Shane MacGowan RIP

Shane MacGowan has now been gone six months and I never got around to writing about him. 

 I don’t know that I have any insight but 1988s If I Should Fall From Grace with God and 1989s Peace and Love were huge modern rock hits. My first Pogues album was their next one and the seams had fallen apart on 1990s Hells Ditch. People hate this album and they hate me for defending it. It is the bomb that it was when it was released, but it is definitely a mood and I think you can make a case for at least a handful of tracks. It was reissued in 2005 with extra tracks and though Punks News gives it a whopping four star- a review I doubt many would agree with - I find little fault with that that. I was able to follow the band after that but I wasn’t crazy about what I heard. No one was. 1993s Waiting for Herb and 1996s Pogue Mahone are MacGowan-less records to round out the band discography (Though in the “select a song” 21st Century, the Spider Stacy sung “Tuesday Morning” is a fine addition to any playlist) I tried following MacGowan post Pogues with the Popes but it wasn’t my thing (with a differing opinion, Allmusic gives 1994s The Snake four stars).

I never did buy those popular late 80s albums, eventually opting for 1991s Essential Pogues which was a misnomer only covering the three Island Records albums and Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah EP. Those are great songs but the band had released two albums before their American success- 1984s Red Roses for Me and 1985s Rum Sodomy and the Lash. Once I was able to find these imported CDs from a big city record store, I did. 

In my mind, Rum… is about as good as it gets. It creates a genre in itself - not only obvious bands like Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly but any band that fuses punk to traditional sounds- Gogol Bordello, Frank Turner and the Felice Brothers It’s not that the Island Records are bad. It’s that they are a more commercialized version of what the band created on those first two albums- Wild and raw. The band smartly mixes their own songs with a selection of traditional ones. Elvis Costello produces and as he did with the first Specials album and Squeeze’s East Side Story nails it.