Music / Gigs
Review – The Pogues, Lloyds Amphitheatre
Banging yourself hard on the head numerous times with a baking tray cannot be healthy for anyone.
But if you’re Shane MacGowan, you haven’t got many more brain cells to lose.
“You’ve been fucking great you have,” MacGowan told the Lloyds Amphitheatre crowd at the end of the night after a raucous rendition of Fiesta, in one of his few intelligible sentences of the evening.
At some points in this gig, his band actually have to translate what he has just said.
To give the man credit, he has still got enough charisma to entertain an albeit partisan crowd, and A Rainy Night in Soho was performed with surprising tenderness during the encore.
With a drink never far from his side, MacGowan’s slurring was more than compensated for by a band you would love to see in an Irish music session down your local pub.
As all their hits not to do with Christmas drifted across the harbourside air – including Dirty Old Town, The Irish Rover and Free Born Man of the USA – arms were put around shoulders, jigs were danced and a few over-enthusiastic fans were escorted out by security.
Bristol Summer Series promoter Conal Dodds has said that this week’s Paolo Nutini and Pogues concerts are just the beginning of what will hopefully be an annual series of outdoor summer concerts in the city.
He has already asked the council to save the same dates at the Lloyds Amphitheatre for 2015, with plans for five nights of music within five years from now, attracting international artists.
It’s a lofty ambition, but the success of these two initial concerts show that the appetite in Bristol is most definitely here for events like this. And if it rains, as it will, there is also concrete rather than a muddy field underfoot.
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