AUSTIN, Texas (by Greg Barr) - It’s nearly 2 a.m. Friday morning, and I’m going to pass on that second can of Red Bull. Who needs that extra buzz when you’re in the mosh pit at a Gogol Bordello rock show? Those orchestrators of bolshevik rock 'n' roll lunacy from New York City have a room full of people - well, actually it's a covered tent - leaping and screaming in unison.

The South by Southwest music clusterfuck is all about the next big thing. Who will get signed? Who will sign them? Who will hurl chunks first? (Sorry, actually that's a side bet with my buddies). So it's nice to know that Gogol Bordello, which performs year after year at the Austin nightclub showcases, still is arguably the most energetic band on the planet.

With vocalist Eugene Hutz stripped to the waist and leaping around the stage like some blitzkrieg Barishnikov, and singing songs in his heavy accent with lines like "I hear the dogs barking and see the monkeys clapping," the crowd was whipped into the kind of frenzy that has to be the envy of any of the big-time punk or metal thrashers whose shows are tepid by comparison.

As usual, Hutz - who refers to the band's music as gypsy fuck songs - was often joined on stage by the group's two chick dancers wearing their semi-traditional Ukrainian costumes with tight fitting track pants and strings of garlic hanging off the backs of their hats. At the edge of the stage most of the night, one woman crashes two cymbals together, the other pounds on a bass drum. The guys in the crowd up front are slack-jawed, salivating heavily.

The first time I saw the band at SXSW in 2003, Hutz walked out on stage in the first song, took a sip from his can of Heineken, and then pitched the full can over the heads of the crowd, grazing my shoulder. Not to be outdone this year, Hutz and the bass-drum playing chick took turns crowd-surfing aboard the bass drum held aloft by the folks in the pit. The whole thing reached several mind-blowing and ear-splitting crescendos of punk fury colliding with gypsy gyrations, with frenzied violin and accordion solos and Hutz pulling people up from the audience to mosh on stage, while the tent poles were wobbling to the driving beat.

Shit, I've got two more days of this stuff. How can the other 600 or so bands who have yet to play Friday and Saturday nights possibly supercede this pack of transplanted Russians, Israelis and Americans who tear the hell out of Austin every year. Well, dammit, I hope at least they try.

Labels: Gogol Bordello, SXSW