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Mezzi.
Gary Mezzi, a.k.a. Buzz Gordo, beamed from behind a 12-string guitar on the stage of Cafe Nine Tuesday night. “This is a song about the demise of a dog track,” he said, to introduce the song “White City,” by Shane MacGowan. “And even if there were another song about the demise of a dog track, this would still be the best.”
Mezzi and a host of other musicians were there — along with a packed house — to pay tribute to MacGowan, songwriter and lead singer of the now-seminal Irish folk-punk band The Pogues. MacGowan died on Nov. 30 of complications from pneumonia at the age of 65.
That MacGowan really died from a lifetime of hard living is quite thoroughly documented. But over nearly a decade and five albums with the Pogues, released between 1984 and 1990, MacGowan managed to create one of the finest collections of songs anywhere. They’re simultaneously steeped in Irish traditional music and soaking in the seediest end of the punk lifestyle, and most important, chock full of astonishing lyrics, profane, hilarious, heartbreaking, and utterly human. As MacGowan himself wrote in the song “A Rainy Night in Soho,” “I’m not singing for the future / I’m not dreaming of the past / I’m not talking of the first times / I never think about the last / Now the song is nearly over / We may never find out what it means / Still there’s a light I hold before me / You’re the measure of my dreams.” It was fitting, then, that the crowd that showed up was there to celebrate, to drink, sing, and sing along.
First up was Chris Kiley, who set the bar by blazing confidently through his first song, “Dirty Old Town” (popularized by the Pogues but actually written by folk singer Ewan MacColl — father of Kirsty MacColl). Kiley sang in a strong voice with just a hint of a quaver that kept the audience rapt. The crowd erupted in cheers. Kiley beamed.
“I wish I got here earlier so I could do a ‘Sally MacLennane,’ ” Kiley said, referring to a song from the Pogues’ second album, 1985’s Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.
“You can do it!” called Cafe Nine owner Paddy Meyer, who was working behind the bar. But, he warned, “it’s got so many lyrics.” Riley knew them all, as did many in the crowd. As Riley stepped down off the stage, some in the crowd were still singing it.
Mezzi was next. He sprinted through “White City,” navigating the songs melodies and its twists and turns with ease. He remarked at the end that he’d been playing it with a band for years; it showed. He then introduced the traditional song “The Auld Triangle” by asking “is anybody here really Irish and been to prison? Because if that’s you, you might really relate to this one. Just as his romp through “White City” was full of joy, his take on the song popularized first by Brendan Behan was drenched in sorrow. Both Kiley and Mezzi succeeded in their choices in reminding the audience not only about MacGowan’s prowess as a songwriter, but about his ability to connect with and work within the Irish musical tradition. With his death, it could be argued that he’d now become fully a part of it.
Fitzpatrick.
The homage continued. Jay Russell, who strutted through the song “If I Should Fall from Grace with God,” praised MacGowan as a man who “lived by his own rules” and “wrote some amazing songs.” The four-piece Noggin’ Boots got up to play “Streams of Whiskey” — which brought a dancer to the front — and the traditional songs “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day” and “Jesse James.” TIm Fitzpatrick dedicated his impassioned performance of “A Pair of Brown Eyes” to his wife, who was in the audience and finally had a chance to hear him sing in public.
A man who only gave his first name — John — got up to sing “Nancy Whiskey”; Meyer introduced him as someone who once “drank with the Pogues, so he’s the real deal.”
Meyer.
At last, Meyer himself came to the stage with a guitar. He wanted to sing a song that he dedicated to a friend of his who had just died, unexpectedly. “We don’t know how it happened,” he said, describing him as “an underground legend” as a musician and promoter in New York, “the glue that held a lot together.” Meyer was still reeling from his death. But he gained strength as he sang, in strong voice, the traditional Irish song “The Wild Rover.” The audience sang along, and clapped and stomped on the break, likely as they learned (as did this reporter) from their families.
Bill Fryer performed an honest, heartfelt rendition of MacGowan’s “The Broad Majestic Shannon.” Bill Scovill did the same with “Rainy Night in Soho.”
The evening’s signups were drawing to a close; it remained only to sing the song that perhaps most needed singing: MacGowan’s “Fairytale of New York,” widely regarded as his best. It’s the Pogues’ most popular song and has become a modern Christmas classic, telling the story of an Irish couple that makes it to New York to pursue dreams of entertainment stardom and ends up dissolute and brokenhearted. The 1988 song, a duet between MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl, is dogged, like a dropped stitch in a rich tapestry, by a couplet that deploys a slur for gay men. Even the Pogues occasionally walked it back, sometimes substituting the word “haggard,” presumably to clean up the song for TV censors (MacGowan is on record as having had no problem censoring the song).
Times change; values change. Do we perhaps wish he’d used different language? Sure. But “Fairytale” has endured because it is, in the end, real; it’s a song about people living in desperation. It’s about people who are deeply flawed, and fighting with their flaws, and sometimes losing, but still fighting. Who isn’t doing that? And most important, it’s also a song bursting with hard-earned, tattered life. There’s a reason that when the song was performed for MacGowan’s funeral, people danced in the church aisles.
The rendition of “Fairytale” that came out toward the end on Tuesday night at Cafe Ninewas thrown together by enthusiastic participants. It was messy and disorganized and full of heart. It breathed new life into the proceedings, and people kept getting up to sing. Someone sang “Fairytale” again, and everyone joined in, singing it together at the tops of their lungs. Maybe loud enough for MacGowan to hear, wherever he may be.