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I was a wee lad the first time I saw Shane MacGowan live. Backed by the Pogues, he slurred his way through a performance on Saturday Night Live a decade or so ago. It was the most gawd-awful musical thing I'd ever witnessed.
MacGowan's reputation for going hot and cold in concert is the stuff of tired legend. But Wednesday at New York City's Irving Plaza, MacGowan and the Popes were on, as they burned through twenty-one songs in just over an hour. It was a performance that, for better or worse, whipped a blubbering, blotto crowd into a frenzy that left the wrecked club awash in a slippery slide of spilled suds and discarded cans and cups.
Without a widespread American release since 1995's The Snake, MacGowan's current U.S. tour is almost something urgent, an opportunity for him to find his feet again in a country in which the music industry has packed up the car and left without him. He's more than up to the challenge. MacGowan and the Popes display the range of his former cohorts, but pack a greater whallop, an ability to shift from danceable trad to Clash-like runs of post-punk fury. It was a performance that makes a good argument for MacGowan and the Popes as one of the most versatile and furious rock & roll units working today.
From the uber-familiar opening strains of "If I Should Fall From Grace with God," the venue erupted. Throughout the first verse, MacGowan's lazy ramble couldn't be heard over the din. But with the bansheesish "EEEEEEEAAAAAAGHHHH" that punctuates the end of the second verse, MacGowan lit up as he presented a cross-section of his twenty-plus career covering material old and new, Pogue and Pope. Never much for dymanic stage presence, MacGowan's teetering two-step with the mic stand is still something charismatic in its own dreadfully fascinating way. His large frame, clinched eyes and gutteral slur have made him the thing of myth. "He's the king, man," a fellow beside me said. Indeed, with his paunch and bushy mutton chops, he doesn't look unlike a Paddy-version of the Big E. And damned if people don't hang on the self-destructive parallels with romantic glee.
And therein lies MacGowan's great musical tragedy. The charges of wasted talent have grown long in the tooth. Though hardly prolific, MacGowan cranked out six albums with the Pogues (nearly one every other year, if you're counting) and has released two with the Popes over the past five years. He can drop a brilliantly detailed story song about an executed martyr at the drop of a hat, he can break your heart, he can make you laugh and cry within the same song. The only thing he's pissed away is his liver, but one can hardly claim that drinking has hindered the legacy of his output. If there are troubles to be found, they lie in his reception. From the familiar first tune to the unexpected holiday-season corker of "Fairytale of New York," MacGowan's audience treated the performance as something of a mosh-pit karaoke. And while it offers undeniable, visceral punklike thrills, there is no better setting for losing lyrics in the moment. The frenzy that complements moments like the chorus for "Donegal Express," a humerous, albeit not entirely profound offering of "Kahaya! You fuck!/Come Hell or high water/I might have fucked your missus/but I never fucked your daughter/fol-diddle-dee-ahh," tends to drown out the nuance of "Pair of Brown Eyes" and "Lonesome Highway."
It's a scenario that hearkens Willie Nelson's return to Texas three decades ago (where you bellow "Whiskey River" and shut yer yap during "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"). Nelson found room for the cowboys to dance and the hippies to smoke their dope in the wings. MacGowan has the same disparate element amongst his culty legions, with no such sanctuary for the pre-arthritic set. There's a dirtied, yet beautiful lineage of song that MacGowan presents that should demand as much respect as the release that the music provides. From a cover of Hank Williams' "Angel of Death" and Ewan McColl's "Dirty Old Town" to his myriad originals that boast a spectrum of ire and beauty that suggests Woody Guthrie, MacGowan may be tapped into this timeline better than any contemporary songwriter. Yet middle fingers abounded, as though Fred Durst, a songwriter of zero capacity by comparison, were in the house.
As with any entertainer, MacGowan's boozy rep simply can't be to blame for the behavior of others; he's not responsible for the thousands who set themselves sailing towards intoxication in a fan-based form of synergistic dopplegangerism. He fired off his songs with his trademark piss and vinegar, but ferchrissakes, the guy still carries himself with wit, intelligence and yes, even dignity. The parade of audience members ejected from the venue felt like an ESPN-crafted montage of the finest field-storming moments of Billy Martin and Earl Weaver combined. Of particular merit: a tipsy halfwit lovingly whispering the first verse of "Fairytale" into his girlfriend's ear while holding her close and swaying together. Fortunately she possessed enough lyric comprehension and savvy not to coo back with "you scumbag you maggot/you cheap lousy faggot/Happy Christmas your arse/I pray God it's our last." Other highlights, a three-hundred-plus pound crowd surfer and the following run from one admiring fan: "Fucker!" (?) he yelled. "Asshole!" (??) he then offered. "Jew boy!" (?!?) was his hidden trump card.
But behavioral complaints aside, you gotta give the masses credit for
knowing all the lyrics. "Lost Highway," "Paddy Rolling
Stone" and "Paddy Public Enemy No. 1," all from Crock of Gold,
which has never seen widespread release in the U.S., became singalongs with the
same vigor of the older Pogues material. And then, of course, there's Shane
himself. The humorously choreographed anti-waltz between MacGowan and his
unidentified duet partner (who true to the song, fought his dancing advances)
on "Fairytale" ended with both of them toppling to the floor of the
stage, perhaps intentionally, most likely not, to a riotous reception. And as
he always does, MacGowan got up again. "Glurrrbsh, good night," he
said before leaving the stage. It was a moment both sincere and unintelligible
and reflective of the dual forms of reverence that bathe one of the most
puzzling and dazzling performers in rock & roll.