The Pogues: Classic or Dud

He briefly got re-Pogued. At least, I saw the band in ... 2007 (?) with him and they were great.

afaik he never left the reformed band

^ he was in nine years of the original run, fourteen years of the reunion

When the Q&A session came, I nervously asked about Shane and his standing among traditional Irish musicians like themselves. They had nothing but respect for him.

I had a similar experience years ago in Manchester, as a college student. There was an Irish folk-rock band my friends and I used to go see a lot, a real hot-shit group full of "national champion" musicians. We got to know them a bit and had some drinks with them. They had a few Pogues songs in their repertoire, and I was a huge Pogues fan, so I asked the band what they thought of them. First they all laughed about what terrible players most of the guys in the Pogues were. But then their lead singer said something like, "But y'know it doesn't really matter if you can't play when you've got Shane MacGowan's songs." They all nodded.

johnny depp's new irish accent is tied with Bono appearance as the worst thing in this.

I remember Jimmy Tarbuck giving big props to Shane, just ahead of his appearance on a chat show they were both on.

just watched this last night

on the one hand in general Julien Temple drives me up the wall bc his docs are like overdecorated xmas trees

but

Crock of Gold is weirdly beautiful in its way. it‘s sad & stark but maintains the intent of celebrating him with his flaws, & works really well as genuinely sincere reminder of his godgiven talent for music & writing

like it felt like the kind of thing that might be put together about other great poets or writers

him saying if he was handed a full syringe today he’d still shoot it & his biographer’s genuinely shocked reaction (and his rationale “a reward for being a good boy”) - i mean, god if you are looking for a real snapshot of addiction, there it is

the footage of nick cave & shane singing summer of siam together made me bawl

this movie, whoa. what a story. reliable narrator crisis. or not? i think the crisis is only in my head.

yeah with Shane who fuckin knows

i love the moment when MacGowan is talking to Bobby Gillespie about the coronet solo in Fairytale of New York & he says “you know it right” and Gillspie looks at him SON blankly to the point where clear that he doesnt but also it’s unclear if Gillespie even knows that Fairytale is a song, a Pogues song, what even is a song or who is this person talking to me rn

*SO not SON oops

when Shane says quit interrogating me and Bobby half rolls his eyes and says "well what do you want to talk about?" is priceless

yes that was gold

I was more shocked by Shane's condition in a BBC documentary made ten (15? 20?) years ago. There are clips of it in Crock of Gold: in one memorable bit Shane gets lost in a pub, wandering out from the bar into the corridor and keeps shouting "Where's the pub? Where's the pub?" That was a real wrencher, but having seen it, he didn't seem too bad in this one.

What's Bobby Gillespie doing in this anyway?

Lol, seriously. What the fuck does he have to do with this story? Save it for the Stuart Adamson (RIP) doc.

We started this last night. It's really good (sad) so far, but we were wondering if Shane had had a stroke. I guess it turns out that in 2015 he suffered a fall in the studio and injured his pelvis. I'm assuming he blew off medical advice to take it easy or whatever. Hence the wheelchair.

Pretty sure Irish folk music is not a genre Primal Scream have latched on to yet. Unless someone knows better.

yeah I don't know, he just kind of shows up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceMxRE6ViIQ

I'd say him and Shane are just "mates" in the same way he and Depp are

Gaun yersel' Boab!

I read it as an attempt to have Shane interviewed not by traditional interviewer / documentarian types, but by different-yet-complementary cultural figures.

Having, say, Bob Dylan interview him would have been a surprising choice, but we as the audience wouldn't be any more enlightened or informed

And (not to be That Guy) but the cornet solo in question is from "A Rainy Night in Soho."

I point this out only because one could make a little doggerel about how (in McGowan's telling) he fired Elvis Co. for wanting an oboe solo on "Soho" and he said "No. Go."

ahh thx curse my bad memory

I was reading a bit & Temple decided since MacGowan is a pretty ornery interview in general, that to get a variety of conversations he’d gather friends/famous fans/ people he’s sat down & talked to before

i suppose in lieu of footage of macgowan telling temple to fuck off repeatedly

which … doesnt sound like the worst idea …

Rainy nights and fairy tales.

Underrated band. So many great songs.

Still need to read Here Comes Everyone

Someone loaned me that book and I read it despite never having heard a Pogues album. Fearnley is a good writer who, for some reason, has a tic of saying "I lifted my accordion into the air and shook it as the song's final chords crashed to a halt" every time he describes their stage show. I was amazed upon finishing the book to learn that Shane MacGowan was neither dead nor institutionalized. There are interesting appearance from Costello and Strummer too, including the story of how Fearnley would up marrying the latter's girlfriend.

Oh, it's Here Comes Everybody, a Joyce reference.

Yeah, sorry I misstyped.

been listening to Rum, Sodomy & the Lash for the first time in forever, how'd I go without "A Pair of Brown Eyes" for so long?

Also: "Navigator"

a pair of brown eyes is incredible - one of my alltime favorites

more beautiful and desolate than a Hank Williams song imo:

So drunk to hell I left the place
Sometimes crawling sometimes walking
A hungry sound came across the breeze
So I gave the walls a talking
And I heard the sounds of long ago
From the old canal
And the birds were whistling in the trees
Where the wind was gently laughing

That James Fearnley memoir was really good.
I really regret not getting to see them when I was hearing about them in the early days

Funnily enough I looked at the new Cat Power covers album in the shop today and the only thing that piqued my interest was that it includes A Pair Of Brown Eyes.

I've since listened to it and it's rather aimless

Growing up in Ireland, I used to see Ray Lynam and Philomena Begley albums in the shops all the time. That Country n Irish genre was on a different planet to my own tastes

I've since listened to it and it's rather aimless

It's a Cat Power album.

Yes. That's why I didn't remotely consider buying it.

This is brilliant and excruciating and funny and sad all at the same time....when @shattenstone met Shane MacGowan at home in Dublin. https://t.co/lHg2HtScZU

— Donald McRae (@donaldgmcrae) April 4, 2022

I feel like I've read several of these Simon Hattenstone I-interviewed-a-star-and-they-didn't-make-it-easy-for-me interviews. I think he did a similar one with Lou Reed. He certainly has a line in moronic questions though - what are your favourite songs, did living in London make you feel more Irish - I mean no wonder his interviewees turn surly...

"Dublin, here I come!", "MacGowan Mansions"...I find that typical Guardian jokey-without-being-actually-funny style unreadable

Desperately trying to work out who he reminds me off in that photo.

https://res.cloudinary.com/uktv/image/upload/v1512565649/oiqhiwkpev8mpzebhv5v.jpg

XP - He's an exact mix of Fred Armisen and Limmy

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/arts/music/shane-macgowan.html

This december 2021 NY Times piece by a freelancer didn't add too much

Oddly enough, I dreamed about Phil Chevron last night. I was as sad in my dream as I am in waking life that he is gone. I feel incredibly fortunate to have seen the band while he was still alive.

Oh, and the Pogues are an absolute fucking classic, at least for 3 1/2 albums.

They’re great, he’s great, that was boring, but he’s really—quite boring now? Not bad, often correct, just not v interesting. His wife seems more interesting really. Interviewer 🙄.

I only saw the Pogues once and it was without McGowan, Spider Stacey was handling vocals. It was still a great show.