Shane MacGowan may be a toothless drunkard, but he can balance a cup of gin on his head for a good five seconds while spinning a microphone by its cord in one hand and dangling a cigarette with an impossibly long ash from his other hand. Watching him on stage was a little like dropping a coin in the hat of a semi-conscious street bum lying in the gutter as he gurgles the words to “Molly Malone.” Ever since the Pogues emerged with their 1984 debut album Red Roses for Me, the then-27-year-old MacGowan has been teetering on the edge of an alcohol-induced coma. While his face shows the ruin of decades of substance abuse, his voice hasn't aged: it's just as charmingly incoherent as it was 16 years ago when MacGowan recorded his last album with the Pogues, Hell's Ditch.
The excitement of seeing MacGowan hold forth with the Pogues was heightened by the sense that every song could be his last. After just two numbers, during which MacGowan slouched in sunglasses, he exited the stage, leaving his confused band mates to begin an impromptu jam that, once it became clear MacGowan wasn't coming back, meshed into a pop song from the band's post-MacGowan era. But then magically he was back, gin cup in hand, to much applause from his unruly fans. “Aw, I can tell ya don't give a fuck,” he drawled.
Throughout the set, predictable miscues abounded. MacGowan repeatedly screeched into the microphone to punctuate choruses, threatening to throw the seven-piece band off tempo. He started singing halfway through drummer Andrew Ranken's haunting harmonica solo which kicks off “Dirty Old Town,” but when the band stopped playing and Ranken rose out of his seat with mock aggression, he sheepishly shut up and let the song start over. When MacGowan wandered too far from his microphone to begin a second verse, his intrepid cohorts simply played on until he was ready to continue.
And play they did, covering the band's most demanding and rewarding material: “Body of an American,” “Sally Maclennane,” “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” “Bottle of Smoke,” and “Fiesta,” when piper Spider Stacey played percussion by meticulously denting a metal plate while slamming it to his forehead. Banjoist Jem Finer and string player Terry Woods were also in fine form, while accordionist James Fearnley outdid himself, hammering the keys with relentless precision while acrobatically working the bellows.
MacGowan's performance meanwhile, for all his antics, actually improved throughout the show. His rendition of “Rainy Night in Soho” was beautiful, outmatched in poignancy only by the encore performance “Fairytale of New York,” which featured a surprise performance by Marcia Finer, who deserves a medal for keeping her balance during a dizzying waltz with MacGowan, who reeled her in clumsy circles. The gaze of fondness and almost fearful anticipation on Marcia's face expressed as no words possibly can the combination of serenity and sorrow that comes with seeing MacGowan pulling off yet another impossibly brilliant performance.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).