BY ROXANA HADADI / PHOTOS BY ADAM FRIED

Think only women can be lushes? Then you've probably never seen Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz.

The man was in fine form - drunkenly and musically - Jan. 2 at the 9:30 Club, swigging one bottle of wine before the show, when he came outside to check out the sold-out line curling around the side of the venue, and chugging another during his group's nearly two-hour set in front of said crowd. Didn't want to get splashed by the wine? Too bad - that bottle was stuck in Hütz's hand as he danced across the stage, jumped off speakers and climbed into the crowd, and the wine made itself intimately known to (i.e. splashed all over) everyone in the mob-like front of the stage (including the bouncers' heads, this reporter's notebook and one BLURT photographer's camera).

But who cares about some stains that can never be washed out (similar to Lady Macbeth's blood situation, but less sinister) when there was so much fun to be had? The show was the first in a two-night stay at the 9:30 Club, and displayed all the qualities that make Gogol Bordello so great: The previously mentioned drunken Hütz; the adorably energetic violinist Sergey Ryabtsev and accordion player Yuri Lemeshev; spastic hypeman and emcee Pedro Erazo (who also served as the band's opening act, as he DJ-ed a dub-heavy 75-minute set); the calmly chill guitarist Oren Kaplan, bassist Thomas Gobena and drummer Eliot Ferguson; and the too-hot-to-describe dancers and back-up vocalists Pamela Racine and Elizabeth Sun (who had two costume changes during the show, which included gold lace face masks, knee pads and hot pants), all combining their powers in a very Captain Planet-like way to create gypsy-punk at its best and the most engaging, audience-oriented stage show possible.

Those Eastern Europeans (and Russians and Israelis and Thai and Scots and Ecuadorians, as Hütz listed when he reminded the crowd of the band's mixed ancestry) sure do know how to party.

There wasn't much stage banter to be had - Hütz's English is so Ukranian-heavy that it's hard to make out, well, anything he says - but there was tons of crowd encouragement, as the frontman skanked across the length of the stage, playing to each side of the club; gestured Ryabtsev and Lemeshev to the front and motioned for the crowd to cheer them on (in the history of pop music, has there ever been more screaming for two guys playing a violin and an accordion?); and mimicked Erazo's wild leaps from speaker to speaker, all while yelling at the crowd to sing along.

Oh, yeah, there was music - and it was damn good, too.

The band played a very similar set to their previous time in the area - August's Virgin Mobile Festival in Baltimore - and commanded the crowd the entire time, who screamed, shrieked and sang-along to nearly every word that came out of Hütz's mouth. The mostly 15-year-old-and-accompanying-parents crowd ate up "Illumination," the song in which Hütz proclaims that in this time of adversity, "You are the only light there is/ For yourself, my friend;" listened to "Supertheory of Supereverything" like it was a sermon ("I don't read the Bible/ I don't trust disciple/ Even if they're made of marble/ Or Canal Street bling"); and pogo-ed and crowd-surfed during favorites such as "Wonderlust King," "American Wedding," "Start Wearing Purple" and "Mishto."

And as Ryabtsev and Lemeshev spazzed out on their respective instruments, Erazo acted like a human bouncing ball, Racine and Sun banged their drums and smashed their cymbals and the crowd screamed like a bunch of "Twilight" fangirls, Hütz stood court over it all - shockingly sweaty (eventually, he took his shirt off, revealing a Mr. T-like assortment of gold chains and pendants), enjoyably drunk (at the end of the night, he put the wine bottle and a working microphone in a red tin bucket and then banged the hell out of it with a drumstick) and incredibly pleased with himself. Well deserved, sir.

[Photos Credit: Adam Fried]