Live Show Review: The Pogues at 9:30 Club, Washington DC

[Zuzana]

Live Show Review: The Pogues at 9:30 Club, Washington DC

Logan K. Young
March 10, 2011
Crawdady Magazine

Full URL

The Pogues
March 8th at the 9:30 Club, Washington DC

I think it’s time to add Shane MacGowan to that vaulted roster of revered Irish writers—above Heaney and Ó Faoláin, tied with Synge and Kavanagh maybe, but out of reach of Beckett, Joyce, or Wilde. Alas, I have to qualify my lead because the last thing this brilliant sot from Tipperary has done of any real merit was a haunting guest vocal on the Townes Van Zandt classic “Waitin’ Round to Die,” nearly two years ago now. A man of many fine words and famously few teeth, it’s been heartbreaking to watch him become another Brendan Behan—a stale caricature of what the rest of the Western world expects from its Irish men of letters. In fact, it’s precisely because of MacGowan’s old habits living hard that his backup band has dubbed their present tour—their absolute final one here on American soil, they swear—”A Parting Glass with the Pogues.”

Taken at face value, that’s pretty much all a Pogues concert is anymore, especially one on Shrove Tuesday. Large, sweaty, and unbearably Anglo, it’s mostly a celebration of libations, thrown for those who don’t know their bodhrán from their penny whistle. Present-day Pogues shows can quickly degenerate into mass karaoke, where everyone is just Irish enough to bark along the refrain “I’m a free-born man of the USA” without irony. Which, it must be noted, this particular crowd did with surprising aplomb. And that’s great, really. It is. After all, it’s quite rousing, if not exactly welcome, to witness a sea of green (or orange, if you’re Protestant) slur and teeter together, in time, to “The Body of an American.” I doubt Big Jim Dwyer would have wanted it any other way.

But for every good drinking song MacGowan ever wrote, he’s penned at least two better love ones. And quite frankly, that’s how I hope he’ll be remembered, as a top-tier lyric poet. With enough Jameson (or Bushmills, if you’re a Protestant), any hack can get a drunk to hum a pub tune. But to compose a song like “Love You ‘Till the End” or “London Girl”, well, you can’t really teach that—not in Belfast, nor in London. For those sober enough for the encore, MacGowan’s sobering reading of “Rainy Night in Soho” was surely lesson enough. True, the sentiment might be a smidge maudlin or downright inappropriate even, but great love songs they remain. Even after a record like Rum Sodomy & the Lash, perhaps MacGowan’s most sadistic moment, he shrugged it off and wrote a grand ballade like “Fairytale of New York.” Which, it too must be noted, the band gracefully avoided, given that Kirsty MacColl’s been dead for over a decade.

Intimate songs require an intimate evening though, and a sold-out 9:30 Club a week before St. Patrick’s Day offers little in the way of privacy. Lest I frame Shane MacGowan primarily as a lovesick dandy, I needn’t remind you that he’s still a rock star. And he knows it. Imposingly clad in all black , he’s only the third person I’ve seen allowed, nay encouraged, to smoke on stage at the new 9:30. (Some perspective: The other two were Bob Pollard and another notorious lush, Courtney Love.) But if MacGowan wasn’t singing one of his songs, as on the Pogues’ own top-of-the-pops single “Tuesday Morning,” he’d simply saunter off in his familiar, schnockered gait. Thus, I truly missed his rendition of “Thousands Are Sailing,” from perhaps his all-around best moment, If I Should Fall from Grace with God. Next to drink and love, MacGowan also knows a great torch song when he’s heard it. And though he didn’t scribe this one himself, he does do a superb job with a difficult vocal. To wit, I’m sorry he no longer has the desire to sing it. ‘Tis a dirty shame indeed, as “Thousands Are Sailing” is probably the best song about the Irish plight that Shane MacGowan never wrote.

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© Crawdaddy Magazine


Spider's comments posted below the article:

"You’ve done it again you fucking idiots. Love you till the End was written by Darryl Hunt the Pogues bass player. It appeared on our last album released 5 years after Shane had originally left the band in 1n 1991 and sung by me, Spider, the one that also sang/wrote “the Pogues own Top of the Pops single” mentioned in your review (incidentally the nearest thing we ever had to a hit in the US)

We don’t not play Fairytale out of some mawkish reverence for Kirsty MacColl. She lives on forever in our hearts and in our souls, and we’ve played it every christmas in the UK and Ireland with Jem Finer’s (co-writer of said song) daughter Ella singing her part, and singing it beautifully. But you’re only interested in stuff about Shane, so here’s some breaking news for you. He’s asleep in his room with the tv playing really, really loud.

Oh and fuck you again for the “back up band” comment."

[Sportin' Life]

Funny stuff, Spider.

[Cdn Steve]

Logan K Young has been at his thesaurus again...

and wtf is "unbearably Anglo" ?

btw Mr Young, Thousands of Sailors is sung and brought to glorious life nightly by it's author, Mr P. Chevron.


Spider, don't ever change...

[NewJerseyRich]

Sounds like little logan has a few issues. I remember when Crawdaddy had good writers that knew what they were talking about.

[firehazard]

...
and wtf is "unbearably Anglo" ?...

A very bad bit of concertina playing?
Which is not something one would expect at a Pogues gig...

[philipchevron]

...
and wtf is "unbearably Anglo" ?...

A very bad bit of concertina playing?
Which is not something one would expect at a Pogues gig...

I suppose it means we're not Mexican. But we are, we so are.

[gorilla33]

A Medusans love for the Pogues is unanimous, not for any one individual but for all the blessed boys we love and cherish. See y'all Thursday night. Flying up from New Orleans to see ya!! Cheers!

[O'Blivion]

Typical half-assed review (Spider hitting himself with "an aluminum baking pan during Waxie's Dargle" !!!) accompanied by some nice pics:


The Pogues @ 9:30 Club

By Valerie Paschall in Arts and Events on March 11, 2011 11:30 AM


“He’s not gonna make it through the whole set.”
“Waddle Waddle Waddle, Stumble Stumble Stumble.”

“He makes Bob Dylan look like a linguist.”

Say what you want about Pogues fans, but after overhearing those comments, we can say that they definitely aren’t deluded. Admittedly, Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan wasn’t in the piss poor form of legend (no chair was needed to hold him up this time), but he still looked lost as he staggered haggardly onstage in his sunglasses, trench coat and Mardi Gras beads, as if forward movement was an epic struggle. However, one fan’s comment of “As long as he’s standing and singing, we’re fine,” seemed to be the prevailing sentiment amongst the audience.

Pogues fans don’t pay 55 bucks a pop because it's fun to watch MacGowan mumble lyrics almost unintelligibly for four or five songs before being helped offstage to take a break. Yes, the other musicians have songs like "Tuesday Morning" where they can take over the lead vocal duties, but truth be told, it's still pretty sad. However, the experience of seeing a Pogues show around St. Patrick's Day comes with the ability to say "I was there!" Pogues fans come for the experience. It isn't quite the booze-fest of decades past for either the band or the audience, but it was a night of loud cheers and louder sing-a-longs: a clear celebration of the camaraderie embodied by such drunken nights.

And that camaraderie was in no short supply. The vast majority of the audience knew every word to every song that the Pogues played, whether it was drinking anthems like "Streams of Whiskey" (with which they opened the show) or covers that they'd made their own like "Dirty Old Town." Therefore, a thousand voices supplemented the guttural growls and unearthly shrieks of McGowan as the set moved along at a cheerful, jaunty pace. "This song is an instrumental, but you can sing along if you like," quipped tin whistle player and sometimes singer Spider Stacy mid-show.

That said, the set was peppered with reminders that The Pogues are, at heart, a punk band. Yes, Spider Stacy plays a tin whistle, but he also whacks it against his leg when he's not singing (and repeatedly smashed his head with what looked like an aluminum baking tray during "Waxie's Dargle.") Yes, they have an accordion player, but James Feamley poses like he has a little Cap'n in him in between drops to his knees (although his knee pads belie the move's spontaneity).

McGowan also proved that despite his limited movement he was still capable of sloppy fun. He knocked over his mic stand, tossed around his microphone and he, too, beat an aluminum tray over his own head. All of these moves threatened to do him in and he lit up onstage with a frequency that even put Bob Pollard to shame. However, at the end of the night, McGowan was cracking jokes ("This is our last number again," he heaved at the end of the first encore) and managed to drag the set out to almost two hours. He's just as much symbol as singer at this point, and the show wouldn't have been the same without him.

Opener Titus Andronicus has fed off of the feverish energy of their fans the last two times we saw them. This time, they proved that they can rock just as hard in front of a bunch of people doing the 'standing still'...something they probably haven’t experienced in D.C. since this show. They still threw themselves around (singer Patrick Stickles and guitarist Amy Klein especially) with joy and fervor as they played most of the highlights from The Monitor, including the epic "The Battle of Hampton Roads," noting that it was the battle's one hundred forty-ninth anniversary. It was a clinic on how to win over an audience not present for their sake.

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