That Time a Pogues Concert Broke Out at a Fight
The song, Fairytale of New York is not just one of my favorite Pogues song, its one of my favorite songs of all time.
Shane MacGowan, lead singer of the Pogues, died the other day. With that, tonight I poured a nice glass of 12-Year-Old Glenlivet, and I'm going to tell you about a concert my friends and I attended in the late eighties.
Pier 17 in New York, it was Mojo Nixon/Violent Femmes/Pogues, and four of us went. The Pier is an outdoor venue, with hundreds of rows of folding chairs lined up in front of the stage. We were seated somewhere in the middle rows, mine an end seat with no one to my right.
God knows how drunk the crowd was, but band members drank from bottles of whiskey stashed all along the stage. In a very short time, things were going to get ugly.
It started at the first row, out of our sight, but soon a wave of bodies rolled toward us. Folding chairs tossed aside, heads flying from side to side, and just like that, a mosh pit formed. Every few seconds another row of bodies joined that wave. We could see the crowd be absorbed into the frenzy. As it grew larger and closer, I said to my friends, "We are not moving."
Right behind us were two dads with two young sons, the sons looked terrified. I planted my feet, and waited for the inevitable to arrive.
It didn't take long. Anyone who grabbed, shoved, or slammed us were unceremoniously returned to the pit. As we stood our ground I thought, ‘how long is this damn song’, but as it played on, so did we. Not one maniac got passed us.
The wall stood its ground.
Then came my wild west, saloon fight, once-in-a-lifetime, movie moment.
To my right, out of the hysteria, a man leapt into the air. As he sailed toward me, I caught him mid-flight, his feet never touched the ground, and launched him back into the crowd.
Then the weirdest thing happened. When the song ended, the crowd stopped on a dime, retrieved all the tossed chairs, returned them to their place, and waited for the next one to begin.
When this storm was over, one of the dads thanked us, and the concert continued.
Just a note, I never had much luck with concerts. In the past, I lost my ticket stub for a Bob Seeger concert in Madison Square Garden, so had no seat and literally hung from a rail to watch the show. I slept on the sidewalk overnight, soaked (my clothes) in Southern Comfort, for what turned out to be a painfully short forty-five minute show by the Rolling Stones in Philadelphia. Arrested (twice in one night) at an Ian Hunter concert in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
With that said, by far, this Pogues concert was the best ever.
Rest in Peace, Shane MacGowen – have a drink on me.
