| Shane MacGowan Luther’s Blues, Madison, May 18, 2002. Shane lived up to expectations. But what’s truly remarkable is not that he succeeded in entertaining the crowd, but rather that he lived through the night. An hour or two late taking the stage, closed-eyed, swaying, and held up by the roadies, Shane made his way through the crowd to take the stage. No one thought that a man that drunk could perform. I saw the ex-Pogues lead singer four years ago in Chapel Hill North Carolina, and I would say the old bugger has gained seventy-five pounds since. He mumbled a few things to crowd, then the band started into “If I Should Fall from Grace with God.” It was a fitting beginning: “If I Should Fall from the Grace with God/ Where no doctors can relieve me/ If I’m buried beneath the sod/ Where no angels can receive me/ Let me go, boys/ Let me go, boys/ Let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry.” The band sounded great, and Shane is not required to sound great. He is the barroom poet, and he was in the bar shouting out what all of us hoped would not be his own elegy. It wasn’t too long before he began working on his first Guinness. Instead of having some roadie go through the trouble of bringing him another drink after each song, Shane just grabbed them from the crowd after every other song: some beers, some whiskey and cokes, some gin and tonics, some God-knows-whats. Shane wasn’t picky. At first, it was amusing to see him throw back a drink, but after a while, it was kind of frightening. Many of us wondered if this next drink would be the one that would kill him. By handing him their offerings of praise—lit cigarettes and full drinks—the crowd was helping him dig his grave. I guess it’s true, we do kill our heroes and poets. What’s really scary is that Shane became more and more lucid and coherent the more he drank. Even though he was far gone, his gestures and on stage presence had a sense of cool to them that can rarely if ever be found in this age of hip look-a-likes. Most of the songs he played were either from his most recent solo stuff or his very early Pogues material, as well as doing some very cool covers: one by Van Morrison and one by Hank Williams Jr. The best, of course, was the closing song, “A Fairy tale of New York,” which he performed with a girl from one of the warm-up bands. She was good. She should really think of leaving her group. The middle age, Irish lead singer of that opening group actually tried to mix traditional Irish music with rap [ed. note: bad idea!]. Yeah, the Pogues mixed punk and traditional Irish music, but the Pogues had Shane. --Brian Marks 6/5/02 |