Saturday night I went with my rugged man to see a show with the band Kultur Shock. We actually saw them about two years ago, when they opened for Gogol Bordello. You probably haven’t heard of Kultur Shock, but you may very well have heard of Gogol Bordello. The guy in Everything is Illuminated, who isn’t Elijah Wood, is Eugene Hütz, Gogol Bordello’s lead singer.

While Gogol Bordello is gypsy punk with a Ukrainian/Brighton Beach flavor, Kultur Shock is Balkan gypsy punk. There is plenty of crashing guitar, but also keening, melting vocals that make you think of loneliness in the mountains, and shepherds, and campfires and men riding horses.

I choose these images, perhaps, because the lead singer, Srdjan Yevdjevic a.k.a. Gino Banana, bears a great resemblance to Taras Bulba.

My image of Taras Bulba, though, is greatly influenced by the 1962 Hollywood version, featuring Yul Brynner. (Bonus fact: Yul Brynner was actually of Russian origin, born in Vladivostok.) It just seems to me that if Taras Bulba had been a gypsy punk (though really Cossacks have nothing to do with gypsies and probably would be offended by the comparison), he would have been something like Srdjan Yevdjevic.

The first opening band was pretty awful, though they did have the sort of interesting gimmick of introducing every song with ‘Yeah, um, so this next one is called “Dick on a Bike”.’ We left and came back for the tail end of the second opening band, which was more decent. Turned out to be quite a few Balkans, Bulgarians, Russians, and general Eastern Europeans in the crowd, including several people we knew but hadn’t realized would be there. We got down on the dance floor when the real act began, and did a little moving.

There was a very tall guy in front of us for quite a while, with a wide shouldered suit jacket and a shaved head — he was reminiscent of Frankenstein. He had a petite little lady with him, who was perhaps not quite five feet tall, and the only time we could see over him was when he bent down to kiss her. At one point, he picked her up, so her arms were wrapped around his neck and her feet (in black, leather, pointy-toed boots) were hanging down between his legs. They reached about to his knees. A bit after that, thankfully, they left the dance floor, I presume to find a dark corner.

We spent quite a bit of time watching the audience, as well as the performers, and playing the same game we have played at the Gogol Bordello shows — Spot the Russians. I suppose it was more Spot the Eastern Europeans, but it’s really a pretty simple game.

All in all, a good night, if a late one. My only regret is that I can never remember to get ear plugs for these things, and my ears were ringing for a long time afterwards.