TANYA’S ROUND OF RUBBISH
The Pogues – Rum, Sodomy and the Lash
Now if there is any nationality who knows about drinking, it is the Irish. Unfortunately if there is any nationality that knows about maudlin drunken sing-songs with instruments with names which cannot be pronounced it would also be the Irish. Put it like this I always though the uilleann pipes were part of my lower gastro-instinal tract. Having heard them, I am not inclined to change my opinion.
Ah but the Pogues, the Pogues were a breath of fresh air from staid trad Irish music. Actually no, they were a breath of stale manky foetid air from the mouth of Shane MacGowan: and you have seen the state of his teeth, guess how bad his breath is. The idea was apparently to fuse raw punk energy to traditional Irish music. Instead they fused the lack of technical ability of punk with the introspective self-pitying topics of Irish ballads. Can anyone suggest the relevance of still moaning about the British soldiers of 1844 in 1984?
Rum, Sodomy and the Lash was their breakthrough album. This meant that they had frankly had enough of them in Ireland and sent them to the UK to muck up our charts. Just to ensure the album was piss poor they roped in speccy Elvis Costello, a man who knows how to strangle innovation way before birth. So we get endless mumblothons like the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda, and Dirty Old Town. Surely there is a law against an Irishman singing Dirty Old Town these days, Dublin really cannot be THAT dirty. And as for ruining Rum for me, well all they desrve is the Lash. Flayed alive in hell for every terrible song they wrote, ever diddle they diddled and for every tooth that has fallen out of Shane ‘Gappy’ MacGowan’s gob.