by James Murphy Thu Dec 19, 2013 12:58 pm
Just tweeted a bunch about this song, so I'll storify them here, where someone who cares might see them.
Body of an American by the Pogues is my favourite song. I've been listening to it for years and I'm still finding new stuff in its words.
The Cadillacs, American cars, in Ireland, with gypsy locals trying to steal them, undercutting Irish-America's blarney romanticisation.
It's an honourable boxer's wake, Jim Dwyer, a tough man, who's brown hatted immigrant mate or lover, the narrator, has travelled back with his coffin to his family.
He gets drunk with the relations and his mind wanders back over Dwyer's life, how shitty the nativists were to him, how he had to reaffirm that he was just as much an American as the rest of them "I'm a free born man of the USA" before hitting them out with a well earned clout.
Jim Dwyer became heavyweight champ in Pittsburgh but in a fight with a little Italian guy "Tiny Tartanella" in a bar who beat fuck outta him.
Dwyer tried to avoid conscription, being champ and all, but the corruption meant he went away to fight the fascists.
Remember drinking Spanish wine, and the rosary, the drink and religion that defined the lives of many. But Spanish wine is also an Irish code for military intervention, which gives it a double meaning for when he was in the service.
The Skatalites Guns of Navarone tune lift in the bridge, I've just realised, is about Dwyer's service in the war.
He thinks of Dwyer, happy to be champion in America. "I'm a freeborn man of the USA" wasn't an angry proclamation to racists then, but pride.
"This morning on the harbour/When I said goodbye to you" he's leaving, he's on the boat, sentimental, the wake's over, the family are pissed
"Fare thee well gone away/There's nothing left to say/'cept to say adieu/To your eyes as blue/As the water in the bay" I misunderstood.
It's not to the narrator's Love waiting in the US, but rather to the departed that he's leaving buried in the shores where his fathers lay.
"I'm a freeborn man of the USA" isn't said in anger or pride now but as a eulogy, the words of the dead echoing as narrator boats back home.
And, despite what bigots might have said, no matter how defensive Dwyer was forced to become in his Americanness, it's there in the title of the song.
What lies on the ancient land of Ireland, with a history Uncles gave lectures on earlier, is the Body of an American. It's fucking clever.
https://twitter.com/James_Murphy_1Just tweeted a bunch about this song, so I'll storify them here, where someone who cares might see them.
[quote]Body of an American by the Pogues is my favourite song. I've been listening to it for years and I'm still finding new stuff in its words.
The Cadillacs, American cars, in Ireland, with gypsy locals trying to steal them, undercutting Irish-America's blarney romanticisation.
It's an honourable boxer's wake, Jim Dwyer, a tough man, who's brown hatted immigrant mate or lover, the narrator, has travelled back with his coffin to his family.
He gets drunk with the relations and his mind wanders back over Dwyer's life, how shitty the nativists were to him, how he had to reaffirm that he was just as much an American as the rest of them "I'm a free born man of the USA" before hitting them out with a well earned clout.
Jim Dwyer became heavyweight champ in Pittsburgh but in a fight with a little Italian guy "Tiny Tartanella" in a bar who beat fuck outta him.
Dwyer tried to avoid conscription, being champ and all, but the corruption meant he went away to fight the fascists.
Remember drinking Spanish wine, and the rosary, the drink and religion that defined the lives of many. But Spanish wine is also an Irish code for military intervention, which gives it a double meaning for when he was in the service.
The Skatalites Guns of Navarone tune lift in the bridge, I've just realised, is about Dwyer's service in the war.
He thinks of Dwyer, happy to be champion in America. "I'm a freeborn man of the USA" wasn't an angry proclamation to racists then, but pride.
"This morning on the harbour/When I said goodbye to you" he's leaving, he's on the boat, sentimental, the wake's over, the family are pissed
"Fare thee well gone away/There's nothing left to say/'cept to say adieu/To your eyes as blue/As the water in the bay" I misunderstood.
It's not to the narrator's Love waiting in the US, but rather to the departed that he's leaving buried in the shores where his fathers lay.
"I'm a freeborn man of the USA" isn't said in anger or pride now but as a eulogy, the words of the dead echoing as narrator boats back home.
And, despite what bigots might have said, no matter how defensive Dwyer was forced to become in his Americanness, it's there in the title of the song.
What lies on the ancient land of Ireland, with a history Uncles gave lectures on earlier, is the Body of an American. It's fucking clever.[/quote]
https://twitter.com/James_Murphy_1
