like a drunken fuck on a saturday night

I don’t like people very much. I get twitchy and freaked out in malls — I think I’ve been in a mall only a handful of times in the last ten years — and crowded airports. The bubble around me that constitutes My Personal Space is large, and rarely invaded. In my day-to-day life, I do not touch other human beings very often, and other human beings do not touch me.

And then there are concerts. I’ve searched for explanations, and I don’t have any. What I do have, though, is walking out of the Pogues show last night, my clothes soaked through and dripping with at least three beers and five hours of sweat, and thinking yeah, that’s about as close as I get to religion. Which sounds a little weird, really; I have liked the Pogues very much for many years, but they’re not one of the bands of my soul. But I stood in the pit, some woman plastered to my back and breathing down my neck exactly the way I was wrapped around the guy in front of me, skin to skin and moving as one. I lost the earplugs from my ears — did I get kicked in the head? Probably, but who knows — and I lost my roommate because he was breaking up fights, and the only reason I didn’t lose my glasses was because I periodically dropped my head to the shoulder of the guy in front of me. And we all danced together and we sweated on each other and we sang the same words to the same songs at the same time, and I’m probably not ever going to see any of those people again, but they were my best friends for a few hours at that moment in time. And if that’s not god, then I’ll be fucked if I know what is.

I do not have any pictures of this show to share with you, although I am tempted to draw up some sketches to explain to the world how a concert pit works. Not that anyone who needs such a primer is actually reading this. But okay, if you’re going to be in the first third of the house of a GA punk show, there are things you need to know. You need to know there is going to be a pit of some kind, probably a circle pit or a slam pit. And you need to realize that there’s no telling where that pit is going to break out, but those really drunk dudes chanting ‘USA! USA!’ are a pretty safe bet, and usually it’s 3-4 rows back from the rail. If you’re in front of the pit, you are going to get crushed from behind (depending on the show, you might get very VERY crushed). If you’re behind it, people are going to fall into you, and you’re not going to be able to see very well. And if you happen to be one of the people who is right on the edges of the pit, and you yourself have no desire to be in there, then it is your job to either help keep the pit in the pit — by which I mean stand there and watch the damn thing and push people back in when they come flying at you, and pick them up when they fall down, and generally keep the thing contained — or move out of the way. You should not just stand there, let yourself get pushed around, and then get mad about it. If you cannot defend your turf, then you need to deal with the fact that you’re going to lose it. I’m sorry, that’s just how it works.

And so at this particular show, we got there early enough to be on the rail with a little finagling, but when Titus Andronicus started, the pit broke out maybe three people to the left. And the three people between me and said pit were just not very good at concert pits (one guy looked honestly VERY CONFUSED about what those kids were doing over there), and so eventually my roommate and I were like, okay! I guess this is our job now. Otherwise it was just going to be intolerable for everyone. And so we did pit control for that corner of it, and we picked people up off the floor, and my roommate talked some kids into going in (I think he actually said, “go on in, kids, the water’s fine,” but I can’t be sure) because it was pretty tame and seemed like a good starter pit for them. (They’d never been in before. They were sort of adorable.) And at one point some guy came at me and I went to catch him but he stopped himself and then started begging me not to punch him. He just kept saying it over and over, “please don’t hit me,” and I did a few moments of deep soul-searching in which I tried to determine if I have the aura of someone who punches other people for no reason. Then I decided I don’t really care either way, and I rolled my eyes and pushed at his shoulder, and he went back to dancing.

Meanwhile, Titus Andronicus was playing some songs.

…I actually do not have much else to say about their set! I enjoyed it, and I was halfway familiar with a lot of what they played because my roommate has had their latest album, The Monitor, on heavy rotation lately. A big portion of the crowd up front was there for them, and almost everyone in the pit proper knew every word to every song, and there were a lot of good singalong moments. So the crowd was into it, the band was tight and having a good time, and although I heard some people saying the sound was crap, it was pretty good where I was. I thought they were a really good opener for the Pogues. Their music fits pretty well, they draw in some younger people, they get the crowd warmed up.

Unfortunately, we cooled back down again (well, not literally), because it took the Pogues more than an hour to come out. I was starting to get a little worried, frankly — not that they weren’t going to play, but I think things would have gotten pretty nasty if there’d been much more of a delay. We were very hot and getting gradually more compressed and more restless and people were starting to get edgy and angry. But the band eventually came on, and Shane MacGowan looked drunk but frankly not as wasted as I was expecting. He was in a black trenchcoat and sunglasses and a red shirt, and he smoked the whole time, Illinois smoking ban be damned. I don’t remember the last time I saw someone smoking on stage at an indoor show. Ten years?

They launched into ‘Streams of Whiskey,’ which was fitting and perfect, and I thought Shane sounded great. He got stronger as the night went on, too, and he skipped some bits of ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda,’ but no one cared. I didn’t understand much of what he said, but his singing was fantastic! It seemed like a greatest hits show to me, but the Pogues’ greatest hits are pretty fucking great, so I have absolutely no complaints about the setlist.

Anyway. The rest of the band sounded great, too, and they didn’t look half-bad, either. Philip Chevron was in a kilt and awesome hat and kickass boots; he sang one song, I believe, while Shane was off doing whatever it is Shane does when he staggers offstage and lets someone else take over vocals. Spider sang a few as well (definitely ‘Tuesday Morning,’ but I’m not sure what else), and he danced around a bit, and during ‘Fiesta,’ he hit other people in the head with a beer tray. The accordion player spent a lot of time zooming from one end of the stage to the other. They were clearly having fun up there, which made it a lot of fun down on the floor, and if you can catch them on this tour, you should. They’re saying it’s the last one, and if that’s true, they’re going out on a high note.