Ireland & UK tour Dec 2012

[tonger]

Great gig. I though the atmosphere and sound were spot on, band were on great form, but night spoiled by some low life scum bag nicking £100 out of my pocket; luckily he didn't take my train ticket as well! Happy Christmas his arse I hope it's his last!!! And my mate has his iphone lifted too!! Watch out at gigs people, this is not the first time I have heard of this, Gaslight Anthem at Brixton it was rife!

Happy Christmas to you all!!

[MissWalshy]

I'm going to have to call you a liar on point 2

[JohnG]

Great night. My first visit to the O2 and the atmosphere was better than expected. Glad it seemed to be almost full. Agree with others about the excellent sound quality.

My standing ticket never arrived in the post so I was instruced to pick one up from the O2 where I was told it had been exchanged for a seat !! Not very happy about this but a helpful steward advised me to go to customer service where it was willingly exchanged for a standing one.

[Ginga]

A very mixed night. My standing tickets hadn't turned up so I contacted gigsandtours and was told that duplicates would be available for collection from the box office. Sorted. Then at 6.15 upon emerging from the tube I got a message that I would in fact be getting seated tickets, and not standing. Called them up and after holding for 20 minutes got through to someone who was no help at all and given the choice of a refund or taking the seated tickets. Begging at the O2 box office didn't help either. Tried customer services but they had no spares left (unless people left!)

What is it about the 02 that there are no touts when you need them!

So it's 8 o'clock, the pub's run out of Guinness, and I'm a bit gutted. Checked on here, see that someone has spares. Call him, bugger, he's sold them five minutes before.
Trudged to the seats, apologised in advance to the people behind for the fact that I would be stood for the duration, sourced some Guinness and then the band comes on.

And everything was suddenly well with the world.
Amazing gig despite the venue and the ticket agents. Thanks to the band, and Merry Christmas!

[ManniGee]

Hi !

Who was the girl at FONY ?

[philipchevron]

Hi !

Who was the girl at FONY ?

Camille O'Sullivan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_O'Sullivan

[in_the_morning]

This fucking Evening standard review just shows that Shane can't win, no matter what...he sounded fantastic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1slpNXsw8E
wish I could have been there...at least there's a decent review in the Independent!

[fatbloke]

I know one can ever touch Kirsty but by fuck Camille gives it right old go. Great version! Thanks for the youtude link, appreciated.

[storm and stress]

12 Things I Learned Last Night

1. It's a tricky thing arranging to sell spare tickets via the interwebs. You can never quite know whether it will work out in real life. But the smile on someone's face when you do manage to meet and hand over the ticket they wanted is priceless. Hope you enjoyed the gig, mate. By the way, I still have one spare standing ticket for sale. Face value to anyone who wants it.

2. It's possible to arrive at Nandos, order and eat a meal, and get out again within approximately fifteen minutes. Even if you have to be taken up and down in possibly the world's slowest lift.

3. The O2 Arena is a big corporate soulless shed of a venue. But The Pogues can make it rock! (Even if you do still miss Brixton.)

4. The wheelchair access at the Arena is way better than at Brixton, and the viewing's better. And one of the nice girls there will bring you drinks at any point during the evening if you ask. Sadly you do have to pay for the drinks, but hey.

5. Frank Turner is even better live than I remember him. I need to see him again soon.

6. Young Ned Of The Hill should be an integral part of any Pogues gig, and Mr Woods needs to be persuaded of this.

7. Shane does a grand version of Thousands Are Sailing, but I really miss Mr C singing it.

8. You get a very good class of fake snow at the Arena, and plenty of it.

9. However hard I try, I can never remember a whole setlist unless I write it down at the time. Setlist please, anyone?

10. You can never leave a Pogues gig without overhearing someone on their mobile saying, "Shane MacGowan was totally out of it. He kept having to go off stage and other people had to sing." Even when Shane is on damn fine form, and even though part of the joy of the Pogues is that different band members sing different songs, for goodness' sake.

11. The strangest revelation of the night was that it turns out that I am actually Fr McGreer's dad.
Well, you never quite know about these things, do you? But it was good to see my long-lost only son after all these years. And I suppose that makes me Grandfather McGreer.

12. The Pogues are the best band in the world. (Actually I knew that already.)

Thanks to the band for a truly great night. Happy Christmas.

Not to be a holier than though veteran, but I must concur with you and as I mentioned above, the whole Shane's such a mess noises that were going on behind me and all the "oh my god he's ACTUALLY got to go off!" exclamations in between every song that wasn't FONY did great rather (especially as we were on the FRONT ROW!) made me sad. I'm not expecting an audience with an in depth knowledge of their back catalogue, but £40 seems a lot to stand and talk to people you see all the time at the expense of proper fans (I won't go on about her boyfriend who berated me for wearing a 2009 tour hoodie that said "Ireland" on it when I'm not Irish...). Still loved it, but can't help thinking Brixton's front row probably wouldn't have included such ignorance...

[in_the_morning]

I know one can ever touch Kirsty but by fuck Camille gives it right old go. Great version! Thanks for the youtude link, appreciated.

No problem! Yeah, Camille is great. Actually she sang with Shane before (together with Sharon Shannon I believe) and here's a great TV performance from 2007:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_W4_YjZUK4

I'm so fucking sick of these pricks declaring that Shane sounded "so out of tune" bla bla when the evidence is all there that he sounds WAY BETTER than he did in recent years. His voice seems to be recovering a fair bit, or maybe he just wants to sound better. He can still be fucking brilliant if he wants to put on a great show. This review-prick sounds like he wasn't there or that he doesn't know anything about Shane's history. Sad.

[in_the_morning]

Sorry for double-post, but this sounds more like it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYTzn7XoyW8

[Thrupenny]

12 Things I Learned Last Night


9. However hard I try, I can never remember a whole setlist unless I write it down at the time. Setlist please, anyone?

Thanks to the band for a truly great night. Happy Christmas.

I'm sad enough to write the set list down during the gig, otherwise I woudln't remeber eigther, anyway I believe the list from last night's gig is:
1.Streams of Whiskey
2.If I Should Fall From Grace With God
3.Broad Majestic Shannon
4.Greenland Whale Fisheries
5.A Pair of Brown Eyes
6.Tuesday Morning
7.Kitty
8.The Sunnyside of the Street
9.Thousands Are Sailing
10.Repeal of the Licensing Laws
11.Lullaby of London
12.The Body of an American
13.Young Ned of the Hill
14.Boys From the County Hell
15.Dirty Old Town
16.Bottle of Smoke
17.The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn
****First Encore ****
18.Sally MacLennane
19.A Rainy Night in Soho
20.The Irish Rover
**** Second Encore ****
21.The Star Of The County Down
22.Poor Paddy
23.Fairytale of New York
24.Fiesta

Great set but many great songs missing (Turkish Song of the Damned, Misty morning Albert Bridge, Summer in Siam etc,). maybe they'll make it on to the set list next year (please, no more talk of farewell tours!)

[philipchevron]

Britain is, let us not forget, the home of the Pantomime and the novelty hit. Only in Britain could Noddy Holder and Shane MacGowan be the joint Face of Christmas Past. I think there may be a substantial "office Chrtistmas Party" component at our Seasonal shows in which a noisy minority (the OMG he was SOOOOOOOOOO out of it brigade) have arrived with their own repertoire of responses and attitudes and deep-felt need for Saturnalian Celebration in Excelsis.

It doesn't matter in the slightest that in order to do what we do for 100 minutes, all of us even, perhaps especially Shane, in his way, have fitness and health demands inconsistent with this objective. Nor does it matter, in this particular context, that Shane's "unscheduled" departures, which have been going on for 30 years and around which we have always built our setlist, are wilfully misconstrued by some people as emergency calls of variable urgency or that one or other band member has suddenly been called into active service in light of Shane's unexpected absences.

These are "Pogues fans" you may never see from one end of the year to the next, though I like to think our continued popularity as a live band is driven, in part, by the simple fact that we are are a very good live band and worthy, perhaps, of less raucous scrutiny at another opportunity when it's not Christmas. But though it must be maddening to have Tracey from Marketing's OMG he's SOOOOOOOOOO out of it yelled at you like some gleeful affirmation of your money's worth achieved, it would also be disingenuous to pretend that part of the Pogues' mystical appeal is not the upholding of a certain fantasy that yes you CAN have it all, and stay drunk while you're doing it. Nobody who knows anything about the history of the chemical misadventures of individual Pogues can be under any serious illusion that fantasy is exactly what that is.

But we are also, in that fine Celtic tradition, straw men, mummers, players, wren boys, sent to direct and provoke the annual proceedings of chaos and disorder in a world grown hostile to spontaneity and paganism. If we weren't there, we would have had to invent us. It doesn't, I think, make the songs any less beautiful or less enduring or the miracle of our survival less notable that we are sometimes misrepresented. It amused me yesterday personally to view the red tape and incredible security and planning involved in the simple act of ferrying a guitarist and his driver Chucky into the bowels of the 02 itself, the sort of process I always just consider "getting into work" but which sometimes verges on the farcically-efficient. And all I could think back to, from the plush black leather luxury of my town car, was a foggy musing from way back when. "I must check I have the right address of the Sir George Robey and whether I can afford the tube fare and a couple of pints, otherwise I might just walk there."

And now that George Robey himself and Arthur Askey and Little Tich and Dan Leno and the rest no longer rule the Festive stages in London, we have instead a band who not only offered the eternal "Fairytale of New York" but also did so while they were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO drunk.

Merry Christmas to all

[Mr Chevron's Christmas Message is also available in 3D and HD]

[Mark_Wafc]

Ha ha superb ! Merry Christmas Phil here's to more gigs next year !

[Fionn MacCool]

Sorry for double-post, but this sounds more like it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYTzn7XoyW8

Jesus people put any bollocks on Youtube these days don't they. Any actual videos of the gig?

Star of the county Down was fantastic. Anyone else think Shane looked a bit like a priest at the start with the scarf draped around his shoulders?