Local Celtic punk band the Dropkick Murphys will headline this month's Spring Fling concert, Concert Board has announced.
The group is best known for its up-tempo anthem "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," which gained popularity as a victory song for major New England sports teams and a prominent part of the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning "The Departed" (2006).
The band blends distorted guitars, wailing bagpipe melodies and growling-scream vocals to create what Concert Board Co-Chair Alan Munkacsy called "a unique style." Munkacsy, a sophomore, said the Boston-based talent will serve as an unconventional but popular Spring Fling headliner.
"We thought that the Dropkicks would be great for Tufts because we haven't had a band like them in a long time," he said, mentioning that the soft-rock band Guster had headlined the last rock-themed Spring Fling two years ago.
The Dropkicks will join the rapper Common and the student band FunkSoulLove in performing at the annual concert, which will be held on April 26. Concert Board has yet to sign the fourth act.
"We have submitted a bid for a third band," Munkacsy said. "There will definitely be a third band. It will be rock."
Concert Board secured a contract with the Dropkicks last month, but the band stipulated in the document that Tufts could not publicize the booking until today.
Signing the Dropkick Murphys was not a simple process, according to Munkacsy. Concert Board submitted a bid in January to bring the band for Spring Fling, but the Dropkicks said the offer was too low, Munkacsy said. Concert Board tendered a higher bid, which the band accepted, according to the co-chair.
"Then, after we had agreed on the price we then had to agree with the contract because Tufts doesn't agree to a lot of ... things, such as insurance and liability," Munkacsy said.
Unlike Common, whom approximately 100 Tufts students had requested that Concert Board bring, the Dropkicks were not in particularly high demand among students, Munkacsy said.
He added that since there are more rock bands than hip-hop acts to choose from, Concert Board typically gets a wide variety of requests for rock performers.
"Since rock is such a broad genre [students' requests are] very scattered with the rock," Munkacsy said. He continued that the rock bands that students request most often are usually too pricey. "Rock is generally a more expensive genre [to book than hip hop]. A lot of the names that we get over and over again are just bands like Radiohead, just bands that we could never afford," he said.
The Dropkick Murphys formed in Boston in 1996, practicing for fun in the basement of a friend's barbershop. The group's mix of traditional Irish music and punk rock made for a unique sound. This innovative blend caught on, and the independent punk label Hellcat Records signed the band in 1998.
The Dropkicks have since released five albums. The most recent, "The Meanest of Times" (2007), saw the most commercial success. It peaked at number 20 on the Billboard 200.
The band performed "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" and other hits at the Boston Red Sox's victory celebration last October in downtown Boston after the team won the World Series.
