The Medusa Fora

Shamelessly lifted from the Paddy Rolling Stone site. Posted December 12 by Mr. Chevron:<blockquote><blockquote type=cite>Oh dear. it appears I have inadvertently opened a can of worms here, so let me make it as plain as possible: a lot of people made a lot of money from The Pogues in the 80s and 90s. The Pogues themselves were not necessarily among that number.

Andy, the business hasn't won. These days, we cooperate only if they're paying top dollar and if most of that is going into our pockets. That's the way it works now - they steal your creativity from the outset, for as fast a buck as possible, but if you can outsmart them by surviving for long enough, you get to call the shots after all.

Mr MacGowan, on the Frank Skinner show last week, attributed his "longevity" to the fact that his imminent demise has been confidently predicted for 20 years. Don't think for a moment he was kidding - payback is a strong motive!

Now, none of that would matter a damn if we didn't actually still enjoy playing together, if we didn't actually look forward to the opportunities when they arise. Personally, I like the work better now than I ever did first time around. The point is, we are on nobody's rollercoaster, we are nobody else's career plan.

Again, none of this would matter if we were not blessed with loyal and smart supporters. The reality seems to be that most of those are to be found in the UK and Ireland, so at the moment it makes more economic sense to do our shows there.

A lot of the work we do is year-round and behind the scenes, whether it's Spider and Jem taking personal responsibility for the quality of the t-shirts or myself and Darryl supervising the sound of the reissues (and making sure, incidentally, that these new definitive editions are as low-priced as possible). Nobody is more respectful of the Pogues' legacy, or of the fans' part in that legacy, than the Pogues themselves. This is why we unequivocally renounce such shabby cash-ins as the "Streams Of Whiskey" album and the recent "Town And Country" DVD.

If what we are doing these days seems like a cynical nostalgia-fest to any of our fans, they are right to vote with their feet and boycott us. I only know that, to me, performing "The Old Main Drag" or "A Pair Of Brown Eyes" in 2004 is a uniquely different experience to playing them in 1985. These songs grow and resonate in new ways as they - and we - gather their own baggage. </blockquote></blockquote>

Cheers for that - interesting! I stopped reading the forum there aorund the time when the gig in NY was cancelled and all the bad words were flying... it was impossible to keep up!

I check in there very rarely.

So Shane's Nov. gig in New York was canceled, huh? Even after all the "My friend owns the bar and personally guarantees that Shane will be there" crap?

I check in nearly every day.
I like to read what Danny Pope or Mr Chevron has written.

Someone posted this;
Really funny
Spider:
"We have nothing against most of these people personally, but musically a lot of them are just really crap. Like U2. They are a rock band and I really hate rock bands. To me U2 sound like what would have happened if William Blake had been exposed to lead pollution as a small boy, and then been given an electric guitar on his 14th birthday."

Thanks for sharing that DZM......It's great that a band like the Pogues are as smart as they are in organizing their tour and in doing it at least on a level that gives us fans some real value seeing them.

I too have stopped frequenting the shanemacgowan.com forum due to the disgusting amount of kiddy like toilet humour and BS that seems to dominate the posts...

Fyllo wrote:I like to read what Danny Pope or Mr Chevron has written.

It's precisely because of their participation that I check in there. Unfortunately there is no way to easily find their postings so I typically end up looking at the first two screens and then move on.