Word: macgowan
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Orrell played with the band on the 2001 release Sing Loud, Sing Proud, the album that established their dominance over the punk scene. It included standout tracks such as the single “Good Rats,” featuring Shane MacGowan of the legendary Irish rock band The Pogues, and “For Boston,” a rendition of a Boston College fight song...
There are few other figures in pop music today who could make the transition from poetic lyrics to lyric poetry with such confidence--Dylan, MacGowan and Stipe come to mind--or such success. Reed knows the stakes and the difficulties, making his achievement more impressive: The book is an obliging read...
...Pogues are not a postmodern incarnation of the Clancy Brothers, however. Only half of them are Irish (MacGowan, 31, was born in Ireland but moved to ! London when he was six), and it quickly became apparent back in the formative days that working up a repertoire of Irish music exclusively, even punked and pulverized, was a dead end. "It was patronizing," says Stacy simply. So instead of the raw Irish musical tradition itself, the band took the spirit of the tradition, which Stacy compares convincingly with rhythm and blues and reggae...
...centered in London, where they are an enduring force in a music scene that changes with tidal regularity, the band members still live close by one another, most of them in the same working-class neighborhoods where they grew up. "We are not the sort of people," says MacGowan, "who like to be snotty bastards, out in space." They just finished playing a few dates in the States, to get Peace and Love off to a strong start, and will return next month for a lengthier series of concerts, both opening for Bob Dylan and performing on their...
...Pogues are doing well enough, and remain enterprising enough, to explore some unlikely avenues of musical inspiration. "There are eight really strong personalities in the band," MacGowan comments. "Everybody writes." Jem Finer, who plays banjo, sax and hurdy-gurdy and who pulled the Pogues together in the early days, has written, with the aid of a "very old Italian phrase book," an aria. "We've rehearsed it," he reveals, "but it wasn't recorded for the album. Various factions thought it was pushing things a bit far. But opera is one of our secret desires." Unlike British soldiers...