The Medusa Fora

I bought the book over the weekend and finished it last night - I have to say it's VERY good. It's a rather tender and touching account of James' experiences up until Shane was asked to leave the band. It's funny too and I found myself laughing out loud to myself - especially at his description of Spider as "the greatest disturbance"... in fact, I'm laughing about it now!

I'm surprised too, that the rest of the band didn't try and knock the living shit out of Shane on more than one occasion!

John C...

Excellent book, i am now reading it for the second time!Without sounding like a boring German spoilsport, i did notice one or two factual errors, i made comparisons with the 2 other biogs of The Pogues.But really,it hardly matters,it was a long time ago.Time really does play tricks with the mind, after all didn't Germany lose 2-3 against England in the 1966 World Cup Final?

Is that yourself dsweeney? You don't fool me with your factual errors! How would James know? He was only there!

Shaz wrote:There's an entertaining and very positive review by David Quantick of Here Comes Everybody in the May issue of Word magazine. And it's a full-page one!

Any good soul with a scanner?

Just ordered my copy on Amazon. Can expect it in a few weeks. Being delivered from England. A friend highly recommended it and said the parts about Shane reminded her of when she was a child and found out Santa Claus wasn't real.

He has an astonishing vocabulary e.g.: eiditic, preterite, febrile, plicated, valanced, pellucid, mardy, moil, stook, pyknic, crepitated, scutiform and flocculent

Loved the bit where they drink the mezcal on the tour bus:

'Shane appeared from the back of the bus.
'You supposed to eat the worm?' he said.
'Yes', Jem said.
In a while Shane returned. he stood in the doorway. his eyes swam in an attempt to focus. his head tilted this way and that, as if the lashings tying something down in it had come loose.
'Got any more?', he said....'

Later that night:

'The gig we played was atrocious, interrupted by vomiting and mezcal-induced memory loss. Philip was incapable of standing. A chair had to be found for him. Spider became entangled in a stook of microphone stands by the side of the stage.Shane filled a bucket with puke.
'Jem's fault!', Shane said afterwards. 'He told me to eat the worm!'
'If Jem told you to eat your own shit, would you?' Spider said.
Shane looked at Spider, surprised.
'Yes!', he said.'

Jem comes across as a moral beacon in the band - the only responsible adult - you can imagine that Shane would have eaten his own shit if Jem had told him to!

A great read!

Im reading yet another 800 page stephen king novel, so i am going to be a cheapskate and wait for a copy of james book to turn up in Barter Books

Great book,James is an excellent wordsmith and his description of some of the characters is, vivid to say the least, i love his description of Ali Campbell.I met Campbell one time and thought he was a right turd!I look forward to Volume 2.....

Just got hold of the Word magazine review. Here's some of it:

''The first time I met James Fearnley...he took issue with a live review I'd written of his band...""I thought it was recondite,'' he said, which is not the answer you'd have got from, say, Smeggy of King Kurt....The Pogues' career was not so much a thundering roller-coaster as a pilled-up afternoon on the dogems, which makes it a great topic for a book...James Fearnley recounts pretty much each and every moment from the jaundiced eye of the hurricane....In the end it's the I-was-there insights that make Here Comes Everybody such a good book -Shane wigging out to Contact Yourself (the acid house single he wanted to release under The Pogues' name)...Elvis and Cait and their furious rows...Shane's awful room in King's Cross (there is, distressingly,a photograph). That and a prose style that combines wit with clarity (though at times I found it a bit recondite), make Here Comes Everybody not just an essential purchase for Pogues fans but for anyone interested in the reality of being in a band. And what a band.''

It's a brilliant read. He has a great skill in sketching someone in a couple of lines. His descriptions of the dubs are to be relished.

re: errors. There are one or two typos and mistakes, they'll probably catch before the (smaller) paperback comes. James will search in vain for his copy of the Sunnyside Of The Street single for instance. On the other hand, the whole book - as with all memoir - is a hostage to the vagueries of memory and in misremembering a Sunnyside single he tells us a deeper truth about these projects, a sort of caveat emptor, this is my truth, and I like that, if that doesn't sound too frigging pretentious.

And so, we await books from the other six.

Loved the book. Fearnley placed the filming of STH in '85, where Strummer would have been somewhat busy with a little side project called the Clash.

CM wrote:On the other hand, the whole book - as with all memoir - is a hostage to the vagueries of memory and in misremembering a Sunnyside single he tells us a deeper truth about these projects, a sort of caveat emptor, this is my truth, and I like that, if that doesn't sound too frigging pretentious.

Can't be worse than "A Drink With Shane MacGowan" on that front (although i love the parts where Victoria argues with him over his recollections).

I've ordered my copy, but foolishly did so via amazon.ca which means i have to wait for the domestic release, May 29th (but for a change i remembered to use the link on the front page when ordering).

Low D wrote:

CM wrote:On the other hand, the whole book - as with all memoir - is a hostage to the vagueries of memory and in misremembering a Sunnyside single he tells us a deeper truth about these projects, a sort of caveat emptor, this is my truth, and I like that, if that doesn't sound too frigging pretentious.

Can't be worse than "A Drink With Shane MacGowan" on that front (although i love the parts where Victoria argues with him over his reccollections).

I've ordered my copy, but foolishly did so via amazon.ca which means i have to wait for the domestic release, May 29th (but for a change i rememberd to use the link on the front page when ordering).

I actually like what Victoria did with that book as it gives us an idea of how Shanes head works. It kind of puts to bed all those interviews before where you look at what Shane has said and think either hes telling fibs, mistaken or he was treated horribly!!!!! After reading that you think Ahhhh right thats Shane ha ha. He even contradicts himself in the same session at one point (which by the way is his right to do ha ha)

RICHB wrote:

Low D wrote:

CM wrote:On the other hand, the whole book - as with all memoir - is a hostage to the vagueries of memory and in misremembering a Sunnyside single he tells us a deeper truth about these projects, a sort of caveat emptor, this is my truth, and I like that, if that doesn't sound too frigging pretentious.

Can't be worse than "A Drink With Shane MacGowan" on that front (although i love the parts where Victoria argues with him over his recollections).

I've ordered my copy, but foolishly did so via amazon.ca which means i have to wait for the domestic release, May 29th (but for a change i remembered to use the link on the front page when ordering).

I actually like what Victoria did with that book as it gives us an idea of how Shanes head works. It kind of puts to bed all those interviews before where you look at what Shane has said and think either hes telling fibs, mistaken or he was treated horribly!!!!! After reading that you think Ahhhh right thats Shane ha ha. He even contradicts himself in the same session at one point (which by the way is his right to do ha ha)

Oh i quite agree - i enjoyed "A Drink With..." for the same reason. When i said "Can't be worse than..." i meant that there couldn't possibly be a greater AMOUNT of "the vagueries of memory" (or, I suppose, a greater extreme of each individual vaguery). Sorry, I should have picked a better adjective!

(Speaking of which, spell check is telling me that neither "vaguery" or "vagueries" are correct. So i looked 'em up, "vaguery" is correct, but apparently the plural is "vagaries." Odd that it drops the "u". I bet James would have got that right!)

Describing Shane on their first meeting, auditioning for the Nips in 1980: 'His gaping mouth...was full of crowns...Where one of his crowns was missing stood a tiny brown prong.'

But the picture of the two of them on stage just a few pages later shows Shane, open mouthed, with all his dental crowns in place.

He's not worried about strict accuracy though - he says at the end, 'In order to reproduce the spirit of an event, I have conflated a number of similar, recurring situations and exchanges.'