Street Dogs

Boston, Massachusetts is a uniquely divided city, consisting not of amorphously defined neighborhoods like the ones that make up Manhattan, but small, semi-autonomous villages with names like Allston, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain. Similarly, Boston's music scene has traditionally been equally insular, with little communication between the punk, indie rock, hip-hop, metal, folk, and Celtic scenes. One of the first bands to overlap some of these fiefdoms was the ska-punk-metal hybrid the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, which included drummer Joe Sirois for most of their performing career. About a half-decade later, the Dropkick Murphys formed in predominantly Irish South Boston, fusing hardcore street punk with an ever-increasing amount of Celtic folk influences, like a harder-edged and more street version of the Pogues. The Dropkick Murphys' lead singer was the fierce, gravelly Mike McColgan. Following that band's first album in 1998, Do or Die, McColgan (a veteran of the first Gulf War) left the Dropkick Murphys to join the Boston Fire Department. Ties between the Boston Irish community and the local fire department run deep, and being a fireman has long been one of the most prestigious jobs in South Boston, but by 2002, McColgan returned to music, forming the Street Dogs with guitarist Rob Guidotti, bassist Johnny Rioux (both formerly of local street punk band the Bruisers), and a fellow ex-Dropkick Murphys member, drummer Jeff Erna.

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