Poguery

I wonder if Shane McGowan is a little pissed off that he's still alive.

Imagine if he'd kicked say in 1987 or 88 and joined the ranks of Morrison, Hendrix, Dean and Joplin on the blazed out, gone too soon, too talented to live team, forever young and dangerous and snarling. Instead we have the bloated, staggering, nearly 52 year old Shane who gets raucous cheers merely for not falling down...or for in fact occasionally falling down, or so it might seem from last night's show.

Don't misunderstand me, I love love love this band and their music. I have for years and always will. They're great musicians who pretty much invented a genre of music, a feat which not many bands can claim. I think Shane MacGowan is a poet of rare gifts and when he's functional an amazing, soulful performer. I left last night's show glad I went and fairly certain that if the band ever comes back to Kansas City I won't go again.

The show was certainly not without its moments. The encore performances of Fiesta and Poor Paddy cooked. If I Should Fall was great. I thought Rainy Night In Soho was brilliant. The band, when not having to watch every note and measure to make sure to stay on the same page as the stumbling Shane, was drum-tight and showed the musical bonds that decades of playing side by side will bring. James Fearnley valiantly tried to kick up the energy level with the most acrobatic accordion playing I've even seen. But I left disappointed.

Now I've seen the band before and I've seen Shane worse off before. I didn't go into the show expecting the Irish Tenors or Riverdance. I know what you get when you get Shane. But when you look at the amazing body of work that this man has assembled and you consider that at 51, he's still relatively young it made me a little sad to know that for a lot of people the fun in seeing him is to see how f'ed up he is and watch him slowly circling the drain. He's become a sideshow act, a circus clown, a train wreck you can't look away from.

A commenter in Tim Finn's Back To Rockville review of the show this morning praised Shane as "close to understandable." When that's enough from an artist as ridiculously gifted as Shane is, I don't think you can help but be a little saddened.