The Pogues: Classic or Dud

I sort I feel like for a band that good, they haven't passed on to future generations. Kind of like what happened to REM.

I feel the Pogues were an huge and essential group when i was a teen but their legend has waned a lot - one of those bands where it is tricky explaining to younger friends how vital they used to seem - Its not necessarily their “fault” but a lot of the commentary/mythologising around macgowan’s “lifestyle choices” has probably aged pretty poorly? not sure endorsement from johnny depp helps here!

and however inaccurate, perhaps a sense of “roots music” being anathema for a certain type of music fan - maybe too it has not been the moment for the whiskey-soaked romanticism songwriting style (again i am aware this does all of them a disservice) - and their entire diverse catalogue being overshadowed by one song cant help

anyway keen to see this film! and interested to find out if there is room for the pogues in the contemporary moment.

I feel like they're seen as a novelty/kitsch thing now — when I first heard about them (mid to late '80s, when If I Should Fall... was brand new but Red Roses For Me was already something you had to order special from the record store) they were sold to me as "Irish music, but punk, and the shows are amazing," but "Fairytale" and the use of "The Body of an American" in The Wire and the existence of shit like the Dropkick Murphys have combined to reduce them to something you listen to on St. Patrick's Day and that's it.

I'm sure their reach is generationally limited, but among Gen X music nerds at least I don't feel like their place is particularly diminished. I think Shane's rep as a first-rate songwriter and singer is pretty solid.

Hmm. There might be something to a generational aversion to "roots" music, or at least stuff that veers from the standard country/folk derived "Americana" formula. Like, I've noted before how Los Lobos, once revered, at some point sort of just fell off the radar, for no particular good reason, or that all the British folk rock stuff remains pretty cult (at least here), maybe because of all the exotic/stodgy Celtic or whatever elements to it. Bands like the Pogues, or to use the latter example Fairport Convention, stuff like that, I think there's a slight disconnect between what one might read about the groups (it's punk! it's radical! it's a crazy fusion of the modern and ancient!) and what you actually hear, which in the end is pretty traditional stuff.

lol I put on Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, and right on schedule my daughter walked into the room, wrinkled her nose in semi-derision, and asked "what are you listening to, bagpipes?!"

That London Irish thing is not really 'authentic enough to interest hipster folk tastes, so it really comes down to McGowan as a songwriter.

I don't know what London Irish means. Is that just what it sounds like? Anyway in the US at least, Irish-Irish vs London Irish probably isn't the hurdle. Shane is a great songwriter, but sounding Irish at all (penny whistle, etc.) is probably what keeps people at bay, hipsters or no. Honestly, I'm not a fan of thinking of them as Shane N' Friends, anyway, because great songwriter or no I love the playing of the band as a whole, and some of their best stuff is not Shane stuff. That is, I listen to "Peace & Love" as much as any of their albums, and Shane has a writing credit on less than half of the tracks.

I think there's a bit of difficulty disentangling the Pogues from all the horseshit Irish pride mook shit like Dropkick Murphys

they are like Led Zeppelin, amazing band, terrible influence

The perspective in the US will be different I think the concept of the Plastic Paddy might just be too painful to confront/ admit to.

ha I had to Google that phrase, that's a good one

Other kid walked into the room and asked why I was listening to the "Lord of the Rings" soundtrack.

I think there's a bit of difficulty disentangling the Pogues from all the horseshit Irish pride mook shit like Dropkick Murphys

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, April 16, 2021

oh man... i guess i can kinda piece this out intellectually but it just makes no kind of sense.

great acts fade in stature over years all the time (we keep getting older, hot bands stay the same age etc etc) but being forgotten seems far less cruel a fate than being misremembered like this.

anyhoo, thanks for reminding me about the doc. I was cautiously optimistic and then wandered off waiting for it to drop

there's no pain, there's no more sorrow,
they're all gone, gone in the years babe

After a Grateful Dead concert at night I was in this dudes car with my gf. He was going way too fast around curves and had “fiesta” on the stereo

xpost I'm not saying that's what I think wrt the Pogues, I like them a lot, but I just know a lot of people that kind of are like peace out on any Irish type stuff because of...I dunno...Boston I guess

and truly it has very little to do w the Pogues or even actual Ireland

ugh boston

feel like somehow this is down to matt damon and tom brady. has anything worthwhile come out of boston since the cars?

Pixies? Mission of Burma? Marky Mark?

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

lifetime pass for Mission of Burma

Here's hoping the doc does revive the band's rep and influence, then, beyond Fairtyale.

Hey, don't talk shit about Boston! "Worthwhile" is in the eye of the beholder but there's been lots of great stuff from here since The Cars, jeez.

As for The Pogues, love 'em all through Shane's tenure - and the odds and sods box set is the gift that keeps on giving. It's interesting to observe the ups and downs of different music's reputation - old things are constantly rediscovered and made the new hotness, then time moves on again and down it goes in terms of appeal. I'm specifically thinking of the post-punk era and how in the early 00s those bands were name-checked constantly, how it faded in the 10s but it seems to be coming back. At least from my purview.

blame insufferable patritos fans lol

documentary is good btw. i didn't even hate johnny depp.

one thing I did not know: that “streets of sorrow/birmingham six” was treated by the authorities as a “fuck tha police”-level threat to order

oh cool I see this is on Hulu, that's my Saturday night

no interviews of any pogue bandmates was weird and disappointing
I wasn’t crazy about it but some good vintage clips
Poor man is basically nosferatu now, what is his actual ailment? Liver disease? aftermath of stroke?

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

that “streets of sorrow/birmingham six” was treated by the authorities as a “fuck tha police”-level threat to order

Yeah, that came out as the Birmingham Six case was finally working toward eventual exoneration. They were all released in '91. It was a huge political cause.

xpost I'm not saying that's what I think wrt the Pogues, I like them a lot, but I just know a lot of people that kind of are like peace out on any Irish type stuff because of...I dunno...Boston I guess

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, April 16, 2021 10:02 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

and truly it has very little to do w the Pogues or even actual Ireland

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, April 16, 2021 10:05 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

lets not forget the Bennigans, which my partner immediately referenced the first time they heard me put on a Pogues record

"the Bennigans", jfc, idk where that came from

Um, us neither...

ha fair i meant Bennigans the (now defunct i think?) restaurant chain often thrown as a reference for annoying US fake-irishness

https://bennigans.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/BENN_2021SPD_Website_Banner.jpg

Ah.

Thx

I think there's a bit of difficulty disentangling the Pogues from all the horseshit Irish pride mook shit like Dropkick Murphys
Except they don't sound anything alike. I was in Dublin a few years ago and went on a musical pub crawl like all the tourists do. Our hosts —who could really play — absolutely trashed the Dropkick Murphys repeatedly (and justifiably). 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.

Yes, I know what the Pogues and Dropkick Murphys don't sound alike

guy was probably relieved to have a tourist asking him about literally any band other than the dropkick murphys

@UMS just to clarify, no one thinks you are endorsing this POV! you're just reporting the news :)

watched this, really took me out a bit. obviously it's julien temple so it's got it's quirks but i'd rather his eccentricities than the standard straight to streaming formula music docs of which there are so many.

to the irish discussion, was a great example of what tom d. was talking about wrt plastic paddies in the u.s., the film felt so connected with ireland on so many levels, how deeply shane believed in his irishness, the pain and the hurt and the bloodshed and the poetry and the literature and his ancestors and the countryside itself, all of it. here it's just a dodgy "celtic" tattoo around the bicep of a bouncer and dyed-green beer and green mardi gras beads on st. paddy's day.

it really broke my heart to see him now. just completely slack, no expression, barely upright, methodically downing glass after glass of white wine. he would say things that made sense, sometimes were even funny or insightful, but it's almost like he's trapped in his own body -- some kind of lucid coma.

the parts where the sinn fein leader is talking to him are so uncomfortable. he wants something from shane that just isn't there anymore.

you could see it in the eyes of some of the people he talked to - the woman who was his biographer (i think?) and even ilx's beloved boaby gillespie. saw little moments where he would roll his eyes - "okay what should we talk about then?" after shane tells him to quit interrogating him about moving to london, little sad, knowing flashes in his eyes.

his family history and childhood was gripping. so much hurt and pain and alcohol, just gallons and gallons and gallons. getting fed booze at 6 years old by his aunt, how was he supposed to turn out.

i liked his sister the best, i think she understands him. to have such a gift and such a sensitivity to understanding people - to be able to really *write* that into a song. what a gift. and then to see someone drown that gift, year and year, blot it all out, extinguish whatever talent god had given him. really heartbreaking.

i think it hits a bit closer, because i've always been a social drinker, a fun drunk, i like talking to people. but in the last year sometimes i get the impulse to just deaden everything.

at the end when he says he wishes he could write songs again and play pool. it's so clear that's never going to happen again.

yeah watched this today and all the contemporary bits with him were extremely difficult to watch.
the shots where he would raise a glass to take a drink, it took me a few times to realize that they werent in extreme slow motion, that was just how he moved. crushing to see. would have scared me off drink altogether if i'd seen something like that in my teens.

also fuck johnny depp, what a little sycophant ghoul wannabe he is, found his new hunter s. thompson to cheer on into the grave

yeah i wont soon forget the part he rang that bell and was like "i defy any bastard to shane isnt sharper than the rest of them put together!" or whatever, meanwhile shane is across the table struggling to breathe

the worst

theatrically laughing hysterically at every little thing shane managed to mumble out

i found the parts where he was being interviewed by his own wife...um....interesting?

yeah, no idea whats going on there.

its gonna be on my mind for a while, i can say that for sure. by the end of it all i could think of was the body of work that will never exist, songs he'll never write, poems never published, the memoir we'll never read. in the tribute at the end, it was brutal to watch him barely able to croak out a few lines of "Summer in Siam" next to Nick Cave & knowing theyre the same age.

Still need to see this, but I've always wondered how much of Shane's current state is due strictly to drink and not that in combination with all of the other substances he's ingested over the years.

I haven’t seen it yet either, but tbh the mere fact of a non-dead Shane in 2021 is a bit of an astonishment. I thought he was a goner when he got de-Pogued in the early ‘90s.

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