- THURSDAY JAM: Early morning sunshine tell me all I need to know (4/18/24)
- THURSDAY JAM: Why does the sun shine? (4/4/24)
- SATURDAY JAM: You feel the turning of the world, so soft and slow (11/11/23)
- SUNDAY JAM: Hello, Darkness, my old friend (11/5/23)
- FRIDAY JAM: Plowin’ straight ahead, come what may (10/27/23)1
- WEDNESDAY JAM: Some folks say there ain't no bears in Arkansas (10/25/23)1
- FRIDAY JAM: I took a drive today... (10/20/23)
FRIDAY JAM: A rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ I’ll go
Sometimes “a perfect voice” is the furthest thing from the perfect voice.
Listen to Bob Dylan’s latter-day classic “Make You Feel My Love.” Garth Brooks, Adele and Billy Joel have all covered it, and the vocals are technically far more proficient than Dylan’s.
They’re all beautiful renditions, yet none of them quite match the raw, soul-bearing power of Dylan’s original version. He has the perfect voice to express the longing and admiration of that song.
Often there’s much more meaning and, yes, beauty to be found in the rough edges.
So it is that today I turn my attention to Shane MacGowan, the Celtic punk pioneer who passed away Thursday morning at age 65.
MacGowan was all rough edges — physically and otherwise. His big ears and nose and rotten teeth were matched by a truculent personality, years of drug and alcohol abuse and that voice — oh, that voice.
For me, MacGowan’s vocals defy metaphor. It’s the mumble of a perpetually drunk Irishman with a head full of horrible teeth. Guilty as charged.
Yet, listen to a song like “Sally MacLennane” and try to imagine anyone with a “better” voice improving upon that song. I can’t.
Taken from their 1985 masterpiece “Rum Sodomy & the Lash,” the song perfectly encapsulates what I love about the Pogues’ music — an expression of world-weary joy even as death lurks on the fringes.
That was Shane MacGowan. A huge fan of early punk bands like The Clash and Sex Pistols, MacGowan and his bandmates remained the England-born children of Irish expatriates. Rather than deny that heritage, they found a way to blend it — all the sadness and joy expressed by traditional Irish folk alongside the energy and attituide of punk rock.
The outcome was often magical, with MacGowan-penned classics like “The Sick Bed of Cúchullain,” “Streams of Whiskey,” “If I Should Fall from Grace with God,” “A Rainy Night in Soho” and a personal Christmas season staple “Fairytale of New York” (co-written with bandmate Jem Finer).
They all share the qualities that MacGowan seemed to live out — a lust for life in the face of sadness, always with a nod to our own mortality. As his band’s star was rising over the second half of the 1980s, MacGowan sank deeper into drug and alcohol use.
After the rest of the band finally had enough of the missed practices, media appearances and concerts and fired him in 1991, he reportedly asked, “What took you so long?”
MacGowan knew he was living a self-destructive lifestyle, but he didn’t seem to care. I’m not here to celebrate that, only to observe that Shane MacGowan was no hypocrite.
What I will celebrate is the way that he and his bandmates — who brought those very unpunk instruments like the tin whistle, banjo, accordorian and bodhrán to the tunes — introduced me, and I’m sure many others, to traditional Irish music.
Through covers of classic Irish songs like “Whiskey in the Jar” and “The Irish Rover,” the Pogues made mestart to realize what an amazing songwriting tradition there was in traditional Irish music.
Now I know of bands like the Clancy Brothers, Dubliners and Wolfetones because of the Pogues. And my love of music is richer for it.
But it’s also clear that MacGowan’s own songwriting was rich because of the influence of these bands. It comes through most profoundly when the band dials it back a little and does a ballad.
While the band’s ballads were often in the form of a cover song, rarely is their sound more touching than on “A Pair of Brown Eyes.”
All of the essential elements of the Pogues’ sound are there — Spider Stacy’s tin whistle, James Fearnley’s accordion, Jem Finer’s banjo, Cait O’Riordan’s bass and Andrew Ranken’s driving drum beat. In the live version below, we even get MacGowan himself on the guitar, which was not so on the album.
I won’t break down the lyrics too much, as they don’t tell any sort of linear narrative. I’ll only say they don’t exactly paint a pretty picture between “blood and death ’neath a screaming sky” and leaving the place “sometimes crawling sometimes walking.” Yet the song puts me at ease.
It’s something soothing about the pair of brown eyes and, honestly, the wonderful job the band does of painting a peaceful, bucolic scene, even as MacGowan ponders war and death in the midst of a swirling barroom.
I think that’s the real beauty of Irish music. It embraces the contradictions of life, finding humor, love and joy in the face of oppression, anger and death.
Too often, we think we only find the good things in life in the absence of its challenges.
The truth is, we find the good things in the face of challenges.
Rest in peace, Shane. Be good out there this weekend, friends.
Then again, in Shane's memory, let loose a little.
- -- Posted by Alice Addertongue on Tue, Dec 5, 2023, at 10:53 PM
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