If people thought this year's State Patty's Day was as "Irish" as Penn State can get, think again: Flogging Molly is coming to town.
The Celtic/Irish-American punk band will play at 7:30 tonight with opener Scythian at a sold-out HUB Alumni Hall.
Bob Schmidt, the mandolin/banjo player for Flogging Molly, said he is excited to play the show.
"It's great when we get a chance to play colleges," Schmidt said. "We kind of have our old-school loyal crowd in their 30s, and we do Warped Tour, which is like 12- and 13-year-olds, and there's that gap in the middle."
The show will be a stop on the Green 17 tour, said Claire DiGiacomo, Student Programming Association (SPA) entertainment chairwoman.
Tim Thompson, a fan of the band, said Flogging Molly is often associated with intense live shows -- both on the stage and in front of it.
Thompson (senior-art history) has seen the band four times and said each show is a spectacle -- usually coupled with mosh-pits and damage to flesh and nearby objects.
"Honestly, the best place to hold this would have been a parking lot at Beaver Stadium with a nailed-in fence around it," Thompson said. "Throw up a fence and a stage in a parking lot if you don't want anything broken. They're kind of asking for it."
HUB concert policy bans drinking at shows, but Schmidt prefers performances where alcohol is allowed -- and he's confident students will find a way.
"Dry shows always present a bit of a challenge, but college kids know what to do: drink in the dorms, or drink in the parking lot an inch away from the university," Schmidt said. "They stumble into the show, sweat it out and reabsorb it."
DiGiacomo said she hopes students will act responsibly.
"We think a lot of the students here will just enjoy the show," DiGiacomo said. "We hope that they take advantage of the fact that we have Flogging Molly here and understand that, and not get out of hand. We're hoping."
But Schmidt said that even though mosh pits can get rough -- he recalls a time when a man had a heart attack during a show -- there's a certain sense of community to it.
"They'll get out there and they'll knock heads and elbows and everything," Schmidt said. "But if someone falls, they'll all stop and help them up."
Thompson is surprised by the choice of venue and expects a fair amount of damage, even though he won't be joining in on it. The only things that are safe, he predicted, are things made of concrete or wood.
Everything else -- lights, radiators and dividing walls -- is fair game.
"If a bunch of college girls can wreck it with a techno show," Thompson said, referring to the damage caused during last year's Girl Talk show, "I'm pretty sure we're going to do a bit more."
