Moseying through the muggy afternoon collegiate tunefest dubbed the “Download Festival” last Sunday at the Tweeter Center, I watched as chicks shimmied to the jammin’ beats of the Wailers and dudes walked with hats back and shirts off, spilling beer. It’s still summer in the city, and school’s starting soon. They have priorities.Sponsors didn’t flinch at constructing an entire makeshift garage-type apparatus right next to the second stage that the Wailers performed on. Inside, drums and guitars were available for anyone to mess around with, as well as a fleet of hammocks, and six VWs with girls sitting inside getting VW corporate insignias tattoo’d onto their foreheads as photographers shot away. A basketball hoop was affixed to the outside for pick-up games.
Pepper took the stage, sans shirts, yelling, “Have some dirty, hot sex with me,” jumping from foot to foot over messy reggae chords. I wondered how many would take them up on the offer — Trojan was handing out samples at a nearby stand. Jurassic 5 held it down later with a set featuring throat-tickling bass lines and some high-quality old-school jams from their 2002 disc Power in Numbers plus some new material from their latest, Feedback (both Interscope), that included the feel-good single “Work It Out.”
Later, perched on a chair in a baby-blue pimp suit and top hat, G. Love waggled his knees as he and Special Sauce launched into “Don’t Drop It” and then continued through a set of insanely extended guitar/bass/drum solos that actually put a few fans to sleep. It was up to Dropkick Murphys to wake the slumberers and save the night. Walking onto a darkened stage punctuated the sounds of Irish uillean-pipe music, a woman singing, and primal drumming, they exploded into familiar punk sing-alongs: “Boys on the Dock,” “The Walking Dead,” and even a heartfelt “Tessie” for a Red Sox team that was by then in desperate need of a boost.
Topics:
Live Reviews
, Jurassic 5, Dropkick Murphys
