Archives for July 2019

Certain Songs #1597: The Pogues – “Fiesta”

July 31, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: If I Should Fall From Grace With God
Year: 1988

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As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, several of The Pogues spent some time in Almeria, Spain filming Alex Cox’s riotous Straight to Hell. As you can imagine, it was a party, the spirit of which was fully caught in one of my very favorite Pogues songs, the utterly hilarious “Fiesta.”

Co-written with banjo player Jem Finer, who based it on a melody he kept hearing at various food stalls that stuck in his head, “Fiesta” is pure and utter nonsense lyrically, and an ridiculous stew of disparate elements musically. That it works at all is a tribute to the gonzo musicianship of The Pogues, who grab hold of the tune from the start and hang on for dear life.

Certain Songs #1596: The Pogues – “Thousands Are Sailing”

July 30, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: If I Should Fall From Grace With God
Year: 1988

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The story goes that Phillip Chevron was a bit apprehensive to bring “Thousands Are Sailing” to the Pogues. In retrospect, that seems a bit strange since, unless you were paying attention, it was virtually indistinguishable from a Shane MacGowan lyric, both in overall subject matter (Irish emigration) and telling details (Manhattan, Brendan Behan).

And of course one of the things about the Pogues was — in the grand folk tradition — they didn’t really seem to care where a song came from: a great song was a great song. So “Thousands Are Sailing” became the first great Pogues song written by someone else in the band other than MacGowan.

Certain Songs #1595: The Pogues – “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”

July 29, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: If I Should Fall From Grace With God
Year: 1988

While it was over two years after Rum, Sodomy & The Lash before The Pogues released another full-length album, it wasn’t like they weren’t busy.

In early 1986, they released the Poguetry in Motion EP, which was also produced by Elvis Costello, who would soon run off with their bass player, Cait O’Riordian, which featured “Body of an American,” which some of you will recognize as “that song in The Wire they keep playing at the wakes for cops.”

Certain Songs #1594: The Pogues – “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda”

July 27, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
Year: 1985

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One of the more interesting things about Rum, Sodomy & The Lash is how it’s structured: the first side is nearly all Shane MacGowan originals (or co-writes), and the second side is nearly all covers.

Even for an Irish Folk-Punk band like the Pogues, that was kind of a risky move, but the riskiest of all was closing the album with an eight-minute dirge about the horrors of war. “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda,” was written in 1971 by Eric Bogle, an Australian singer-songwriter who was born in Scotland. As so often happens.

Certain Songs #1593: The Pogues – “Dirty Old Town”

July 26, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rum, Sodomy & The Lash
Year: 1985

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Did you know that “Dirty Old Town” celebrates its 70th birthday this year? That’s right, it was written back in 1949 by Ewan MacColl — father of Kirsty MacColl, who of course sang on “Fairytale of New York” — and has been covered countless times, by luminaries ranging from the Dubliners to the Mountain Goats to U2 to Rod Stewart, who used to to close his first solo album.

But as far as I’m concerned, the definitive version was recorded by the Pogues; so definitive that a casual listener might not know that they didn’t write it.

Certain Songs #1592: The Pogues – “A Pair of Brown Eyes”

July 25, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rum, Sodomy and The Lash
Year: 1985

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One of the great ironies of the Pogues was that while they’ll forever be described as an “Irish folk-punk” band, most of their best songs pushed back against at least part of that description.

And thus it was that their breakthrough, 1985’s Elvis Costello-produced Rum, Sodomy & The Lash revolved around three down-and-out dirges, two of which were covers, and the one original sharing some of the themes as the most devastating of the covers.

Certain Songs #1591: The Pogues – “Streams of Whiskey”

July 23, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Red Roses For Me
Year: 1984

It’s probably not surprising that the first time anybody publicly took notice of Shane MacGowan, it was because he was bleeding at a Clash gig.

And, of course, the guess here is that he’d been drinking, as Shane MacGowan is one of rock ‘n’ roll’s poet laureates of alcohol — the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems — leading his crack band through five stellar albums that started out mixing traditional Irish music with punk rock, but ended up so much more than that.

Certain Songs #1590: P.M. Dawn – “The 9:45 Wake-Up Dream”

July 22, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Jesus Wept
Year: 1995

One of the things that kept coming up as I did the research for these P.M. Dawn posts was just how slagged they were at the time for being out of step with what was going on with early 1990’s hip-hop.

And yeah, by the time of their third album, 1995’s Jesus Wept — named, of course, after the shortest verse in The Bible — if P.M. Dawn had very little in common with their hip-hop contemporaries, they also had little in common with anyone else, as their best songs are a psychedelic stew of hip-hop, soul, rock and gospel, and sound amazing all these years later.

Certain Songs #1589: P.M. Dawn – “Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine”

July 21, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience
Year: 1991

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I’ll admit that I slept on P.M. Dawn during the overstuffed musical year of 1991, partly because I was kinda overwhelmed with everything that was going on in my life, but also because I wasn’t all that wild about their one big hit, “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss,” probably because it relied heavily on a sample of another song I never really liked, Spandau Ballet’s “True.”

I’ve softened on both songs (though you won’t be seeing “True” in this blog), but when I finally went back to explore P.M. Dawn’s catalog in the wake of Jesus Wept, the song that struck me from their debut Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience was “Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine.”

Certain Songs #1588: The Plimsouls – “Oldest Story in the World”

July 20, 2019 by Jim Connelly

Album: Everywhere At Once
Year: 1983

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Of course when the Plimsouls put out their major-label debut — 1983’s Everywhere at Once, on the evil Geffen — I was kind of disappointed at the time because none of the other songs on the album were as great as “A Million Miles Away.”

Which is pretty much the stupidest fucking reason to be disappointed in an album, I know — pretty much every other album released in 1983 didn’t have a song that great, either — and so over time I came to love Everywhere at Once (and their self-titled indie debut, as well), because of Peter Case’s clear voice and even clearer melodies.