A guy I met recently told me that he won’t give Flogging Molly any of his money because they were on a white power record label and toured with white power bands.
Is there any substance to this?
A google search for “flogging molly white power” and “flogging molly racist” didn’t turn up anything incriminating on them. www.allmusic.com lists the label for their first album as 26f Records. I’ve never heard of them and google doesn’t bring up anything on it, but the URL for Flogging Molly’s website it www.26f.com, which leads me to conclude that the album may have been self-produced. If what you’ve heard were true, it would probably be easier to find information on.
Is it possible that the guy you met wasn’t knowledgeable enough to differentiate between ‘skinhead’ and ‘white power’? Because I’d be very surprised if Flogging Molly hadn’t toured with skinhead bands while starting out.
I know the Dropkick Murphys, a band that combines punk with Irish music very similarly to Flogging Molly, has a very strong skinhead fanbase, and I’d imagine similar bands like Flogging Molly and the Swingin’ Utters do too. But one thing I learned from my years in a ska band is that not all skinheads are of the white-power/racist variety–some actually like to beat up THOSE guys! There is a lot of crossover between the punks, skins, and soccer hooligan-types that listen to punk and ska and hardcore and “oi” music.
I doubt it, because I know a lot of strong anti-fascists who love Flogging Molly. But I’ll ask on one of our messageboards if anyone knows the source of the rumour.
That’d be my first guess. Up until a couple months ago, I thought the two were synonymous, for what it’s worth.