CAMBRIDGE - They all live in different places now (mostly the Los Angeles area) and haven't performed together in public since 2003. So the newly reunited Mighty Mighty Bosstones' return to the local stage Wednesday night seemed, more than ever, like an emotional homecoming celebration for a band of long-lost brothers.
The buzz surrounding the return of Boston's most famous, longest-running, and commercially successful ska-punk band began well before its plan to revive its annual series of Hometown Throwdown shows was made official. When the Bosstones' five-night stand, which continues tonight through Sunday, at the Middle East Downstairs was announced in October, tickets for all five shows reportedly sold out in seven minutes.
"Listen, I've been out of town," teased sharp-suited frontman Dicky Barrett, whose most recent employment has been as an announcer on the LA-based "Jimmy Kimmel Live" late-night television program. "What's been going on? How're the sports teams doing?" Never let it be said that Barrett doesn't know how to work a crowd - his crowd.
The greater question of what effect the long layoff might have on the ensemble was answered swiftly and authoritatively the moment the band tore into its opener, "Dr. D" - one of nearly two dozen party-hearty rave-ups the Bosstones bounced, bopped, and blasted through, horns blazing and band erasing any trace of its four-year hiatus.
On the rash of old dancehall favorites that followed - "The Rascal King," "Where'd You Go," and, of course, the band's biggest hit, "The Impression That I Get" - the eight-piece outfit's trademark "Two-Tone" template sounded tightly, firmly intact - a rhythm-heavy mix of hardcore's fast-beating punk heart and ska's hedonistic, what-me-worry? vibe.
With a voice like coarsely ground gravel, Barrett was his old crowd-friendly self, more party MC than platinum pop-punk singer, amiably bantering with his beery audience and assuring the ocean of fans clad in "B"-themed headwear that he too knew LA was a bad place to be. At one point, Barrett briefly, if unwisely, allowed one crowd member to launch into a semi-coherent story about the time Dicky didn't respond to his band's demo, a gripe that drew loud boos from the crowd. Ever the diplomat, Barrett offered his apologies and promised to buy the guy a consoling beer after the show.
Picking up where he left off, Barrett snatched back the microphone and returned to stalking the stage decked out in shades and his Sunday best whose purpose seemed, as always, to be to conceal the previous night's out-on-the-town debauchery in neighborhood bars. "I'll feel better in the morning," he croaked on "Nevermind Me," a tune about getting rolled on the street for drug money.
There were a few surprises: a faithful cover of the Clash's "Rudie Can't Fail," which Barrett dedicated to "the real punk rockers out there," and the Stiff Little Fingers antiwar salvo "Tin Soldiers," which summed up the band's viewpoint on the state of international affairs. The band also laced into "Don't Worry Desmond Dekker," a swinging track whose title refers to the iconic reggae singer-songwriter who died in 2006. In the span of a mere 80 minutes, the Bosstones were back at full throttle, hitting hard, having fun, and sounding as if they'd never left town.
Openers the Gaslight 
