The Pogues

March 5, 2007
The Congress Theatre, Chicago

Last night The Pogues played Chicago as a complete unit for the first time in over 15 years. I had the great fortune of seeing them last year in New York over Paddy's Day weekend, but once I heard they were coming here I scooped up a couple of tickets and convinced Duder to come check 'em out.

If there's anything that Duder loves, it's big crowds and a crappy part of town. Oh yeah, and I made him stand down in front with all the big obnoxious drunk guys. The crowd itself was pretty interesting: a lot of Chicago Irish mixing with next-gen youth apparently living the 80s punk scene all over again.

Girl in a Coma opened the show, a trio of Texas girls who tore that shit up.

The band finally took the stage and it was great. I was down in the thick of it, singing along with every word and still amazed that Shane MacGowan looked pretty good, all things considering.

Set list hasn't changed much from a year ago, and well, it hasn't changed much in 15 years. Rumors of new music float around, but Shane says it might be best to stay out of the studio if they want to stay together. Fair enough, I suppose, but I hope more comes out of this than a few rounds of reunion concerts.

"Fiesta" closed the show, we ate The Greatest Burritos Ever, and headed home, grumbling about having to get up and go to work in the morning. Thankfully we kept our Guinness intake to two apiece.

Incredible show, from start to finish. It was the opening night of the tour and they sounded tight and seemed to be having a good time. Shane had trouble keeping up with some of the faster songs ("Bottle of Smoke" was a bit rough), but then they slowed things down with "A Rainy Night in Soho" and Shane proved that he can still get it done.

Here's a quick bit of video from the show: the first 60 seconds of "The Body of an American" for ThePhoenixNYC. Enjoy the show next weekend, my friend.

NOTE: Video link was showing up funny in IE. Apologies for those of you not using Firefox; I imagine the pictures sometimes are coming up a bit oversized. I only use IE at work and don't notice when things are off-kilter in different browsers. I'll work on this later and try and get it fixed.