Gogol Bordello don't really need a specific cause to get together and perform their carnivalesque gypsy punk, but when the band plays two gigs in its adopted hometown of New York City this week and a string of European dates next month it will be to celebrate the 500th year of vodka . . . sort of. "It's the 1,000th year of vodka!" Gogol's mustachioed ringleader, Eugene Hutz, exclaims. "Don't be fooled when some asshole tells you it's only 500 years. This event is largely celebrated in our circle. We would know."

Vodka is but one of numerous inspirations in Gogol Bordello's mix of traditional Ukranian music, punk rock and any other style that happens into the path of their musical avalanche. In addition to its drink of choice, the band's Frankenstein sound is at least partially due to a nomadic culmination of events that brought the eight-piece together.

As a youngster in the Ukraine (he was born in Kiev in 1972), Hutz had to rely on others to aid his discovery of the fringe music that would shape his own sound, as much of rock & roll was largely unavailable in his country. "There were several people who had fantastic record collections," he says. "They had a relative abroad, that kind of action. Or they were fucking an exchange student, somebody who brought them stuff. These people who had Dead Kennedys or Nick Cave records almost had the same status as the Dead Kennedys or Nick Cave. It was almost like being a rock star. Just because you had these fucking records. The rest of us, we had some shitty tapes. We had to pay them dough to get tapes made."

Hutz's family moved into the west Ukraine after the Chernobyl meltdown, and eventually settled in a refugee camp in Italy for a year. He was transferred to an Albanian/Romanian refugee program, which provided his ticket to the U.S., though he landed in the unassuming locale of Vermont. "As you may guess," he says, "it was not my first choice. When I was in Vermont I felt like I was farther away from fucking New York than when I was in the Ukraine. I was like, 'Now I'm in real motherfucking exile.'"

Nevertheless, Hutz managed to find a counter-cultural scene in Vermont playing with other ensembles, and he also started his own band, the Fags. He eventually migrated to New York, where Gogol Bordello (the handle crosses the name of a nineteenth century Ukranian writer with a whorehouse euphemism) took shape in 1999 with fellow eastern European transplants including accordionist Yuri Lemeshev, violinist Sergey Ryabtsev, guitarist Oren Kaplan, saxophonist Ori Kaplan and a handful of dancers. The musical proceedings were instrumentally organic, if not exactly sonically subdued. "I think after visiting an eastern European wedding, people will get the feeling that these instruments have plenty of rocket," Hutz says. "It's just so fucking intense when a violin or accordion is in the hands of a crazy motherfucker. It's amazing what can be done and how many different ways it can be treated. I don't think of them as sounding old or new."

Combining their seemingly disparate musical loves with a vaudevillian sense of theater, Gogol sparked a following for their high-energy performances in the city. "I remember ten years ago thinking about putting together all of my urges," Hutz says, "to be a conductor, a singer, a drummer, a guitar player and an actor [laughs]. And basically it all found its way into Gogol Bordello. So we grew into an eight-piece, bringing people together who in the back of their mind had similar musical interests. My part is the guy steering the wheel of the whole fucking thing."

Gogol harnessed their whirlwind sound on their first album, Voi-la Intruder, released in 2000. The album found the group linking an ethnic gypsy sound with lyrics rooted in folklore ("all kinds of weird shit like sick spiders and invisible assaulters," he says, "but that's just eastern European fairy tales you hear before bed"). With the band's second album, last year's Multi Kontra Kulti vs. Irony, "we moved on to developing and inventing our own mythology," he says. "Creatures and stories that were not of a traditional kind. And that has to do with our transplantation. Bringing our mythology here and mixing it with New York stories."

The band's style is inclusive, but allows glints of its multiple facets to shine through. It's also Hutz's tonic for globalization, a term that Hutz despises and accuses of creating inclusiveness at the expense of heritage and ethnic individuality. "Globalization is basically another form of colonialism," he says. "And in music, with Buddha Bar and Putamayo and shit like that, it's a marketing thing. We try to blur those broad categories. A lot of people think we're original because we're from eastern Europe and we have that heritage. But when we go back there, it's weird, because we're these traditional musicians, but on the other hand it's very clear that we have some new cockroaches running in our heads. Our music is starting to sound like it came not out of this country or that country, but out of a country we created. Try putting a label on that."

Which brings the band to its third recording, which has a number of potential titles, including "Alcoholimpics" and "Gypsy Combat Rock." Gogol hope the album is a return to the essence of rock & roll, while still moving it forward. "People are confused about the nature of rock & roll," he says. "Rock & roll was great because it was a democratic form of art. Now most of the people see it as a way to get into an easier lifestyle or some kind of idiotic VIP treatment. So hopefully this album will snap some people out of that moronic vision of what music-making is about."

And then there's the tour. According to Hutz, the band will play a gig commemorating the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg in Russia in addition to doing the European festival circuit and what will undoubtedly be an amusing set at London's prestigious Tate Gallery on July 18th. "I personally don't give a fuck about the art," Hutz says, "but it's always nice to punch a couple of holes in an establishment like that . . . upset their apple cart."

The tour also gives the band an opportunity to play for an audience that Hutz says is less restrained than those in the States. "Of course, there are great crowds here," he says. "But generally people here go to bed when the bouncer tells them. If you can, please forward to the American audiences that they're allowed to be more provocative and enjoy the mayhem. Our tour is for getting out and going fucking nuts . . . it's not for taking shit from the bouncer."

ANDREW DANSBY
(May 21, 2003)