Here are a few random details from the concert I saw Monday evening at the 9:30 Club in downtown (way downtown) Washington:

Shane MacGowan addresses the audience: “Ish Gorge Bluhh enn da houth? Ah’d lahkh tah dedicught thish sung to him. Iht’s culled, ‘Ah Pear uh Brown Izahs.’”

The band then breaks into the anti-war song “A Pair of Brown Eyes.” The band, as it does throughout the night, rocks.

***

By this point MacGowan is such a wreck that just seeing him on stage attempting to put on a show is rather poignant. When the band performed “Turkish Song of the Damned” the lyric “The shadow hanging over me is no trick of the light” took on an unintentionally autobiographical meaning. Or would have if anybody could have understood his singing.

And yet MacGowan puts all he has into it and the show is terrific. The Pogues perform two encores, throwing in a version of the old pub standard “The Irish Rover.”

***

Most commonly heard audience reaction to Shane’s on-stage banter: “What? What did he say?”

***

I see a friendly face in the audience, and walk over and tap her on the shoulder. She turns around, sees me and smiles.

“Hey what are you doing here?” she asks, then gives me a big hug.

I’m here, same as you, to see the concert, I say. Why didn’t you tell me that this was where you were headed? We could have shared a cab from the Dubliner.

She looks puzzled for a second.

“So,” she asks, “How are the wife and kids?”

Now it’s my turn to be confused. Umm, I don’t have any, I say.

“Waitaminute, aren’t you George Herbert?” she asks.

No, that not my name, I say. Weren’t you and I chatting it up at the Dubliner over by Union Station earlier this afternoon?

“Uh, no. I came over here from Fado’s,” she says. “My God, you look exactly like George. I mean exactly.”

So while we were happy to see each other again, we turned out to be complete strangers.

***

During “Sally MacLennane” some dude I’ve never seen before puts his hand on my shoulder and we sing along to the tune with merry abandon. A full 20 minutes later, my friend Ed and I are helping his girlfriend keep him upright as he stumbles out of the club and into a cab.

***

From my friend, Ed, who is Polish:

“So that is your cultural heritage.”