Dan Aquilante
March 18, 2006
New York Post
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WITH more than a decade of hangovers and regrets since Shane MacGowan's last New York performance fronting the Pogues, the reunited band was a powerhouse of Celtic punk Thursday night.
At the first of a four-night musical binge at the Nokia Theatre (concluding tomorrow), MacGowan and company totally wowed the sold-out house.
MacGowan is older, but he's no wiser. The man remains scruffy and seemingly inebriated. Yet when he basks in the center-stage spotlight, he's able to transform stagger into swagger. And despite a mouth that's famously devoid of teeth, every song he sang had bite.
While most of the kids who packed the Nokia on Thursday were too young to have seen the band on its first go-around, this show found the original lineup in top form delivering a classic set.
All the great tunes were laid down for New York with a nod to traditional Irish music and a punk aesthetic that would have made the Ramones jig.
The performance opened with "Streams of Whiskey." That nod to Irish tea was a theme that ran through many of the evening's numbers. At this show, MacGowan was like Dean Martin, who cultivated an intoxicated cool as his Rat Pack image.
He was your favorite drunk who kept a bottle at his feet but didn't imbibe. Still, between songs he mumbled, grumbled and was as indecipherable as Popeye on shore leave. Likewise, his vocals were big, sloppy and slurringly wet - just as they should have been.
MacGowan was emphatic in his vocal conviction during "Bottle of Smoke" - so intense it felt like he was holding you by your lapels, half singing, half spraying you with spit.
And then Mr. Hyde yielded to Dr. Jekyll, and MacGowan was a romantic for the encore, the Pogues standard "A Fairytale of New York."
And it was a New York fairy tale for the devoted fans who've longed to hear the Pogues play live again. This once-upon-a-time band that self-destructed and reunited had a very happy ending at 12:01 a.m., ushering in the first minute of St. Patrick's Day with the celebratory - and decidedly non-Gaelic - "Fiesta."
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