REVIEW: House of Pain @ Manning Bar 06.05.11

For many, Boston’s House of Pain are really only known for producing 3:37 minutes of party hip-hop history – 1992’s mega-smash-super-monster-hit, Jump Around. A tune that’s been on constant rotation at discos and basketball games ever since. But even the most-dedicated fan hasn’t seen anything from the boys in 15 years. So what would the 2011 Breaking the Law tour reveal tonight – one very famous song played 20 times, or a classic hip-hop show for the nineties-loving diehard?

Judging by the sheer number of fat-boys in Celtics singlets in the crowd, we could expect the latter. Support came from Aussie rock-rap act The Havknotz who seemed to be straight out of 1999. With a DJ, a bass-player and an MC with a seppo-accent, they played an odd assortment of nu-metal rage-inspired efforts. But have they got anything worth listening to? No, they Havknotz.

House of Pain take the stage minus a DJ (Lethal’s contractually obliged to Limp Bizkit, god help him), with a backing band instead and stout front man, Everlast, on guitar. A bit of Apache on keys. Then rapper Danny Boy comes out for Danny Boy, a bit of instrumental Dr Dre and it’s on. The boys might be a little heavier in the frame these days but they haven’t lost any of that fighting-Irish menace. Their vocals are as gravelly as they ever were, and they’ll still gladly Put Your Head Out if you don’t like it. “Step up with beef, and you’ll wind up losin’ teeth”, growls Everlast. Ok. Fair enough Everlast. No beef over here. Quite the opposite actually, we’re all singing along to tunes we haven’t heard since we had Same As It Ever Was on tape. Who’s The Man and Back From The Dead are particularly solid, but you can’t help wondering what they’d sound like with DJ Lethal present and those grainy original beats.

You see the problem with visiting hip-hop artists touring with a live-band is that their backing-bands tend to be a bit crap. In fact, most are. Perhaps sensing this, Everlast turned Manning into a seedy hillbilly blues bar for the encore. Knocking out a decent cover of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues, some of his own solo stuff and an extended version of What It’s Like the encore was a dirty, mix of white-boy blues. But you could tell the Celtic singlets were getting restless. Many had itchy feet and a rather lanky Scotsman beside me grumbled: “will yiz jus’ play jump aroun’? Och aye!” So when the familiar trumpets came in, we needed little encouragement. It was a sweaty mess. Grown men embraced. Lanky Scottish people beamed. Short Asian girls got stomped on. Fat round men lost their breath. Someone pulled their hamstring. We rapped every word, we all jumped around and it was well worth the wait.

RICHARD SCOTT