The Medusa Fora

I wasn't sure which forum this was best suited to, but thought "Official music" was as good as anyplace else.

Anybody else love "The One and Only" and "All the Tears that I Cried," the two Electric Landlady-era tracks Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues did together? The band sounds great on both of them, and of course Kirsty sounds amazing as always, and I've always loved the way they took the same melody and got two different songs out of it. I've always wondered whether Kirsty and Mark Nevin started with "The One and Only" and said, "Wait, if we speed this up we can get another song out of it!," or if they started with "All the Tears" and said, "Wait, if we slow this down we can get another song out of it!," or if somehow they planned to get two songs out of it all along.

Check them out if you haven't heard 'em already -- "All the Tears that I Cried" (the fast one) appears on the new Kirsty box set From Croydon to Cuba, which just came out this week, and "The One and Only" (the slow one) is on Electric Landlady, which was just remastered and rereleased last month. EL also has Kirsty and Jem Finer's poptastic "He Never Mentioned Love," the last verse of which features one of the best lyrical twists in the entire MacColl songbook. All must-haves for the true Pogues trainspotter!

Does Shane feature on either recording?

He does not. But the songs are cool - definitely worth checking out.

Mark Nevin seemingly answers the question of which came first in the (excellent) booklet that comes with From Croydon To Cuba.

Mark Nevin recalls, "I wrote The One And Only (on Electric Landlady), Kirsty oddly wrote another lyric/melody on top of the same track, she changed it from 3/4 time to 4/4 time and it became The Tears That I Cried."

Anonymous wrote:Mark Nevin seemingly answers the question of which came first in the (excellent) booklet that comes with From Croydon To Cuba.

Mark Nevin recalls, "I wrote The One And Only (on Electric Landlady), Kirsty oddly wrote another lyric/melody on top of the same track, she changed it from 3/4 time to 4/4 time and it became The Tears That I Cried."

Excellent -- I've been wondering about this for nearly 15 years! Thanks for the info.

My copy of the new Kirsty box set shipped from Amazon.co.uk on the 26th, so I'm counting the days 'til it arrives!