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Sleeve Notes
Like all genius ideas, combining Irish traditional song with the energy and liberation of punk only made sense as soon as someone did it. That The Pogues added songs of heart-stopping brilliance to the scheme didn't hurt either. "People wanted fast dance music with good tunes, something they could whoop and scream and cry to," mused main songwriter, voice and lodestar Shane MacGowan to author Ann Scanlon. "And what fits the bill better than Irish music?"
This CD set — sequenced non-chronologically, naturally — offers a magnificent opportunity to converse with this vision. Selected from across The Pogues' star-crossed existence, here are songs of wild abandon, tender love, pain, acceptance, lamentation, memory and transcendence, with antique melodies revitalised and newly coined tunes blurring the boundaries between ancient and modern. Inclusive and eloquent, it remains the enemy of chauvinism and puritanism.
The stars were in alignment when the group — a conglomeration of London-Irish and escapees from the English regions, with every element a crucial one — were born from the early 80s King's Cross squat scene. With forerunner bands including The Nipple Erectors, The Millwall Chainsaws and The New Republicans, by October 1982 the line-up featured literary scholar and punk MacGowan providing voice, guitar and songs, Jem Finer on banjo, accordionist James Fearnley and Spider Stacy on whistle and tin tray. Within six months Andrew Ranken came on board to play strident drums. They always wore suits.
Initially glorying in the name Pogue Mahone — 'Kiss My Arse' in Gaelic, of course — they screamed into life playing at such lost London venues as the Sir George Robey in Finsbury Park and The Pindar of Wakefield in King's Cross. In March 1984 this ostensibly uncommercial outfit had self-released their debut 45 Dark Streets Of London before signing to feisty independent Stiff Records. By October's raw debut LP *Red Roses For Me, described by MacGowan as the purest expression of Poguedom ever committed to vinyl, people were really starting to talk. As the summer of 1985's remarkable, Elvis Costello-produced second album *Rum, Sodomy & The Lash would attest, this was folk music not as museum exhibit, but as something fiercely alive. The next year's sublime Poguetry In Motion EP saw the hard-gigging group now augmented by gentleman guitarist Philip Chevron and multi-instrumentalist Terry Woods, ex-of Sweeney's Men.
The Pogues' imperial phase followed. Included here is The Irish Rover, March 1987's riotous collaboration with their spiritual forebears The Dubliners, and that year's now-perennial Christmas single Fairytale of New York. Now signed to a major company, but under their own label, and with Darryl Hunt now on bass, January 1988's *lf I Should Fall From Grace With God would be their commercial apex. As Phil Chevron has noted, however, membership of The Pogues could mean the best of times and the worst of times, simultaneously. Though the material on 1989's *Peace and Love and 1990's Joe Strummer-produced *Hell's Ditch was outstanding, the barbed title of the former record acknowledged that the pressures of a successful working band were beginning to tell. Though letting go of MacGowan at the end of a tour of Japan in 1991, the group would record a further two, heroic LPs before finally disbanding.
As if that could really be the end. Having reunited for live shows in 2001, they recently played their thirtieth anniversary tour. While fans discreetly pray for new recordings, The Pogues' influence can arguably be heard in every folk-rocking group that plays amplified acoustic instruments. As for the legacy, The Pogues should be compared with the likes of The Clash and Johnny Cash — as originals that meant something to millions, and as makers of the finest and most enduring music you can whoop and scream and cry to.
IH
Thanks to Carol Clerkâs Pogue Mahone: Kiss My Arse: The Story of The Pogues (Omnibus, 2006)