Thu Jul 28, 2005 4:41 am
The Osaka show was great--my first time to see the Pogues! I wrote the setlist down, but don't have it with me at the moment--will post it soon if someone else doesn't do it first. It was pretty similar to the setlist of the "ultimate collection" live album, with a few modifications. One song I didn't recognize--what was the 1st encore song that Andrew sang? Anyone who knows, please let me know.
Anyway, the audience was incredibly pumped-up--didn't realize that Japanese Pogues fans were so passionate! During some songs, seems like the whole place was a mass of writhing bodies. Shane is obviously much beloved here, but Spider is also a star of sorts--lots of people shouting "Supaidaa!" (how "Spider" sounds rendered in the Japanese language). I've been to a number of shows here in Japan, and I've never heard a Japanese audience singing a long so loudly to non-Japanese language music! I've seen English, Chinese and Spanish-language acts here, and usually the audience just sings along with the choruses, if that, but on a lot of songs, they seemed to know every word. They were so loud on "Dirty Old Town" that they practically drowded out the band.
Before the show, they played a great collection of amped-up traditional Japanese music... I'd love to have a CD of whatever they were playing. A few minutes before the show, they played a song by my favorite Japanese band, "Soul Flower Union," a song that combines Okinawan and Celtic music in a rather outrageous way They cranked up the volume on that particular song, and the audience started chanting and dancing, roaring and otherwise carrying on--having gone to hundreds of shows in my lifetime, I don't know if I've ever seen an audience get so excited even before the lights went down. When the lights finally did go down, they played "Straight To Hell" as the opening music--rather emotional, and appropriate.
Anyway, seeing the Pogues was like a dream come true for me, and I was not disappointed!