The Medusa Fora

anyone care to guess at how much of this song is autobiographical?

i've heard rumours that shane was a prostitute
in order to make drug money

Somewhere between 0 and 100 %??

Heard rumours, have you?
Ooooh-aaaah, gosh, how dweadful - them rumours, they're terrible things they are.

"rumours are those things you heard while I was telling you the truth"

Benno wrote:i've heard rumours that shane was a prostitute
in order to make drug money

Wasn't you that said "Drugs are about what they do on the inside, not what they do on the outside. They're about discovery."

Yep. Sounds like they're worth it.

Benno wrote:i've heard rumours that shane was a prostitute
in order to make drug money

And if he was, and if he did, does it make a blind bit of difference to the quality of the song?

soulfinger wrote:

Benno wrote:i've heard rumours that shane was a prostitute
in order to make drug money

And if he was, and if he did, does it make a blind bit of difference to the quality of the song?

Nope, but fretting about it says a lot about the quality of the listener, methinks, nicht wahr?

i love how you lot assumed that i thought being a prostitute was a bad thing
i was simply wondering

i love the song
i love the man
and if he did that, for me, it only adds authenticity
not only to the song, but to his existence in general

Benno wrote:i love how you lot assumed that i thought being a prostitute was a bad thing

So, let's be clear about this.......you think being a prostitute is a good thing?

Personally, I think it's the exploiters of prostitutes that are a bad thing.

it's not a good thing
it isnt a bad thing though

it's all about circumstance
if i was hookedon heroin, and the only way to get cash
was to give old men handjobs
then fuck i'd do it

shane has just lived this life full of authentic hardship
like tons of other people
but unlike other people, we get to hear his poetic reflections through song

He said in an interview he was never one of those boys, but he knew folks that were.

Revsta wrote:He said in an interview he was never one of those boys, but he knew folks that were.

I read something like that somewhere. He said the story was not autobiographical, but that he had seen a lot or all of it while out on the street.

"The songs are all based around fairly basic street level existence in London, which is the life that I've led most of my life," he [Shane] explains. "I used to stay at my uncle's pub which is where 'Sally MacLennane' comes from. I also spent a lot of time down the 'dilly when I was teenager, which is where 'The Old Main Drag' comes from. It isn't necessarily about me . . . it's what I saw. All the rest of it is just stuff that, if you spend a lot of time living the - I don't know the word for it - real life in central London, you see it or it happens to you. I've worked in pubs and done other shit jobs, it's just that I've observed and remembered it, or it affected me enough to write about it. Not affected me so that I wanted to say any great message about it, just that I like thinking about things and then writing about them. I don't like writing about my own personal hang ups which is what a lot of other populists do, I just like giving an impression of real life."

(from The Lost Decade)

Dekuji, Zuzana. Straight from the horse's mouth...

finally a non-smart-alecky response from you guys

much appreciated