The Ogden Theater, Denver – 05 Sep 2021
Excited to be out of quarantine, the Bosstones put on one hell of a show.
I’ve seen the Mighty Mighty Bosstones a lot of times over the years. I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, a mere hour’s drive from Boston, and the Bosstones loved to come down to visit all the time. They would frequently play the local radio station’s free summer concert series. I have a lot of great memories of watching the Bosstones playing free shows in a park with Dicky Barrett in his Red Sox jersey making fun of Yankee fans in the audience. In addition, I always seem to find them playing at festivals I’ve gone to, most recently Riot Fest Denver in 2015. So what was different about seeing them this time? Well, for one, this concert was fresh on the heels (or as fresh on the heels as one can get in a pandemic) of their new album, When God Was Great, which you can see from my review, I really enjoyed. I don’t know if I’ve ever known a band who put out their best album for their 11th LP, but the Bosstones seem to have done just that. Secondly, with the exception of one basement show, this was the first concert I had seen since Against Me! on New Years 2020. Lastly, I tended to take their live shows for granted growing up as they were always easily accessible. I never really paid that close attention to them, knowing there would always be another opportunity to see them again, and I took their concerts more as an opportunity to hang out with friends. Even at Riot Fest I stood at the back and paid more attention to my then girlfriend than I did to the band itself. So this time, I decided to engage more closely with the show and, what I found was, it’s a lot more fun that way.
I showed up halfway through the second opening band, The Pietasters, and found that I had missed the first opening band The Dendrites. I primarily know The Pietasters by reputation and don’t know much of their material, and was really surprised. They were certainly good, but not spectacular, which is not what I was expecting from what I knew about them. They kind of had a lukewarm vibe as if they were the house band in a reasonably priced casino.
The Bosstones came out all in matching suits with the band’s bulldog logo on the chest and a red checkered logo on the back reminiscent of the album cover of their first album, Devil’s Night Out. Frontman Dicky Barrett looked like a particularly dapper silver fox in his suit with his sunglasses (even though it was indoors and nighttime) and a flower in his lapel, although he gradually changed his outfit over the course of the night, even adding a baseball cap that said “Rudeboy” and eventually changing into a Dendrites t-shirt for the encore. They came out playing “The Old School Off the Bright” and then launched into “Bruised” off the new album and then “The Rascal King,” all without taking even a breath between songs. The energy was there from the beginning and didn’t let up through the whole show.
The set was a pretty good mix of old and new, going all the way back to the first album with “Hope I Never Lose My Wallet” and “Devil’s Night Out,” and playing five songs off the new album as well. I was a little surprised by their choices of songs from the new album, playing only one of the three singles off the album (“I Don’t Believe in Anything”). I can understand skipping the eight-minute opus, “The Final Parade,” as it was recorded with 38 guest stars, making it hard to reproduce live. But their black lives matter anthem, “The Killing of Georgie (Part III),” seemed a glaring omission. And of course, they went through all of their classic hits including “Someday I Suppose,” “Where Did You Go?,” and “The Impression That I Get.”
Dicky Barrett was charming and engaging with the crowd, including a fun moment where a stage diver was kicked out of the venue and Barrett insisted that security bring him back in to get on stage with the band. But overall it felt like a huge release of pent-up energy from the last 18 months stuck in isolation, both from the band and from the crowd. I was certainly excited to get back into the swing of live music, so I imagine that feeling radiated throughout the venue. I think a lot of the concerts that are happening now after the vaccine roll out will have similarly electric energy, but I also think the charm of the Bosstones was a big part of what made this show successful.
Correction – this review originally confused The Dendrites with The Pietasters, and has now been corrected. -editor
Julie is punk rock, lesbian time lady from the future. The greatest things in the world are punk rock and science fiction. Check out her website JulieRiver.com!
