Best Irish Music Blog of 2006, if not Ever
I’m not waiting until the end of the year - because this won’t be bettered. It’s the same as the Best Irish Music Blog of 2005. James Fearnley writes BlogueMahone: Dispatches from the Tour. We’re talking The Pogues.
Review of Pogues Gig
Brutal honesty. Great writing. Music. Friendships. Start at the beginning and read it all. I want it in hardback.
Here’s a thing that’s always bothered me: how does Philip do all that whirling in ‘Fiesta’ and not lose his balance and want to go crashing into the backline afterwards, like I do when I try to copy him?At the end of ‘Fiesta,’ I’m lying on the floor, while all manner of mayhem’s going on around me, with Darryl pounding his bass with the beer-tray and Jem squawking down his saxophone and Andrew gone Elvin Jones. Spider comes across, kneels next to me, gives me the last rites and closes my eyes with his fingers.
Back in the dressing room afterwards, there are medics for Shane. He sits on one of the couches like a character from Heinrich Hoffman, his hair a matter of lank shags hanging at his temples. He’s shagged out. His eyes are closed. The medics approach, gingerly, it looks to me.
‘Have you been drinking?’ is one of their first questions.
‘Nah,’ says Shane. They put one of those things onto the end of his finger, for his pulse, and wrap the blood-pressure sleeve on. Whatever the reading is, Sean Fay says, ‘That’s good isn’t it?’
Right now The Pogues are touring America again, west coast, east coast, you know the score - tough titty if you live in the middle.
See Also:
• Billy Bragg Cause Social Change
• Shane MacGowan & Christy Moore on the Late Late
• The Pogues: Founders of an Internet Radio Genre
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Fortunately it’s not over. According to the Pogues website, James is gonna be doing some more dispatches from the Fall tour.