The Pogues Play Showbox SoDo Saturday

The last time the Pogues played Showbox SoDo, I was there and wrote up a review for Seattlest. They’re playing the same venue tomorrow (sold out, even at $50 a head, and people are offering $75 and $100 on Craigslist). To save time, I’m reprinting that review as a preview. If you’ve got tickets, your evening should go something like this:

“Oi flimsy castle,” said Shane MacGowan, 49 [50 now!], a short stovepipe hat on his head. “Frip limpid turtle song.” He stopped to survey Showbox SODO‘s barnlike interior–people were still filing in from Hooverville across the street. Outside the bar, a phalanx of women formed around a dazed, jelly-kneed girl with a mouth rimed with spew. Then the banjo pluck and chime, the snare-drum skitter, a missing-leg march’s rhythm.

One summer evening drunk to hell I sat there nearly lifeless. An old man in the corner sang Where the water lilies grow.

Inside Showbox, the crowd raised their cups and ululated with joy at seeing MacGowan take the stage under his own steam. They adored the shambling walk, the terse, gnomic, between-song utterances. MacGowan pressed into use what was long ago a serviceable baritone. “I am gooooo-ing, I am gooooo-ing,” he sang, knotted cords buzzing like a throat-singer’s. Streams of beer and whiskey were flowing along the floors.

Up in the side bar, women hit puddles and faceplanted, men did awkward splits. “Did ya keep a watch for the dead man’s wind? Did ya see the woman with the comb in her hand?” chanted the crowd. A trio of young men with sharply defined haircuts linked hands and grapevined their way toward the front. Another man burrowed forward like a drunken gopher, leaving heads popping up angrily in his wake.

“Calyx forgle snapshot,” said MacGowan. “Ember dunk Seattle?” He heaved out a dry, wheezy conniption of a laugh, sounding like that evil little animal on the Laff-Olympics. “Gorgon hoodle Pearl Jam.” How old is he, whispered a young woman to her date, who shrugged. “I’m a free born man of the USA!” screamed the crowd when the song came around, hysteria crackling in their voices. Some just wailed out wordless emphasis.

The second encore lasted longer than the first.