Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacey, Jem Finer, Terry Woods, Philip Chevron, James Fearnley, Andrew Ranken, and Darryl Hunt took the stage for a series of concerts at Times Square's Nokia Theatre over St. Patrick's Day weekend, 2006.
They are The Pogues, and they are a group of mostly Londoners who played Irish punk/pop/traditional music in the 80s and early 90s.
They are my favorite band of all time.
I first saw them on Saturday Night Live on Paddy's Day in 1989 (or maybe it was 1990) and they sang "White City" and "The Body of an American", and to this day those are the two songs that I still call my favorites.
Shane had bad teeth and mumbled his lyrics through sunglasses and a scraggly beard, but it was pure magic that flowed through his gravelly voice.
From a hundred thousand mugs Now washed away with dead dreams in the rain And the car-parks going up And they're pulling down the pubs And it's just another bloody rainy day
Oh the torn up ticket stubs
Shane was kicked out of the band around 1992, and the Pogues tried to soldier on, briefly employing Joe Strummer, and released a couple of decent albums featuring Spider on lead vocals, while Shane gathered together The Popes and spent the late 90s touring and supporting a couple of great solo albums while barely able to support himself on stage.
In 2001 the original members reunited, and before too long began performing here and there over the next few years. No new material, but their touring schedule increased and they proved that the reunion shows weren't just about grabbing a quick buck.
After sticking to mainly Dublin and London, the New York shows were announced and I was lucky enough to grab a couple of tickets for the Saturday night show. And the rest is history.
In the eerie green of the Nokia Theatre The Pogues played all the hits, from "Streams of Whiskey" to "Fiesta," and although the set list wasn't much different than what they were playing in 91, the fact that they were all there on stage together, with Spider banging his head on the beer tray and Darryl wearing a coat from the Red Roses for Me cover, and Shane looking fat but alive, and James Fearnley fucking owning the accordion, what more could you ask for?
It made me think of all those night spent in Jimmy's Pub in Peoria, listening to a local Irish band playing their favorite Pogues tunes as we banged on the table and drank our Guinness and found a wonderful, and brief, camraderie.
It made me think of that night hanging out in Mike's room back in high school, as he passed along his copy of Peace and Love to me, admitting that he just couldn't get into it.
The Pogues reuniting on stage again, singing all of their wonderful songs, was about a group of men who were broken apart by all those things that break friends apart, but found a way to gather together again, found a way to heal the wounds, and discovered what it was that made them great.
And as Shane began singing "Fairytale of New York", not with Kirsty MacColl, who sadly died in a boating accident some years ago, but with Jem's daughter, the night ended as beautifully as it began, and hope was rekindled once again:
Well so could anyone You took my dreams from me When I first found you I kept them with me babe I put them with my own Can't make it all alone I've built my dreams around you.
I could have been someone
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