The Medusa Fora

He does a damn good impression dont you think?

Dropofpoison wrote:

As long as I've known Shane (29 years) he has never had an "Irish" accent. In part, that's kinda the point of Shane, really. The only Pogues with Irish accents are myself and Terry. Mine is a slightly genteel North Dublin, inflected with 30 years as a Briton and almost 50 as a devotee of American musicals. Terry's is slightly genteel South Dublin, unalloyed with foreign influence except maybe the mountainy singers of the Appalachians and Woody Guthrie. People usually hear the accents and go "which part of Australia you guys from?", though we do not sound like anyone from any part of Australia I've ever been to. Speaking of which, normal British/Irish September weather appears to have returned to welcome Fintan and his lassies.

Pete Holidai from the Radiators, although he returned to Ireland in the early 70s, still has the Fulham Broadway accent he grew up with when his family migrated to London in the early 60s. wrote:

This is going to be a stupid question but its been bothering me, youre not the REAL Phil Chevron are you?

He is actually.

if thats true, then thats very cool

TheKing wrote:There is NO DOUBT that MacGowan sings in a 'put on Irish accent' so to speak. However, somehow he carries this off very very well and Im sure if anyone else ever tried it they would be ridiculed. But, whats wrong with that? Apparently The Beatles were thought to be different as they came from Britain and DIDNT sing in American accents, it says on Beatles Anthology anyway.

MacGowan still speaks in a normal london voice but cos his teeth are fucked, his voice is not what is is clearly heard to be like in the early interview featured on the If I Should Fall From dvd, in which he is a pure cockney.

Also some songs really need to be sung in a slight accent I feel. I mean, listen to The Family Mahone's Raggle Taggle Gypsy and it just doesnt sound right in my humble opinion. And if Slade sung in Midlands accents then this would also sound quite quite silly whereas Stone Roses singing in Manchester accents sounds fine. So basically certain 'accents' fit certain songs. Thats wot I think anyway.

Hmm

Does anyone actually understand wot I mean?

Yes I do understand wot you mean, but I'm struggling to find a single example where Shane sings in a "put on" accent of any stripe, except when he clearly does so for comic effect, as when he gives us his "Aunty Monica" in the girl's part in "Gentleman Soldier".

Yeah, Shaneo doesn't have classic Oirish accent, since he spent more toime in County Hell than in County Tipperary BUT with everything what hes been doin', oi think hes accent is even better shaped than traditional Oirish accent! As the songs he wrote and the way he sings em' is not really Oirish traditional music BUT much much more - pure Oirish punk rock music as oi see it, in the same manner hes accent is sth much much more! Oirish traditional music is greatest traditional music in the world, but as oi see it, Shaneo crossed the loine and brought it to completely new level.

So the stuff as oi see it and what oi believe in - Shaneo made advanced Oirish music AND Shaneo has advanced Oirish accent(shaped with influences of living in a foreign country - England, shaped with drinking, lack of teeth, shaped with creativity and everything hes done in hes loife)!

Added with me other views, that for the one to be Oirish isn't main stuff to be born in Oireland - oi wouldn't loike to see smn to claim that Shaneo isn't Oirishman cause he wasn't born in Oireland.. the picture is much wider than it meets the eye

Yes Oirish, I think I'll settle for that explanation myself. High Foive!

Jesum.

It be confusing cause Shane has a London-Irish accent, like Philip said he's as a London/Cockney accent but may prounnce the odd word with a slight Irishness air about him simular to myself. Since I was young I've never had an Irish Accent but I'd pick up on the way my parents prounnced words and phases which can lead to confusion to people aren't use to hearing thid. Thus the London-Irish accent is born

Nobody who's been to a Martin McDonagh play (with the possible exception of The Pillowman) can fail to have been swept up in his curious hiberno-english, which can almost only have been created by a Camberwell boy of Irish parentage who spent summers in the West of Ireland and found himself enthralled and excited by the odd speech patterns of the older people, derived as they are from the grammar and syntax, and sometimes even literal translation of the Irish language which had once been second nature to them. Martin would be the first to admit that this impulse comes primarily from the plays of JM Synge, but what Martin brought to the table was a London/London-Irish sensibility, mixed with an irreverence/affection learned from The Pogues, which created a new dramatic language for the stage, one which convulses audiences from Nenagh to New York. It's quite an achievement, but it is not really possible to mistake a Martin McDonagh play for anyone else's.

From Sheridan to Wilde and Shaw to Synge and O'Casey to Beckett and beyond, Irish writers have been at all times in the vanguard of shaping, reshaping and appropriating the English language. It could be an act of colonial and post-colonial vandalism, but it isn't, because Irish writers just love language, speech, words, idioms, They can't help it. The race memory of Gaelic as the first language compels them to find in their contemporary world something as rich and expressive as that was/is.

Shane, like myself, loves language and speech in all its forms and uses it as a tool in his work. He has no need of artifice or fakery because he is himself the living embodiment of the world he writes about and sings about. When the Brits wrote this stuff, it was stage-Irish. When we write it, it's poetry.

This is also why you will never find me undermining OirishRover's form of Oirish English. If the beauty of hiberno-english has caught on as far away as Belgrade, well that's fine with me. Let's see what connections that makes.

philipchevron wrote:This is also why you will never find me undermining OirishRover's form of Oirish English. If the beauty of hiberno-english has caught on as far away as Belgrade, well that's fine with me. Let's see what connections that makes.

Yes, actually from Belgrade, Serbia all the way to Belgrade, Montana USA.

philipchevron wrote:This is also why you will never find me undermining OirishRover's form of Oirish English. If the beauty of hiberno-english has caught on as far away as Belgrade, well that's fine with me. Let's see what connections that makes.

God bless ya Philip!

the irish have a curious way of explaining things i think. the signs make you feel confused

Behan wrote:Yes, actually from Belgrade, Serbia all the way to Belgrade, Montana USA.

Oim willing for an exchange!

Anonymous wrote:the irish have a curious way of explaining things i think. the signs make you feel confused

We do our best to keep people guessing, yes. Thank you.