POWER: DIRTY OLD TOWN

Most of us when we think about power, we look at the outcome: heat, light, government. Let's now look briefly at the flip and the mess left behind. With tiny Greta now bestriding the world, I think it only fair. The main thing the industrial revolution showed us was soot. And this hit home hard here in UK, arguably the first home for the coal fires of industry, and certainly first to take it for granted.

Ewan MacColl

Ewan MacColl is a name of some importance in the world of folk music. I'll bet you know at least one of his songs, even if it is just this one. A complicated and seemingly difficult man, he was born James Henry Miller, in Salford, near Manchester in England. Of scottish stock, his father was a passionate trade unionist who had been drummed out of Scotland for his firebrand workplace politicking, these views etched deep into MacColl's psyche. Looking for work at the time of the great depression, street singing provided as much income as early jobs. A member of the Young Communist League from his teens, agit-prop theatre became his home up to, during and after the war, writing,  directing and acting. A brief spell in the army ended in either his deserting or being dismissed, depending on whose story you heard, but it seems his political persuasions had brought him to the attentions of the power that be.

Industrial Landscape: L.S.Lowry, 1955

Whilst the theatre provided his home and most of his activity and income, it is his music that has had greater posterity. Increasingly drawn to folk music in the 1950s, he was instrumental in the success of the still extant record label, Topic, releasing a slew of albums for them over the next few decades. And this was not folk as in trad.arr., old songs sung sweet, these were his own songs, fiercely opinionated and anti-establishment, if in the folk tradition. Think Woody Guthrie. Or, perhaps even, Billy Bragg. As well as offering a pointer to more of his music, here is a link to something I wrote a year or two back, which offers also some greater insight on the man.

'Dirty Old Town' is no call to arms, being one of the love songs he was more than capable of writing. But the words also reflect, if casually, the reality of most northern UK cities, the fumes and stench of pollution providing the backdrop to lives stunted thereby. Yes, the situation is better now, some might say as a result of knowledge and changes of practice. Or is it merely by the fact that the factories have all closed?

The song has had a fair few covers over the years. Here are a few of my favourites. I think it no surprise that both the Pogues and the Specials should find something of resonance in the song, their experiences, disaffected youth in post-punk London and Coventry perhaps not that changed from MacColls dirty old Salford of two decades earlier. Quite how or why LaVette chose the song remains uncertain, but the first few comments under the youtube clip suggest a recognition within any post industrial town anywhere,

The Pogues

The Specials

Bettye Lavette

Salford
London
Coventry
Detroit

LION/LAMB: THE LION & THE UNICORN/THE MEN THEY COULDN'T HANG

Ever vigilant in my aim to extend my often anglocentric peccadilloes to a wider audience, I dare say The Men They Couldn't Hang may be an unknown quantity to many readers. Which is a pity. Indeed, they are probably also fairly niche on these shores, despite recently ratcheting up a 35th year of performing. Arising out of the short-lived UK cowpunk movement of the 80s, which also produced the Pogues in their earliest incarnation, as well as lesser known names as the Boothill Foot-Tappers. (I know, I can hear the yells from Distressed, Arkansas, chiding me for using the term cowpunk, a term that, a little later, became the term for a more aggressive and electric ragged country sound in the US,  a sort of americana before it was called americana, but, much as I like that too, we used it first and, hey, I'm writing. My guys were a little gentler and used a little more acousticity.)

Pulling tropes from folk music, country and punk, TMTCH always had a strong sense of history, and, hailing from the naval garrison town of Portsmouth, often this was maritime history, encompassing anything from smuggling to the Napoleonic wars. I was drawn in early, finding their rough hewn melodic jangle very much to my ears. A flurry of records appeared between 1984 and 1991, when they first threw in the towel. But no band ever really breaks up these days, do they? In 1996, buoyed by a few interim reunion, they officially reformed, or at least the dominant front line of singer/songwriters Paul Simmonds, Phil 'Swill' Odgers and Stefan Cush, backed by a varying line-up in the rhythm section of guitar, bass and drums, with, often, the additional services of Bobby Valentino, fiddler extraordinaire and Clark Gable lookalike. In the intervening 20 years they have kept up a credible presence, alternating full band tours with individual projects, albeit often with one or other of them tagging along. I have seen them twice, in about 1990 and then again last year. (Here's what I thought.)

So how about the song? And what of lions and unicorns? Actually, a timely moment to consider, 20 odd days ahead of the UK 'regaining' its sovereignty and bouncing out of europe. Or at least the EEC. At the time of writing, no deal yet forthcoming, it looks and feels as comforting as a poke in the eye. The lion and the unicorn are the heraldic emblems on the country's coat of arms. If the lion is a symbol of fierce steadfastness, the unicorn is a symbol of fantasy. I know which feels the more realistic.

How prophetic are these words, penned by Paul Simmonds in 1990, describing his then perception of the status of this nation. I would hate for history to become literally the only future.


'Welcome friends from overseas
I'm your guide I aim to please
I know what you want from me
Sights and smiles and history
I'll take you down to the Underground
Tha's where the spirit of the Blitz is found
Hear those sirens over your head?
See that platform, thats your bed

(Chorus)
Who went mad, who drowned in drink?
Who's in a cage and who's extinct?
Who ended up in a uniform?
The Lion and The Unicorn

Here's the church there's the steeple
Open it up where are the people?
Thinking up ways to take your dough
By deal or scheme or unseen blow
Now out to the shires where the towns are quaint
We spruced them up with a coat of paint
That white paint don't cover up dirt
Bandages don't cover up hurt

(Chorus)
I'll tell you tales of kings and sailors
Puritans, outlaws, thieves and traitors
Show you round the land we made
Whisper something we betrayed
So where's the hope, where's the reason?
Poisoned by the years of treason
Where's the justice where's the grace?
Disappeared without a trace'

Here is a live version.

Down: The Pogues, Down All the Days

The Pogues, Down All the Days

Purchase Down All the Days

From their 1989 masterpiece, Peace and Love, The Pogue’s “Down all the Days” is a tribute to Christy Brown. You will know Christy Brown from the award winning bio pic starring Daniel Day Lewis, My Left Foot. The title of the song is taken not from Brown’s seminal biography, but is the title of his first novel, Down all the Days, from 1970. It is a stream of consciousness reflection of Ireland and the Irish, much in the vein of the classic Irish style that James Joyce made so ubiquitous to the life and literature of the Emerald Isle. 

Peace and Love is one of my favorite Pogues albums, though it is relegated in many’s opinion to one of the “lesser” efforts. Recorded at a time when drunken legend Shane MacGowan’s legendary drunkenness had finally started taking its toll on his musical and writing abilities, Peace and Love is a departure for two distinct reasons: one, it shies slightly away from the traditional Celtic-roots of the Pogues earlier albums and favors a broader approach, delving into rock, rock-a-billy, jazz and glorious pop. It is a manifold and expansive musical canvas the Pogues work with here and the diversity of sound enhances its strength rather than diminishes it. 

The second reason Peace and Love is so different from the Pogue's all too small catalog is that this album saw major contributions from the other members of the band in terms of lyrical content and composition. This album features amazing songs from long-time Pogues conspirators Terry Woods, Gem Finer and Phil Chevron, who each penned tracks that are absolute classics, all of who stepped in to fill the gaps MacGowan's behaviors had left. MacGowan’s performance on Peace and Love has been described at “mush mouthed” and his lyrics as “markedly beneath his previous standards”, and sadly, that is true, but then part of being a fan of the Pogues is buying into MacGowan’s ridiculous drunken buffoonery. 

It’s also appropriate to shake one’s head in disgust and sadness at what a squandered talent MacGowan has made of himself. But, then, that’s part of what the Pogues, as an institution, are about: greatness and what could have been. Characteristic of their significance and the pure exuberance of their total abandon into great music is the lingering sense of the tragic. MacGowan’s lyrical content has long focused on the darker side of love, politics and history, of bitterness, of defeat. The music is tinged with lament and a longing for better days, or at least getting a fairer shot in all of those arenas. Kind of like the Pogues themselves, all things could have been, and truly should have been, better. Like MacGowan’s seeming self-destruction: it took on greater dimensions of tragic when you realized how far it derailed this band's chances from being truly great. Burning stars rapidly arcing through the sky is a great metaphor, but the reality of the fact that the Pogues could have been a far more productive band, with a much longer and more varied catalog is a sad truth that only becomes more real with every listen to their music.

"Down All the Days" starts with an ethereal echo of a winding typewriter, being loaded, clicking and punching away, as if from behind a closed door, set to chiming strings. The songs winds up into a lilting spin of guitar, accordion, tin whistle, the typist still toiling away, the dinging bell of the approaching end of a line coming through in perfect timing. The lyrics vary between the voice of Brown himself mixed with an outside narrator introducing us to Brown as a “man renowned from Dingle to Down” but who was once merely a “clown about town.”  Brown himself enters the narrative and entertains by talking about his life and bragging of his drinking prowess ( I can type with me toes and I suck stout through me nose—both of which were very true of Brown) as well as giving us a vague sense of who he might, or might not have, supported in the soccer pitch. The song winds itself towards a soaring chorus, an aural symbol of that typewriter itself leading to a burst of energy, a writer punching the keys in manic ecstasy as the words, words, words tumble forth. Such a wonderful, almost magical song, the multiple instruments in such chaotic tuneful euphony. Like all great Pogues songs, there’s a manic, barely contained energy and the tune doesn’t so much play as it does swirl and carry the listener away. At a running time 3:45, I always wanted it to last at least twice as long.

I’ve seen the Pogues live many times and there was always the kind of excitement in the venue that might accompany the apparition of a saint—hard to believe they were really there in front of you. And, while it’s bordering on morbid, and certainly a ridiculous cliche by know for music writers, MacGowan has continued to defy expectations and is still going. And by that, I mean he's still alive. Sadly, he’s not producing music, but, it’s good to know he’s still out there. Like The Pogues themselves, MacGowan is timeless in a strange way, and the music, even if there is precious too little of it, is and will be timeless as well. 

1965: EVE OF DESTRUCTION/Barry McGuire

This song is somehow so apposite of 1965, a gruff yet never more Dylanesque slice of protest, replete with frantically strummed acoustic guitar and brief toots of harp. For, in 1965, many truly felt we were on the eve of a self-imposed destruction, nuclear holocaust a mere button away and seeming so close. Earnest troubadours were on every corner warning of the same, anti-war diatribes billowing forth, from Bob himself to would-be Bobs aplenty. And these were no mere paranoid ideations, as there was a palpable sense that oblivion lay waiting ahead, eagerly itching in the wings for the over-eager finger of a Brezhnev (or even an LBJ). This was the year of US troops arriving in ‘Nam and occupying the Dominican Republic, the assassination of Malcolm X, the Watts riots, with fighting breaking out between India and Pakistan, between China and Taiwan, in the Congo, with coups commonplace elsewhere in sub-Sahara, in Indonesia, in Aden. Hell, no wonder folk were nervous.

It was almost an accident that McGuire came to be the one-hit wonder he became. The Byrds had been given first shout, rejecting it. Offered then to the Turtles, it was tucked away on their debut, taking a full 5 years to eventually sneak into the Billboard Hot 100 as a single. At 100. P.F. Sloan, the writer, had a successful early 60s career as a staff songwriter at publisher Screen Gems, coming to the attention of Dunhill records music mogul, Lou Adler, who put him to work penning for many of his roster, from the aforementioned Turtles to Herman’s Hermits and Jan and Dean. He was also an accomplished musician, playing guitar with celebrated sessionmen the Wrecking Crew, who would be responsible for backing, anonymously, many a more famous name and often instead of the musicians otherwise credited. (Go see.) Back to Eve, and, mid July, McGuire recorded a rough demo vocal to the backing track, laid down with Sloan, together with other wrecking Crew alumni, Hal Blaine on drums and Larry Knechtel on bass. Although this was intended to be later tidied up, the demo found its way to a radio station. This all happened within 5 days, and the song became a worldwide hit, hitting the Billboard top slot within about  8 weeks. The more polished version was never made.

In 1965 I was 8. It was the year, impending doom regardless, that my parents first bought a record player, a neat little Dansette, capable of playing a stack of singles one after the other. It came with a selection of about 30 or so of said 45rpm discs, ranging from Elvis, through the Beach Boys, to the Swinging Blue Jeans, none of which were to my parents taste. However they were just the ticket for my elder sister and I can probably blame my enduring infatuation with music on this particular acquisition in the autumn of ‘65. And, of course, Eve of Destruction was one of the records and I own it still, being one of a select few I sneaked from home when my sister left for University, writing my name on each of them for keepsake. 

So what happened to McGuire? It seems he was far from the rough hewn counter culture warrior the song suggests, having been earlier a member of the uber-kitch New Christy Minstrels. (He was the singer on this, their best known number.) After stardom beckoned, he retreated from the limelight, becoming a born again Christian, refusing the play the song again for decades and only then with a bowdlerisation of the lyrics to avoid any possible offence. Sloan continued to write and to seek his own stardom, which largely eluded him, but was the subject of this intriguing song, by the arguably far more successful Jimmy Webb, who claimed his inspiration was fired by Sloan's experience.

50 years on, the world lurches on. Is the Eve of Destruction any the further? Or any the nearer? At least we are still here. Yet the song remains worth singing, as performed here by the Pogues.

Buy the original here

Big Bands: The Pogues

Big Bands—small facts: I am related to Guy Lombardo. Mr. New Year’s Eve and his Royal Canadians. Lombardo, among other musical accomplishments, broadcast for 48 consecutive years on New Year’s Eve, over radio and television, from Time’s Square, NYC.  In this video clip, you can practically smell the martinis and cigarette smoke of “New York’s High Society.”  In 1976, this whole scene—Times Square, the Waldorf Astoria, the cookie cutter, pre-Kenny Gee Kenny Gee horn drone, elevator soundtrack hip sounds must have already come across as poorly chosen nostalgia--what with the Rolling Stones having already peaked, disco being in full, jumpsuit swing, Elvis nearly dead and punk already taking root just a few blocks south in the Bowery…Revel in this--your dead relatives will smile down on you from heaven. 

The Royal Canadians?—not my favorite, despite the familial connections. I feel ashamed to have devoted a paragraph of copy to it…Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman. Those are the names to come to mind when I think of “big band”, but then, I’m hardly a scholar of the Big Band era, so I’m just listing what anyone could. The idea of big band conjures up more image—smart suits, martinis and classy dames with great gams—but the sound itself eludes modern sensibility. Yeah, when Swingers came out there was a bit of a revival, but swing big band sounds just don’t really add up to much unless you’re a student of the era…sadly, as should be discernible here, I am not…

I do love that sound, though: orchestrated swinging, sharp, cracking drums, big rhythm, every musical angel sharpened and snapped into shape by horns horns horns, twirling, snappy punctuations and exclamations of melody. One of my favorites is Louis Prima, he of the Pennies from Heaven” and “Angelina & Zooma, Zooma” fame…you know, the songs that get played in Mafia movies, or by your stupid friends when they have you over for pasta and meatballs...

That’s about all I know concerning Big Band. I have intentions to dig deeper into that era, but I always get distracted. When you reflect on the genres and movements and eras that are said to define one epoch or another, it’s hard to choose where to devote your listening energy. The beauty of music, however, is that the interested listener will literally never run out of avenues to explore. Next time I have a martini, perhaps the urge to strike out into the wide, wide world of the swinging Big Band sound will strike and lead me to something new. Until then, I have my “Rat Pack Christmas” CD, which I pull out out once a year….

But, this month’s theme is about big bands, not Big Bands.

Often times, big bands, like Arcade Fire, or the Polyphonic Spree, strike me as too big. A whole lot of sound comes out of what should be something much more cohesive and tightened up. Don’t get me wrong: big sound is fantastic, but I suppose I look to my rock music to be a little tighter and well-knit—knife edged and snapping, rather than sprawling— than the sound that comes out of large ensembles. I always feel a band like Arcade Fire, and similar artists, are trying to fit too much sound into a four minute song, as opposed to larger, horn-based ensembles that work to widen their soundscape and project a sound that is meant to be heard big and loud and unwieldy. Rock and roll can be chaotic, too, but it seems to work better with a variation of instruments, thus creating a sound with multi-textures. Multi-textures that add up to something cohesive, not something trying to achieve bombast without a reason.

So, I would say my favorite big band would have to be The Pogues. Upwards of eight members, blending traditional, “old-fashioned” instruments with modern, sounds and songs with a sometimes punked-up sensibility, the Pogues did big, roaring sound and rise and crescendo rock better than anyone. 

It’s hard to choose what to write about the band—what’s worth saying, and what’ not, has been committed to print a million times over, such is the devotion, revulsion and general amazement the band generates, in spite or despite of lead singer Shane MacGowan’s status as the drunkest man on the planet. The Pogues do Irish rebel music better than anyone—they also do Celtic rock, poetry, big band bombast, poetic conciseness, and drinking songs better, too. Live, they are a raucous act, and despite slowing down due to age and a history of shenanigans involving alcohol, and even more—despite the fact that they are pretty subdued when standing up there, delivering classics and traditional Irish folk songs—the audience at  a Pogues show carries the day. If you get a chance to see them in their now-rare touring schedule, do so, but watch out for flying shot glasses.

If you can’t see them live, listen and revel in the broad majesty of If Should Fall From Grace With God and Peace and Love, albums so steeped in their own legends as to come forth from your speakers like blessed streams of whiskey and holy water. MacGowan is a feeble-tongued, master poet; the band themselves has made some of the finest, most beautiful melodies and stomping sing-alongs ever recorded. They are past their prime, long past, Philip chevron has passed away, MacGowan is giving Keith Richards a run on the designation of most bafflingly still-alive human being.  Yet, the music they made—that string of albums they made from 1984 to 1990 will never be equaled in terms of instrumental brilliance, lyrical beauty and musical bravado. “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” will go down as classical poetry at some point; “Misty Morning Albert Bridge” is the song you should fall in love to…I could keep going, but, you should just start listening… The Pogues are special, blessed by the gods of music, and when I get to heaven (fingers crossed), this is the band I want playing me through the gates.

Here is their 30^th Anniversary show from Paris

It’s not every song, but it’s pretty f#*king great.  At 38:50, Lullaby of London? Yeah…that’s all you need…pure grace.

Irish Accents: Rainy Night In Soho

The Pogues: Rainy Night In Soho [purchase]

I remember it well.

The table is strewn with empty pint glasses, the ash tray is overflowing and last orders were called longer ago than the man behind the bar cares to remember.  Reluctantly, you stagger out into the hazy London evening, the streets wet and glistening and the icy drizzle doing its utmost to keep you awake long enough to find your way to the tube station.  At Piccadilly Circus you go your separate ways - some head home, some wander off in search of a late license.  You'll see everyone again tomorrow, of course, thirsty as ever.

Except when you don't.  Rainy nights in Soho seem an awfully long way away now, preserved in romantic memories of the good times, untainted by anything but an intellectual understanding that there were bad times too.  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.  Too true, and one can't help but wonder which way one would or could have fallen had one just tripped one time too many.

The swooning romance of this song always appealed to me, romantic that I was.  That I am.  You're the measure of my dreams, Shane tells his companion, and our hearts soar.  One day I met the measure of mine and she made sure I didn't fall into Hell.  This week's theme is in honour of St. Patrick's Day, of course, but I think I'll break ranks and wish everyone a Happy Persian New Year instead: it's about renewal and hope, and my fervent hope is that when you fall you fall into Heaven too.

Irish Accents: “Danny Boy” Collected

Frank Patterson: Danny Boy

[purchase]

Sam Cooke: Danny Boy

[purchase]

The Pogues: Danny Boy

[purchase]

Richard Thompson: Danny Boy

[purchase]

Jackie Wilson: Danny Boy

[purchase]

Elvis Presley: Danny Boy

[purchase]


“Danny Boy” has to a certain degree become the Irish-American anthem, with its overtones of exile, of loved family left behind, and the hazy prospect of return in the far future. So it’s a touch ironic that the tune – the “Londonderry Air” – is an anthem of Northern Ireland, that the lyrics were written by the Englishman Frederic Weatherly, that the song’s only about a hundred years old, and that the fist recording seems to be by a German singer. None of this means anything, of course; by now, there are any number of references to “Danny Boy in Irish-American culture, books that take almost every line of the lyrics as titles, and even a “Danny Boy” Premium Irish whisky (see picture). Any reference to the song is instant Hollywood shorthand for the Emerald Isle.

Before the song got wrapped up in manufactured Blarney, “Danny Boy” took roots in America in the ‘30’s and the ‘40s – promoted in part by versions by Bing Crosby and (in the movie Little Nellie Kelly) Judy Garland. In the 1950’s, it became one of a handful of ‘white’ standards that R&B artists added to their songbook, and at the same time, it drifted into the country repertory as well, (including Bill Monroe, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash in 1965 and again in the American sessions at the end of his life).

As far as I go, there’s no recorded version anywhere that sounds as good as it does when sung sometime after 1 AM with a bunch of friends, all several sheets to the wind. But it seems wildly unjust to subject anyone not wearing beer headphones to that experience, so – a few judicious nominations.

My own personal favorite is by Frank Patterson, a classically trained tenor who decided to follow in the Irish tenor tradition established by the likes of John McCormack. This is the version that’s best known from the Thompson gun scene in Miller’s Crossing.

Sam Cooke covered it on his first secular album. Predictably, Cooke sang the hell out of it (compare Jackie Wilson's version, from his first album; he took it to some very unusual places that I’m not sure it was supposed to go to).

Finally, two down-to-earth takes: a reverent a capella cut by Cait O’Riordan and the Pogues from the unfortunate film Straight to Hell, and a live set-closer from Richard Thompson. Good stuff.

Guest post by Neil

Nine Lives: The Wild Cats Of Kilkenny

The Pogues: The Wild Cats Of Kilkenny

[purchase]

‘The Wild Cats Of Kilkenny’ appeared on The Pogues’ epic 1985 album Rum, Sodomy And The Lash. The instrumental track was written by the dentally-challenged frontman Shane McGowan, whom everybody knows, and the band’s multi-instrumentalist Jem Finer, who is rather more obscure. Still, every Christmas you’ll hear one of his songs…

Kilkenny is, of course, a town in Ireland that also lends its name to the county in which it is located (we could also make up, if we so wished, an urban legend that the name also served to inspire the makers of South Park). There is a poem about the cats of Kilkenny, titled without much prevarication “The Cats of Kilkenny”:

There once were two cats of Kilkenny
Each thought there was one cat too many
So they fought and they fit,
And they scratched and they bit,
Till excepting their nails
And the tips of their tails,
Instead of two cats, there weren't any.

The Pogues in the title of their song probably referred to the epic cat fight of the poem (for there is no doubt that the two protagonist felines were indeed of wild temperament), which is believed to be an allegory for a bloody and self-destructive territorial dispute between Kilkenny and Irishtown. That conflict gave rise to the phrase “Kilkenny cats”, to describe, as wordsmith.org puts it, “people who fight relentlessly till their end”.

Mutual destruction seems to be a badge of honour in some quarters: Kilkenny’s local hurling team (that’s the sport, not the post-drinking activity) is dubbed “The Cats”.

1984: Streams Of Whiskey

The Pogues: Streams Of Whiskey

[purchase]

"When the world is too dark, and I need the light inside of me, I´ll walk into a bar, and drink fifteen pints of beer..." Now that´s the spirit. 1984 was the year an English/Irish mob called The Pogues unleashed its exciting mix of traditional Irish folk and punk on the world, spawning a lot of mostly second-rate imitators in the process. Their best work was yet to come - take next year´s Rum Sodomy & The Lash for instance - but Red Roses For Me remains a fine debut. Shane McGowan shines on vocals and proves himself a highly original lyricist within a mostly Irish literary tradition. It´s not accidental that he evokes the ghost of the great Brendan Behan, self-proclaimed Irish ´drinker with a writing problem´, in the first verse of Streams Of Whiskey. The Pogues have often been accused of not being ´authentically Irish´, but that´s utter shite of course. From the years I´ve lived on the Emerald Isle, I remember that nearly everybody loved The Pogues there. And hated Bono, but that´s a whole different ballgame.