My A Level Coursework.

[James]

English Coursework
By James Murphy
STREAMS of WHISKEY

How the world’s greatest bar band conquered stadiums and stared from the gutter at the stars.

The year is 1983. In the dirty, sweaty backroom of a north London pub a rock ‘n’ roll cocktail emerged from the unlikeliest of traditional instruments. The music is played by a band of seven with more passion and speed than anything seen in the charts for years. Much has been made of this glorious Celtic punk shambles, how it channelled the rich rebel spirits of old folk bands like the Dubliners and the Clancy Brothers via the vicious realist world view of seventies punk groups like the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Using only acoustic instruments and an electric bass guitar and drum to help with the beat (all the better for dancing) the shamanic front man roars through songs normally treated oh-so reverently. Also present are originals filled with poetry unheard of before or since in pop music. It’s all sung with a voice that has been compared to a rusty bayonet, with the dental bombsite in his mouth already softening his S’s.

Shane MacGowan, whether he liked it or not, was a Londoner and in his songs, he exhibited the life force of the city. Despite being known as the stereotypical Irish group, The Pogues were the very model of a London band. MacGowan’s Tipperary via Bethnal Green accent showed exactly where he and the group were coming from. His voice blasted through Dubliners covers and his own originals. Simple, catchy songs with great melodies containing an over riding positivism.

It was clear that this was a band that you could trust to give you a boost when you were feeling low and rev you up for a great night out, but also break your heart with the tender ballads that seemed to fall effortlessly from the pen of Shane MacGowan. However, they never lost sight of making hard, fun pop music with a social conscience. He summed up his world view in the first song he wrote for the band, Streams of Whiskey, a wild anthem dedicated to the life of writer Brendan Behan.

Over the next eight years the original line up of Shane MacGowan, Spider Stacy, Jem Finer, Andrew Ranken, Cait O'Riordan and James Fearnley would fragment and split. O’Riordan left to marry producer and long time enemy/friend Elvis Costello and be replaced by the more technically gifted Darryl Hunt. Philip Chevron, former leader of Dublin punk group the Radiators from Space took over the rhythm guitar once Shane’s notoriously hard living life style took its toll on his hand-eye co-ordination. Terry Woods was a semi-legend in Irish folk music circles and joined the band to add an extra dimension to Shane’s increasingly cinematic writing.

With its reputation as the most exciting live act around cemented and their first two albums Red Roses for Me and Rum Sodomy, and the Lash revered by critics all that remained was for the band to brawl its way to the commercial success. This they did with their most accomplished album to date and their very best song Fairytale of New York which also gave them their highest commercial success. The album that the single was taken off, If I Should Fall from Grace with God was their best yet. It was a testament to the sheer quality of the song writing that in that era of shoddy electro pop this collection of folk songs did so well.

From the top, the only way is down. Alcohol had become more than a habit and harder drugs were worming their way into the band. The next album showed a lack of direction and the band’s tendency to overindulge leaked into the music. The internal tensions were palpable. Overdubs and cocaine dogged the ironically named Peace and Love sessions. The music wasn’t up to much and the lyrics didn’t have the old flash. MacGowan’s partying lifestyle had brought him to the late eighties craze of Acid House, and with his usual do-nothing-by-halves attitudes, was eating LSD like it was candy.

It was clear to everyone on the outside that the current attempts to try and make If I Should Fall… part two were misguided. The band enlisted Joe Strummer knowing he could take the particular brand of rock ‘n’ roll madness that the Pogues had dropped into. No other producer would touch the band. Shane’s singing had hit a slurred, Zen peacefulness and his writing, mostly now with partner Jem Finer seemed even more effortlessly rock ‘n’ roll brilliant than before. The band as a whole was writing well and eternal sideman Spider Stacy got his time in the spotlight to add his raspy English punk voice to more songs.

Whilst, song for song, not an album to be compared to their best work, Hell’s Ditch was a wholly satisfying listening experience especially Shane’s new Eastern flavoured tracks and what the other band members contributed. The songs contain a specialized kind of happiness, a “we’ll beat this, no matter what”-ness, that gets past the surface slur and finds a deeper spiritual contentedness.

It was not to last, however. With a round-the-calendar touring schedule and increasingly bruised egos and fractured friendships the band was going to collapse and it was the now very fragile MacGowan who felt the most pressure. As his on/off girlfriend and current fiancé Victoria Clarke described it, it had taken him to the point where one night he believed there had been a nuclear holocaust and all the leaders of the countries of the world had come to his kitchen with him representing Ireland. In order to demonstrate the cultural inferiority of the US, he ate his Beach Boys Greatest Hits vol. 3 LP. It was here that Clarke found him. He left the band soon after, still enjoying himself, but with his physical and mental state at an all time low.

The true measure of the Pogues is the rash of imitators that have sprung up in their wake. The mostly American-“Oirish” bands all use the same Clancy Brothers having a fight with the Sex Pistols down a dirty old back alley brief but they lose much of the soul. There’s a misconception that by playing traditional songs at 500mph they can emulate the Pogues.

Today, the originals have gotten back together and still take sporadic tours across Britain and America. The band presides over three generations of music fans who flock to see the Pogues in sold out venues larger even than those that they commanded at their previous peak. The band is like an old boxer, standing triumphant over a number of knocked out opponents’ stupid enough not to realise that their collective age belies their power and dedication.

The records still hold up as strongly as ever, and you, the informed consumer, are making a grievous mistake still reading this. You should be pushing to the front of the queue in your local HMV with a Best of the Pogues CD in one hand and some scrunched pound notes in the other, trying to catch the eye of a bored teenaged shop assistant.

It’s with a small smile and a battered swagger that MacGowan walks on stage these days, confident in the knowledge his legend is safe and that his band can out perform even their most talented of imitators.

[dawson]

Ill give it a C-

[Dropofpoison]

I wrote my GCSE English exam piece on Shane MacGowan. I got an A.