I would really love to have seen this reunion show. I’m listening to Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash as i type this.
I’m also a member of a UK message board, and there is currently a thread discussing the shows. Just about everyone who went says it was fantastic.
Ya know, I think it is time for me to learn more about the Pogues. I’ve just put the remastered version of Rum, Sodomy & The Lash on my Amazon wish list (which I use more as a shopping list than a true wish list; I’ll probably order it in a week or two). 
Is their “best of” compilation worth getting?
Before going to Amazon I looked for that album on iTunes, but the only thing there is their 1991 live album. Looking at the track listing reminded me that I do, in fact, know (and like) another Pogues song: I’d completely forgotten about Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah! I was a DJ at my college station for all four of my undergrad years (and eventually became Station Manager): we had a vinyl copy of Peace & Love (I recognized the album cover when I saw it just now on Amazon), but the only two songs that made it to our playlist were Lorelei and Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah.
Quick Black 47 story: I’d never heard of them until May 1995, when I was in NYC hanging out with my uncle and we happened to go to Paddy Reilly’s on a night Black 47 was playing there. The next day we went to Tower Records and I bought Fire of Freedom. That was such an amazing way to discover them!
There are a few different “Best of” compilations, which makes Pogues-shopping a bit confusing. The one I own is Essential Pogues, which has a lot of their Island Records material, and it includes “Lorelei,” “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah,” and “Fairytale of New York.” It doesn’t have any songs from Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, so if you get Essential Pogues too, you won’t have any repeated material–which is nice.
I would alos recommend If I Should Fall From Grace With God, the album they released after Cait O’Riordan left the band. But it the last album of theirs I would buy, chronologically speaking. Shane MacGowan agrees with me.
And check out If I Should Fall From Grace- The Shane MacGowan Story on DVD. We just got it from NetFlix and… damn. How the mighty have fallen.
As Big Bad Voodoo Lou says, there are a bunch of Pogues collections, some of which are better than others.
Personally, i think every good Pogues fan must have the first three albums:
Red Roses for Me
Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash
If I Should Fall from Grace with God
Hell’s Ditch and Peace and Love both have some excellent tracks but are, IMO, not as consistently good as those first three albums. I never really got into the (post-McGowan) Waiting for Herb, but i do like Pogue Mahone quite a lot.
If you really like Shane, you can check his post-Pogues cuts as Shane MacGowan and the Popes, but we never thought it was up to his previous stuff. I guess the band does make a difference, Shane! 
I didn’t make it to the shows, but a colleague of mine did. It was his third attempt to actually see The Pogues live, apparently. I’m a bit hazy on the details, but apparently the first show ended when the band walked on stage and Shane fell off of it, and the second when a fight broke out before the show had started.
In honour of the occasion, he started drinking at two in the afternoon, and turned up for work the next morning looking pissed and in bad need of ironing. His face was an interesting combination of red and puce, and his voice had dropped three octaves from the shouting, and he sounded like he’d gargling meths and smoking 200 rollups a day since birth.
He described the show as “Absolutely ****ing brilliant”, and then fell asleep at his desk.
So I think we can assume it was quite good.
Hmm, IMHO there is not one so-so track on Hell’s Ditch.
I remember wearing out my little cassette from repeatedly playing that album.
Agree about Pogue Mahone.
Anyways, I do know someone who went to London for the first time, with the Brixton show as part of their wonderful Christmas trip. She enjoyed the show.
I envy you, Misnomer, because you are about to listen to some great music for the first time.
I ususally skip over “Summer in Siam.”
And that’s about it. Everything else they did between Red Roses for Me and Hell’s Ditch is fucking brilliant. Waiting for Herb is really, really good, but it’s just not The Pogues. Pogue Mahone should be avoided.
If I Should Fall from Grace with God is possibly the best album ever made by anyone, anywhere.
Listen to the man; he knows what he’s talking about.
Rum, Sodomy and the Lash was my intro to the band and I’d guess it’s their most well-known album. It’s the most distinctive “this is what the Pogues were about” (Irish folk songs performed by a punk band) record. Peace and Love was the one that got the most pop exposure, as far as I could tell.
But If I Should Fall From Grace with God is their masterpiece. Just the transition from “Turkish Song of the Damned” to “Bottle of Smoke” to “Fairytale of New York” makes you think, “Holy shit, these guys are unstoppable!”
I’m amazed at how few people ever have anything to say abvout Red Roses for Me. Personally, i think it’s more “Irish folk as punk” than Rum, Sodomy and the Lash. “Waxie’s Dargle” is a quintessential example of the type, and “Poor Paddy” and “Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go” also have great punk atmosphere.
I agree with you about If I Should Fall from Grace with God. That run of songs you mentioned is indeed great, and i also have a real soft spot for “Thousands are Sailing,” and for their rendition of the old sailor’s song “Bound for South Australia.”
I had never heard South Australia until we got the import CD of IISFFGWG a year or so ago, after sacrificng an ancient cassette copy in a wrecked truck (yeah, we couldn’t even make the tape deck eject!). The US release didn’t have it. An instrumental medley was also cut.