Something quite extraordinary happened at the end of the first Pogues show in Portland in many, many decades. No, I’m not talking about Shane MacGowan’s miraculous ability to keep on surviving, the vibrant version of “Fiesta” the band played to close out the show or being bumped into by Colin Meloy as I exited the theater. As the band bade us goodnight and stepped off the stage, Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times” took over for the venerable band’s two hour set. The opening to that song really is unmistakable, Jimmy Page’s lashing guitar and John Bonham’s fills enveloped the crowd. While the rest of the band had walked off the stage, MacGowan had other plans. House lights were on already, folks, yet MacGowan, clad in a black leather jacket and sunglasses held onto the mike and attempted to gargle along with Robert Plant. For the full duration of the song. The band’s handlers tried to pull MacGowan from the stage, yet he continued to rock out, even play air guitar during the solos. After bandmates Spider Stacy and Darryl Hunt failed to wrest the mike away, they joined in, singing along and dancing as MacGowan punctuated the song with a few of his trademark shrieks. Then the song ended, MacGowan screamed one last time, mumbled something that sounded like, “Fuck you!” and ambled off.
Rewind a few hours and a packed house hooted and cheered for the Pogues to take the stage as the voice of Joe Strummer preceded the band. The Pogues, after decades of being defunct, have found a nice niche as a novelty act. MacGowan, one of the greatest songwriters of his time, is probably too addled with years of drug and alcohol abuse to recapture his muse, but god dammit if those old songs aren’t still fucking fantastic. In fact, almost every tune from Rum, Sodomy and the Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God has become indelible, the fusion of punk and Irish folk becoming nothing less than pure folk. So, it’s understandable that a nostalgia act would concentrate on those timeless tunes. Imagine seeing Zeppelin performing all of IV and you get my drift.
Unfortunately, MacGowan’s excesses have left him worse for wear. Remember, this is the guy the band kicked out in the early ’90s for being such a drunken asshole. As he walked onto the stage with a lit cigarette and looking better than I have seen him in the past few years, MacGowan shouted, “Fuck you, too!” While most of the Pogues appeared to have wizened from age, MacGowan has become bloated and toothless. No bother, the initial shock wore off when the band launched into the familiar strains of “Streams of Whiskey.”
There comes the trade-off. Though the band sounded excellent, MacGowan mangled the lyrics to many of the songs. True, paeans of unbridled joy such as “Bottle of Smoke” and the ghastly terror of “The Turkish Song of the Damned” are supposed to be sloppy, but MacGowan was more or less incoherent for a good number of selections. But you have to leaven that with the fact you’re seeing the Pogues in concert. For some, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know MacGowan is capable of better, however; I have seen the Pogues twice in recent years and he seemed a little off that evening. No bother, the songs he did enunciate like “Dirty Old Town” and set-closer “Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” it was amazing.
It is probably wrong to expect precision at a Pogues show. It is wrong to expect a well-behaved crowd. “This ain’t rock ‘n’ roll. This is patricide,” Stacy yelled towards the end of the show. He’s damned right and we’re lucky to all be alive in the same place at the same time.
by David Harris
[Photos: Josh Brasted Flickr.com/Brasted]
