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This is the archive of the combined Barking Spider and Andy Broad Portsmouth Blues Site mailing lists.
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The Pogues - the best band of the 1980s. Fact.
Shane MacGowan -the best writer of REAL contemporary Irish rock & roll tunes
has never been away. Fact.
The Popes- the best racous and rough arsed Irish band around. Fact.
Shane MacGowan and The Popes are appearing live at South Parade Pier,
Southsea on Saturday 19th March (St Paddy's weekend). Fact.
With their toxic mix of punk, rock and traditional Irish music (Drunk Rock,
if you like), MacGowan and his often-slightly-too-merry men 'lit a fire under
the arse' of popular music (as one critic put it) in 1984, when The Pogues
released their first album, the raucous "Red Roses For Me". They started life as
Pogue Mahone (Irish for 'kiss my arse') but then toned it down to the Pogues.
Asked recently why they struck 'such a big, rambunctious chord in early
eighties Britain', MacGowan replied: 'Because we weren't a faggot and a guy with a
synthesiser' (later insisting, 'I've got nothing against faggots')
That might not be PC, but you know what he means. The Pogues' first album
came out in the year of the New Romantics, Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bland
Aid; their masterpiece, "If I Should Fall From Grace With God", was released in
1988, when Stock, Aitken and Waterman dominated the charts and soap stars
turned pop stars - Kylie, Jason, those twins from "Neighbours" most of us have
since forgotten - were first foisted on the record-buying public. In a decade
dominated by poncy pop acts and stadium-rock wankers ('straights playing "world
music"', as MacGowan called them), The Pogues carried a flame for the rip-it-up
spirit of rock'n'roll.
MacGowan's first taste of fame came when he was a pre-Pogues punk, and he and
his then girlfriend started to bite lumps out of each other in the high
excitement of an early Clash show in London. MacGowan ended up in the pages of the
"NME", blood streaming from his ear, under the headline: 'CANNIBALISM AT CLASH
GIG.'
MacGowan was asked to leave the Pogues in 1991 after his boozing became too
much to handle,and later after a very long lost weekend came back in 1994 with
a new band, The Popes, formed to capture the excitement of the early Pogues.
Spunky The Spaniel and The Barking Spider, in the interest of research,
travelled to Glasgow Barrowlands earlier this month to see Shane & The Popes in
action.....
The initial excitement at seeing Shane and the Popes reunited quickly gives
way to trepidation: Shane cut a ghostly figure on the Glasgow stage, and after
spending the past 15 years living in various hotels, drinking himself to near
death and being shopped to the evil Police by Sinead O'Connor for taking
heroin, one wonders whether he'll still be able to cut it - 'Will he remember all
the words?' 'Will he be in tune?'
We saw him on ITV1's "Frank Skinner Show" only a few weeks earlier (where
Skinner got him to try on some pearly white false teeth), and then he could
barely speak, never mind belt out a tune.
In fact, something peculiar happens when the band starts up: MacGowan comes
to life (well, he sways from side to side, kind of in rhythm with the music).
And he sings the old classics as he always sung them - like a pub drunk who
enjoys a good sing-song after having ten too many. They don't play any new
material (if any exists). Instead Shane runs through his crowd-pleasing greatest
moments: 'Dirty Old Town', 'Irish Rover', 'Misty Morning, Albert Bridge', 'The
Broad Majestic Shannon' and, of course, 'A Fairytale of New York', recently
voted the Best Ever Christmas Song in a poll carried out by music channel VH1,
with special guest Cait O'Riordan (from the original Pogues line up) taking the
place of the late Kirsty MacColl.
MacGowan may not be as pretty as your average pop star, but he sings love
songs better than most of them. Emotion flickers across his bloated face when he
sings 'A Rainy Night in Soho' - 'We watched our friends grow up together / And
we saw them as they fell / Some of them fell into heaven / Some of them fell
into hell'. Nearly 20 years after it was first released, that song can still
make fully-grown men - and Glaswegians at that - weep into their beer.
Watching thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings sway to the music of the past,
it struck me that The Shane & The Popes gig is a bit like the flipside of the
'Here and Now Tour', where those 'faggots and a guy with a synthesiser' who
clogged up the pop charts in the 1980s have been playing across the UK. This
year, Nik Kershaw, Living in a Box, Limahl, Kim Wilde, Bucks Fizz and others have
played at various venues, tapping into the nostalgia for all things
80s-related. The Popes are far and away better than that lot, but their gigs are also
a long, drunken trip down memory lane, where we try to escape the present by
re-rocking to classic tunes of the past.
Perhaps that isn't surprising, though, when you consider how bloody dull the
British music scene has become. Only today that bloody dullness comes as much
from the alternative indie side of things as it does from pop puppets and the
synthesiser brigade. British pop is awash with bland bands - Keane, Travis,
Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand - who make samey, anonymous, plastic piano music,
avoid doing anything too sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, and always get an early night
('The Invisible Band', the title of a Travis album, just about sums these
groups up).
On my way to Glasgow on the bus (yep, you read that right) I read the "Q"
interview with Keane, three men and a piano who named their band after the
little old Irish lady who served them dinner at their public school. The interview
takes place in Mexico where the band were due to make a video, but the idea
was scrapped following reports of Westerners being kidnapped. The band were
'unable to secure insurance for the shoot', so 'for the entire two days they
rarely ventured outside their designated "safe" hotel'. On drink and drugs, Keane
said: 'Why should we get falling-down drunk all the time just to fit in…? Drugs
have never been our thing. I'm sure fear plays a part….' Franz Ferdinand,
the 'undisputed pretty boys of rock' according to "The Sun" (so it must be
true...) recently announced that 'we are really not into the whole sex thing with
groupies' . Now we know why the new Posh Rock is so dull - it's made by dull
people.
It might be a bit sad to live in the past, even if it is a past where the
Popes still rock. But how much sadder that at a time when 'serious' music is
everywhere, it takes a bunch of guys edging 50 fronted by a drunk at death's
door, to remind us what rock'n'roll was like.
J.R
The Barking Spider.
SHANE MACGOWAN & THE POPES appear at South Parade Pier, Southsea on Saturday
19th March - St Patrick's weekend. Tickets are going fast - it's one of the
smallest venues that Shane has played - and are available NOW from.......
Wedgewood Rooms Box Office Albert Rd., Southsea, (023) 92 863911.
Reflex Records Reflex Records, Albert Rd., Southsea, (023) 92289 3571.
South Parade Pier General Office (023) 9273 2283.
In person (cash only) from:
The R.M.A. Tavern, Cromwell Road, Southsea.
Bon Ends bric a brac & collectables shop, Fawcett Rd., Southsea.
Also avaialble by post from Barkinf Spider Music, 105, Landguard Rd.
Southsea, Hants, P04 9DR. Please make cheques payable to BARKING SPIDER MUSIC and
enclose a stamped addressed envelope.
Further enquiries to spiderpromos@aol.com or ring J.R. on 07970 959793
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