Thhs'z th' lssht snggh wrrr plyngh!

"Thhs'z th' lssht snggh wrrr plyngh!"

A Review of Shane MacGowan at the Recher Theatre (w/ O'Malley's March), March 20, 2001
by funtax

Doors opened at 7:00. Supposedly. In reality, doors opened at 7:45. Shane evidently arrived some time around 7:30, which was a good indicator of things to come. I hadn't been to the Recher since college, when it was still called the Rec Room (which is now the name of the restaurant next door) and it basically served as Kelly Bell's personal venue. The next hour of waiting gave me time to wander around, bumping into old friends and checking out the "new and improved" Recher. The beer is still expensive (Killian's is NOT an import, you brigands!), the video games and pool tables are now next door with most of the food and the place has lost a lot of its "dive" ambiance.

As one might expect, the crowd was a pretty good mix of old folks, punks and college kids -- standard Pogues/Shane fans. There was one elderly gentleman we took to calling "The Mac Daddy," who danced with no fewer than 15 young ladies throughout the show. We shared adjacent urinals during the break between sets, at which point he decided to tell me how much he was looking forward to seeing "Sean McGayin," so I wasn't sure if he was actually a fan at all. Which led to me wondering if he just goes to ALL of the shows at the Recher looking for action. But I digress...

When the show actually got underway at around 8:30 (now a mere 1/2 hour behind schedule), Baltimore's rock-n-roll mayor hit the stage first. As always, his shirt was sleeveless to show off his mayoral prowess (and prompting a guy next to us to note that "The mayor's got GUNS!"). O'Malley's March were good, but I think the novelty of knowing that the front man is the mayor makes the whole thing come off as being more impressive than it would've been had they been any other local Irish band. Nevertheless, they did a pretty good set. The ladies "awww'ed" when they ran through a decent rendition of "Where the Streets Have No Name" and a ripple of laughter made its way through the crowd when they started playing Green Day's "Time of Your Life." By 9:15, their set was done.

And then came the hour and 45-minute wait for Shane. Throughout the first hour, there were lots of "I bet he passed out!" and "I bet he beat up the mayor!" comments circulating, each receiving a bit of a chuckle from those within earshot. By 10:30, the crowd had been drinking and standing for well over 2 1/2 hours and everyone was beginning to grow a bit rowdy. There were some boos here and there as security started rushing around to break up the occasional girl-fight that broke out.

Finally, just before 11:00, Shane came out and all was forgiven. Inasmuch as MacGowan can, he looked pretty good. The last time I'd seen him was on TV a few months back, when he appeared to be roughly the same size as a barn, and seemed to be held up exclusively by his mic stand. But he appeared to have snapped back a bit and was in pretty good form when he hit the stage. As usual, there were a LOT of Pogues songs played. There were a fair number of Popes-era numbers as well. Musical high points for me were definitely a slow, drunken "Dirty Old Town" and a raucous "Irish Rover." One of my friends complained that neither of the "County Hells" made it into the set, but I guess you can never please everyone. Shane's personal highlights included incoherent mumbling, breaking his mic stand, strangling his lead guitarist with his mic chord and giving himself the Sign of the Cross with beer, prior to tossing it on the crowd. Classy as ever.

We got one encore, which ended with what I believe was a Hank Williams song, but it's really impossible to know for certain.

As we headed out, the Shane T-shirts didn't seem to be flying off the hangers. I guess most people aren't too down with having his mug emblazoned upon their midriffs. Outside in the rain, folks seemed generally pleased, despite all of the delays (which may have been due to the fact that a lot of us weren't expecting Shane to make it to the stage at all, given his track record). The tickets were a bit steep at $25 (I imagine they were closer to $35 if purchased through Ticketmaster), especially considering the total length of the actual performances was less than 2 hours, but all in all, it was a good show.

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