtic tinged 'Promised Land' or 'No Retreat, No Surrender' are dashed.

We end as is traditional with 'I’m Shipping Up to Boston' and a closing refrain of 'Until the Next Time’. The band then leave the field of play to a smattering of applause from the thirty five people allowed to be in the stadium with them. This was certainly a success and they proved that they could via digital signals alone captivate an audience of hundreds of thousands for an hour and a half. The minimal Springsteen appearance was over played and over hyped and, going by a proportion of the comments that flashed up, lead to obvious disappointment for some. To be honest they didn’t need to have trailed it as they admirably held up the show by themselves. So overall an impressive home victory.

You can catch the live stream : HERE