I wasn't sure what to expect at the Shane MacGowan and the Popes gig on Friday night. I had heard he had sobered up and straightened out his life over the last while and that this was being extended to his live performances. I had last seen him in 1991 and at that time he was a disaster - stumbling on stage with a bottle of whiskey, incapable of delivering any song unaided. Neither I nor anyone else there that night would have expected that he would be still alive and performing 11 years later. Since the Pogues split, I haven't really kept up with his career but it seems to me that in that time Shane has ascended to a position that few others Irish musicians have ever attained in their lifetime - to the Irish of the generation that came of age in the Eighties he is a true Icon - a personification of a particular Irish spirit, a poetic romanticism born of the building sites, and drinking dens, loneliness, bedsits, emigration and persecution; a voice connecting directly with the spirit of Behan and numerous unknown working class Irish troubadours and barroom poets. And the drink, drugs, bad teeth and slurred speech are as much part of the MacGowan package as the music....tragic songs speaking to an audience that revels in a celebration of life and identity amidst the tragic; sang by a man prepared to chase down his own tragedy.

So the gig itself. Shane was preceded by two support acts - a lively folk duo (box and guitar) worked the crowd well before being followed by a splendid young rock four piece from Sligo (more about them in another post later). After that, we had a wait of what seemed like an hour during which we exchanged stories of shambolic concert appearances by Shane over the years. It was noted that the Quays management had refused to return the ticket stubs on entry, which we surmised was motivated by the very real risk of a no-show. ....