Comments on A Rainy Night in Sodo

Thank you for a wonderful review for those of us who could not be there.

Studded leather jacket-to-tweed paperboy cap - I didn't know that could be a ratio. JZ has made it so. Nice, finding the fitting words, JZ.

jz, you nailed it with this beautifully written post. last night's show was even better than the night before, and thank you for remembering to mention the tin trays.

i don't think we'll ever see the pogues like that again. good on you for documenting such a spectacularly sentimental evening.

I'm glad to hear he was looking good and sounding better. Sounds like a far cry from when i saw them in Boston about a year ago.

Jesus, that was a trainwreck...

F'ing A JZ. I hope I'm just getting old, but I feel like there aren't bands in line to follow this tradition. There's plenty of music I like, but maybe 'conflict' is what's missing. Then again, maybe it's relevance. Anyway, you can't just manufacture it, it takes years to grow and develop. Maybe I'm just old and sentimental.

Wednesday night he dedicated 'Body of An American' to Kurt Cobain, just about the only spoken words I could understand, no surprise there. If you look at video on Youtube from March he looks way better now than he did then, but it might be just his haircut, dude looks like Worzel Gummidge in those March shows. Splendid, one of the best bands ever, and not the kind of reunion tour you will see repeated for the cash, this is like Halley's Comet. Thanks Jonathan for nailing it.

@6--holy goosebumps. thats a powerful dedication.

I already regretted not scraping up the cash to go to this, and now I REALLY REALLY REALLY regret it.

Awesome post, Zwickel.

As a member of one of the swaying and crying couples, I gotta thank you for the validation of our gushy sentimentality. Its hard for a provincial punk like myself to live up to the 'cool' of big city Seattle, but it is nice to know that I wasn't entirely scorned. Great review of a great show. The review is one that I am putting in my personal archives.

Cheers.

Great review. Although I was up in the front Wednesday night and confirmed it in my photos that Shane looked so hot close up. He was puffy and had red rings around his eyes, he looked kinda like a body pulled out of the water after a few days. My friend remarked to me, "It looks like he's dying." Sad but true, I was amazed he could pull his shit together and put on such a great show. Definitely an emotional experience for me as well.

Uh, that should have been that Shane did not look so hot up front. Shane definitely did not look good, he looked sick.

@10--weird. kelly o, our staff photographer, was right up front too, and she gave the opposite description: he didnt look puffy or swollen or wrung out but thin and rather ruddy.

we should have pics to give a better representation soon. right kelly?

He looked GREAT, I thought. Not puffy, not stumbling. I think he always looks haggard cuz he needs some frickin' CLACKERS... teeth, man, teeth

He looked much, much better than the last time I saw him with The Popes in 2001. _That_ was a guy who looked near death.

Huh, we did go different nights. But if you click my name you can see some of my photos. People were talking about how he looked sick Wednesday and still pulled off a fantastic show.

Thanks for the reviews and photos. They sure had that big barn rockin Thursday. First time to see them and what a blast. They're kind of punkish in the rhythms and fast pacing of their jigs and reels, but I was surprised at the moshing and preponderance/"ratio" of black leathered punker types in the capacity crowd. I guess the whistle player smashing a beer tray against his forehead is punkish too, but I don't really equate bazoukis, mandolins, acoustic guitars, whistles, accordions, citterns and banjos with punk. No violin? Nope. We ventured up to the edge of the mosh for the last few songs. By then it had simmered a little, atleast they weren't surfing or holding up guys upside down.

Yeah, Shane MacGowan was drunk and drinking, and seemed lost at the start of a couple songs, but nothing like hanging on the mic stand to stay off the floor, like I've read. He sure has a powerful voice, especially evident from his whoops between songs. Too bad, like Dylan sometimes, it was hard to make out his interesting lyrics. Might say his delivery is somewhere between Tom Waits and Johny Rotten.

I couldn't help think of Kirsty MacColl, and that we''ll never hear her sing with MacGowan on Fairytale Of New York again.

The Pogues' two night stand at ShowDo sure raked in some dough. Unlike other indoor area venues of its size, you can drink $5 22 ounce Pabsts and whatever else while watching the show. Let's see, 2 shows x 1,800 people x $62 ($50 + $12 for TM) , + drink revenue. I like the name of the bar across the street, Hooterville, as Sodo was Hooterville during the Depression.

Not Hooterville, Hooverville :) Yeah, better drink prices than the Showbox and 80s games! I paid $50 for my tickets through the Pogues site before they went on sale locally and only had a $2 fee for mailing them. I agree the Showbox must have made a killing, but I think the band must have asked for a lot, the SF shows are $65 and the LA ones $40/$50.

regarding ticket prices: they are dictated by the band's guarantee. venues have obvious costs to cover (sound, lighting, staff, security, blah blah blah) but they aren't making their dough off the door.

any club owner will tell you: there's a lot of profit in booze. and, given the amount swilled in sodo last week, i'm sure both hooverville and the showbox did just fine.

@16, it doesn't get mentioned, but I think Fairytale of New York is a classic. That was a sad ending for Kirsty MacColl.

"fairytale of new york" is indeed a classic--continually ranks, year after year, as one of the best xmas songs in several UK polls.

when i saw the pogues last year in SF, they played it as their encore. they brought out a femal vocalist--im not sure who--and she and shane traded verses somewhat ably. towards the end of the song, a flurry of fake snow fell from the fillmore rafters onto the stage, and shane wheeled the frightened-looking singer around the stage. it was a pretty awesome moment.

What I'd pay to have seen that. It's my favorite christmas tune, it just rings so true that I feel stabbing pains listening to it. How many times I walked the streets recalling 'the wind blows right through you, it's no place for the old.'

"I was surprised at the moshing and reponderance/"ratio" of black leathered punker types in the capacity crowd"

A lot of people consider The Pogues a punk band and they've always had a huge punk and skin following. Yes, despite the banjo and whistle. And they provided inspiration for Celtic punk bands like The Tossers, Dropkick Murphys, Blood or Whiskey and Flogging Molly. If you watch what's going on in the background during the credits of "The Punk Rock Movie," you can see Shane dancing around with Siouxsie. He also appeared in other punk related movies like "The Filth and the Fury" and "Straight to Hell."

What Dan said! And don't forget cameo in 1987 flick EAT THE RICH...

@20: the female vocalist doing Fairytale last year during their west coast tour was Ella Finer, daughter of Jem Finer, the Pogues' banjo player. She's pretty much known Shane since she was born, so I'm guessing she wasn't as frightened as she may have appeared on stage.